Stanford Calderwood, 81; Executive Secured Funding for TV’s ‘Masterpiece Theatre’

Stanford Calderwood, a businessman and a moving force behind public broadcasting’s “Masterpiece Theatre,” died Thursday of pancreatic cancer at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was 81.

Calderwood was president of WGBH-TV in Boston for just three months in 1970, but in that time he talked Mobil Oil into giving a $1-million grant that made it possible to produce the “Masterpiece Theatre” series.

Born in Scottsbluff, Neb., Calderwood earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Colorado in 1942. The first of his several careers was in the Navy during World War II, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.

Returning to civilian life, he became a reporter and photographer at the Union Leader in Manchester, N.H., and for wire services.

He joined the Polaroid Corp. in 1953, and was an executive vice president of the company when he left in 1970.

At Polaroid, he was responsible for its early underwriting of a television cooking series featuring Julia Child.

In 1981, he bought control of Trinity Investment Management, which he headed until 1999.