Greg Garrison, 81; TV Pioneer With a Flair for Comedy, Variety Shows

Greg Garrison, a television pioneer who directed Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” in the early 1950s and later produced and directed Dean Martin’s long-running variety show and his “Celebrity Roasts,” has died. He was 81.

Garrison died of pneumonia March 25 at his home in Thousand Oaks, said his wife, Judy.

In a television career of more than 40 years that began after World War II when he became a “gofer” on an ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, Garrison directed nearly 4,000 shows.

Brought to New York City by the legendary producer Max Liebman and NBC executive Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, Garrison directed “Your Show of Shows,” the live, 90-minute comedy-variety program featuring Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris, from 1950 to 1952.

“He was a very good director, and he always brought something to the show,” Caesar told The Times this week.

At the same time Garrison was directing Caesar and company, he was doing the same for “The Kate Smith Evening Hour,” a live program that aired five afternoons a week.

Garrison, who had stints directing “The Milton Berle Show” and “Ford Television Theatre” in the 1950s, also directed numerous TV specials over the years, including productions starring Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Jack Benny, George Burns, Lucille Ball, Phil Silvers, Bob Newhart and Jonathan Winters.

Garrison also directed television coverage of the 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and produced and directed one of the televised Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960.

Although he never won an Emmy as a producer or director, he was nominated more than a dozen times.

Beginning in 1965, he produced and directed “The Dean Martin Show” for nine years and performed similar duties for seven years on “The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts.”

“Anyone who has watched the assembling of the weekly Martin [variety] bash gets the idea that Garrison can do anything,” Times critic Cecil Smith wrote in 1969. “Greg assembles the show in its entirety, standing in for Martin through all the rehearsals.... [Martin] trusts Garrison in every detail of the show, and it is to the great credit of the producer-director that it functions so well -- or at all.”

Dom DeLuise, who was a regular on Martin’s variety show and “Celebrity Roasts,” said Garrison gave him great confidence as a comedian.

“Greg was the man who said, ‘Just go for it; I trust you,’ ” DeLuise told The Times this week. “I was allowed to ad-lib a great deal with Dean.”

On Martin’s star-studded variety show, Garrison worked with Orson Welles, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra and many other stars, and there was never any question who was in charge.

To get the attention of the performers and crew members, DeLuise recalled, Garrison would whistle into his microphone and say, “One voice -- mine.”

“Everybody would stop -- nobody moved. You just listened as he told you what the plan was, and it was great.”

DeLuise added: “I’m sure he’s directing all the angels in heaven, saying, ‘One voice -- mine.’ ”

The Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Garrison, a high school dropout who attended various colleges, also flew combat missions with the Army Air Forces during World War II and spent time in a German prisoner-of-war camp.

After the war, he greatly benefited from TV’s seat-of-your-pants pioneer era. Within four days of becoming a gofer at WFIL-TV in Philadelphia, he rose to assistant stage manager.

Three days after that, he became a cameraman, and a week later he was promoted to director.

“In those days,” Garrison later wrote, “if you had two weeks’ experience in television, you were considered a genius, because nobody knew anything about it.”

His resume included such early TV fare as “Stand by for Crime,” a half-hour 1949 police drama on ABC. The young actor playing the homicide squad lieutenant was Myron Wallace, now known as “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace.

Wallace recalled meeting Garrison, whose given name was Harvin Ginsburg, when the newsman hired him as a copy boy for the radio edition of the Chicago Sun in the early 1940s.

“He came in, I think still in his teens,” Wallace told The Times this week. “He had dirty fingernails and a wonderful smile and energy and ambition, so I hired him. Then he went away to war.”

When Wallace learned that Garrison had wound up at a POW camp, “I inferred that he died in there.”

He was surprised to learn otherwise a few years after the war ended.

Wallace, who was by then delivering the late news on a Chicago TV station, was invited to audition for the role of Police Lt. Anthony Kidd on “Stand by for Crime.”

“I came in and sat down and waited,” Wallace recalled. “I was a lousy actor, but back in those days you did anything. Eventually, it was quite apparent to me the fix was in. I didn’t understand why, and all of a sudden he said, ‘Mike, you got the job.’ I said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Garrison.’ He said, ‘Mike, it’s Harvin Ginsburg!’ Honest to God. It was so ... funny.”

The two men worked on other early TV shows as well, including the Sunday afternoon “Super Circus,” for which Wallace did the Peter Pan Peanut Butter commercials. And they kept in touch over the years. “He was an absolutely lovely man,” Wallace said.

In addition to his wife, Garrison is survived by his children from a previous marriage, son Michael and daughter Pat; a granddaughter; and a sister, Phyllis Capper.

At Garrison’s request, no services will be held.

He asked that memorial contributions be made to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, 3550 N. Central Ave., Suite 300, Phoenix, AZ 85012-2127; or to the Sherman Oaks Foundation, which supports the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital, 4929 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403.