Fielder Cook

Emmy Award-winner Fielder Cook was a top television director who got his start in the early days of television, when he went to work for Lux Video Theatre (1950) in 1950. Other live-TV omnibus series that he worked on included Studio One (1948) and The Kaiser Aluminum Hour (1956), for which he also did teleplays (and served as a producer on the latter series). He remained true to television, whereas other highly respected helmers from the live days of TV abandoned the medium for feature films. Commenting on the fact that he directed the last episode of both "The Ponds Theater (1953) and Playhouse 90 (1956), Cook said, "I was beginning to feel like the mortician of television." In all, Cook received nine Emmy Award nominations, seven as best director and two for best producer, winning three (two for directing, one for producing). Born James Fielder Cook in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 9, 1923, he was raised in Tampa, Florida. He joined the Navy and served as an officer during World War II after graduating cum laude with an undergraduate degree in literature from Washington and Lee University. After the war he went to England to study Elizabethan drama at the University of Birmingham. When he returned to the US, he eschewed the theater for television, going to work in live TV. His first work as a TV director was with "The Lux Video Theatre." In 1955 he established his critical reputation directing Patterns (1955) written by Rod Serling, one of the most successful productions of the live-TV era. After the broadcast CBS-TV owner William Paley called the control room for the first time ever and said, "Tell everyone, especially Rod Serling, that tonight we put television about ten years ahead." Serling won an Emmy for "Patterns," and the following year the teleplay was made into a movie (Patterns (1956)) from a script by Serling and directed by Cook. While Cook would occasionally direct feature films, television remained his main bailiwick. After "Patterns" he could have the made the transition into feature film work like other directors who made their bones on live TV, such as Oscar-winners Franklin J. Schaffner and Sidney Lumet. However, he preferred directing for TV. "I went back to TV because I could do what I wanted to do", he told the "Los Angeles Times" in a 1966 interview. "You learn from your mistakes with nobody telling you what to do." He believed that the story was paramount. In the days of live TV, writers like Serling and Paddy Chayefsky accrued respect and wielded the kind of power denied movie screenwriters. They were more like playwrights in the theater, where the word was king. In a 1997 interview with UPI, Cook said, "As a director I tell a story, but it's not my story." As a director, he was committed to realizing the writer's visions, so the writer could say, "There it is. That's my work." In addition to directing teleplays and TV movies, Cook also directed episodic television. His first two Emmy nominations came in 1961 for producing and directing Big Deal in Laredo (1962). Four years later he won his first two Emmy Awards for producing and directing the adaptation of the musical Brigadoon (1966). He won a second Emmy in 1971 for directing The Price (1971). That same year he had directed The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), which spawned the TV series The Waltons (1972), which brought him another Emmy nod in 1972. In 1976 and 1977 he was nominated again for directing the pilot of the dramatic TV series Beacon Hill (1975) and the TV special Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys (1976), respectively. Cook continued to direct regularly on TV and the occasional feature film until 1989. Most of his work was in the TV movie genre, including the adaptation of Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979), the Emmy Award-winning Gauguin the Savage (1980) and the Frances Farmer biopic Will There Really Be a Morning? (1983). He took an eight-year hiatus from directing following _"American Playwrights Theater: The One-Acts" (1989) {Third and Oak: The Pool Hall (#1.1)}, and his swan song as a director was The Member of the Wedding (1997). Fielder Cook died on June 20, 2003, in Charlotte, North Carolina.