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
Kraft Television Theatre (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
(Morgen trifft es dich (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
Die 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
Richter Hortons größter Fall (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
Auf der Suche nach Eden - Das Leben Paul Gauguins (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.
