Fred Coe
Encyclopedia
Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology series that was telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. It originated from CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California...
from 1957 to 1959. Among the live TV dramas he produced were Marty
Marty
Marty is a 1953 teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky. It was telecast live May 24, 1953, on The Goodyear Television Playhouse with Rod Steiger in the title role and Nancy Marchand, in her television debut, playing opposite him as Clara...
and The Trip to Bountiful for Philco-Goodyear, Peter Pan
Peter Pan (1954 musical)
Peter Pan is a musical adaptation of J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan and Barrie's own novelization of it, Peter and Wendy. The music is mostly by Mark "Moose" Charlap, with additional music by Jule Styne, and most of the lyrics were written by Carolyn Leigh, with additional lyrics by Betty...
for Producers' Showcase
Producers' Showcase
Producers' Showcase is an American anthology television series that was telecast live during the 1950s in compatible color by NBC. With top talent, the 90-minute episodes, covering a wide variety of genres, aired under the title every fourth Monday at 8 p.m. ET for three seasons, beginning October...
, and Days of Wine and Roses
Days of Wine and Roses (1958 TV drama)
Days of Wine and Roses was an acclaimed 1958 teleplay by JP Miller which dramatized the problems of alcoholism. John Frankenheimer directed the cast headed by Cliff Robertson, Piper Laurie and Charles Bickford....
for Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology series that was telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. It originated from CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California...
.
Born in Alligator, Mississippi
Alligator, Mississippi
Alligator is a village in Bolivar County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 220 at the 2000 census.In 2009, Tommie "Tomaso" Brown was elected Alligator's first black mayor...
, Coe attended high school in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
, and college in Nashville at Peabody College
Peabody College
Peabody College of Education and Human Development was founded in 1875 when the University of Nashville, located in Nashville, Tennessee, split into two separate educational institutions...
, now part of Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
, before studying at the Yale Drama School.
Television
Coe made his mark in the early years of network television when Lights OutLights Out (radio show)
Lights Out is an extremely popular American old-time radio program, an early example of a network series devoted mostly to horror and the supernatural, predating Suspense and Inner Sanctum...
moved from radio to TV on July 3, 1946. Variety reviewed:
- Credit for the show's all-around excellence belongs jointly to scripter Wyllis Cooper and producer Fred Coe. Cooper was the last writer of the radio version with an eight-week series on the NBC net last summer. (Show returns for eight weeks Sat. (6) as replacement for Judy Canova). He followed Arch Oboler at the task and has made the switch from radio to tele without a single letdown in the program's eerie quality. Coe, whose light on NBC television has been partly hidden in the past by Ed Sobol and Ernie Colling, both of whom won ATS awards this last year, has come into his own with this show and should now rank right at the top of the heap. Story, titled First Person Singular, concerned a psychopathic killer whose wife's constant nagging, extreme sloppiness, etc., led him to strangle her in their apartment on one of those blistering summer evenings. Killer was never seen, with the camera following the action and taking in just what the eyes of the murderer would see. Thoughts in the killer's subconscious, meanwhile, told what might go on in the mind of such a person as he contemplates his crime, is convicted in court and then hanged. Coe achieved some admirable effects with the camera, drawing the viewer both into the killer's mind and into the action. Use of a spiral montage effect bridged the gap between scenes very well and the integration of film to point up the killer's dream of a cool, placid existence and to heighten the shock effect as the hangman ended his life was excellent. Technical director Bill States was on the beam with the controls in following Coe's direction.
Writers
Coe was known as a patron saint of writers, discovering or advancing the careers of Paddy ChayefskyPaddy Chayefsky
Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky , was an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay....
, Horton Foote
Horton Foote
Albert Horton Foote, Jr. was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television...
, Tad Mosel
Tad Mosel
Tad Mosel was an American playwright and one of the leading dramatists of hour-long teleplay genre for live television during the 1950s. He received the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play All the Way Home....
, JP Miller
JP Miller
James Pinckney Miller , known to friends and associates by the nickname Pappy, wrote under the name JP Miller. He was a leading playwright during the Golden Age of Television, receiving three Emmy nominations...
, David Swift
David Swift (director)
David Swift was an American film actor, writer, director and producer. He is best known for his 1967 film, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and the Disney films Parent Trap franchise.-Biography:...
, N. Richard Nash
N. Richard Nash
N. Richard Nash was a writer and dramatist best known for writing Broadway shows, including The Rainmaker.-Early life:...
, A.E. Hotchner, Herb Gardner and many others. Numerous important actors appeared on Coe's shows, which were directed by, among others, Delbert Mann
Delbert Mann
Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. was an American television and film director. He won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty...
and Arthur Penn
Arthur Penn
Arthur Hiller Penn was an American film director and producer with a career as a theater director as well. Penn amassed a critically acclaimed body of work throughout the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:...
.
Broadway
Coe also was a significant producer on Broadway. His plays include The Trip to BountifulThe Trip to Bountiful
The Trip to Bountiful is a 1985 film starring Geraldine Page, John Heard, Carlin Glynn, Richard Bradford and Rebecca De Mornay. Geraldine Page won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Carrie Watts. The movie was adapted by Horton Foote from his television play. The Trip to...
, The Miracle Worker
The Miracle Worker (play)
The Miracle Worker is a three-act play by William Gibson adapted from his 1957 Playhouse 90 teleplay of the same name. It is based on Helen Keller's autobiography The Story of My Life.-Plot:...
, Two for the Seesaw
Two for the Seesaw
Two for the Seesaw is a 1962 romance-drama film directed by Robert Wise and starring Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine. It was adapted from the Broadway play written by William Gibson.-Plot:...
, All the Way Home
All the Way Home (play)
All the Way Home is a 1960 play written by American playwright Tad Mosel, adapted from the 1957 James Agee novel, A Death in the Family. Both authors received the Pulitzer Prize for their separate works....
, A Thousand Clowns
A Thousand Clowns
A Thousand Clowns is a 1962 American play by Herb Gardner, which tells the story of a young boy who lives with his eccentric uncle Murray, who is forced to conform to society in order to keep custody of the boy. A 1965 movie version was adapted from the play by Gardner and directed by Fred Coe.-...
, and Wait Until Dark
Wait Until Dark
Wait Until Dark is a play by Frederick Knott.-Synopsis:Susy Hendrix is a blind Greenwich Village housewife who becomes the target of three con-men searching for the heroin hidden in a doll, which her husband Sam innocently transported from Canada as a favor to a woman who has since been murdered...
. He also produced the film versions of The Miracle Worker and A Thousand Clowns, the latter of which he directed.
Coe is buried in Green River Cemetery
Green River Cemetery
Green River Cemetery is a cemetery in the hamlet of Springs, New York within the Town of East Hampton.The cemetery was originally intended for the blue collar local families of the Springs neighborhood who supported the ocean mansions in East Hampton , New York...
in Springs, New York
Springs, New York
Springs is a census-designated place roughly corresponding to the hamlet by the same name in the town of East Hampton in Suffolk County, New York on the South Fork of Long Island. As of the United States 2000 Census, the hamlet population was 4,950...
. His biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
, The Man in the Shadows: Fred Coe and the Golden Age of Television by Jon Krampner, was published by Rutgers University Press in 1997. UCLA has kinescopes of many Fred Coe productions and has made some digital transfers. The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research also has kinescopes.