Paul Bogart

from the Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television

Paul Bogart has enjoyed a career as a director in almost every medium of visual communication. Mr. Bogart is one of a handful of individuals who has directed live television productions of the "Golden Age", the telefilm, the made-for-television movie, and the feature film.

Bogart's career began as a puppeteer and actor with the Berkeley Marionettes in 1946. From there he went on to be stage manager and associate director at NBC, working on such "Golden Age" cornerstones as Kraft Theater, Goodyear Playhouse, and Armstrong Circle Theater. During the 1955-1956 season, when Goodyear Playhouse was known as the Alcoa Hour-Goodyear Playhouse, Bogart directed an episode entitled "The Confidence Man" and an award-winning partnership began. This was the first time Bogart had directed for producer Herbert Brodkin. Bogart would go on to direct many episodes of Brodkin's The Defenders, one of television's most honored series, and garner his first Emmy award for directing "The 700-Year Old Gang," a two-part Defenders episode. Bogart worked almost exclusively for Brodkin series during the early to mid-1960s (The Defenders, The Nurses, The Doctors and Nurses, and Coronet Blue).

After The Defenders period, the larger part of Bogart's work was long form--either television specials, television movies, or feature films. His work for CBS Playhouse was particularly noteworthy. Under that banner Bogart won Emmys for his direction of "Dear Friends" (again with Brodkin producing) and "Shadow Game." During this period Bogart produced the 1966 television series Hawk, starring Burt Reynolds; he also directed the pilot and and a handful of episodes for the series. For theatrical release he directed Halls of Anger (1968), Marlowe (1969), and The Skin Game (1971).

In the mid-1970s, Bogart began another long-term relationship with a single production unit. He directed scores of episodes of All in the Family for Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin's Tandem Productions and in 1978 earned another Emmy for his work on the series. The Golden Girls brought Bogart yet another Emmy in 1986. In 1986 he directed The Canterville Ghost for television and Torch Song Trilogy for theatrical release.

Bogart has said that, in an ideal world, the feature film is his form of choice because the time constraints of television production are absent. Still, he is a singular talent among television directors. He has expressed a partiality for strong characters over a strong story. This preference takes advantage of the intimacy of the television medium, and allows those characters to reveal themselves to viewers through the nuance and subtlety of staging and blocking. These qualities are at a premium in entertainment television today, but because Bogart's aesthetic sensibilities were developed early, in the theater and live television, the episodes he directs are graced by excellent staging and movement of characters. One need only carefully watch Bogart's work for The Defenders, All in the Family, or Nichols to understand that this ability to place characters for the camera is one of the strongest characteristics of his work.

A second characteristic is that he directs like an editor. Bogart begins a directing assignment with a very clear idea of what the program should look like. He then creates the images he needs and pays particular attention to the way those images are linked to make a program. He has stated that, in his view, one of the most important aspects of visual expression is how one image follows another and contributes to the cumulative effect of those joined images. Bogart understands that the power of emotions and ideas can be reinforced or defeated by the manner in which shots are linked. The result is a directorial style which draws on the best elements of the editor's art--the linking of carefully composed images for emotional and dramatic emphasis.

In 1991, Bogart was awarded the French Festival Internationelle Programmes Audiovisuelle at Cannes, one of the few television directors to be recognized for a remarkable body of work. Many directors working in television today are members of a generation raised on television. The better of these directors are those who paid attention to the work of Paul Bogart.

-John Cooper