January 20, 2005
LOS ANGELES, CA - Directors Guild of America President Michael Apted and Awards Committee Chairperson Howard Storm today announced that DGA National Board Member Herb Adelman will be the recipient of the 2005 Frank Capra Achievement Award.
The Capra Award is presented to a DGA Assistant Director or Unit Production Manager in recognition of their career achievement in the Industry and service to the Directors Guild of America.
The award will be given to Adelman at the 57th Annual DGA Awards Dinner on Saturday, January 29, 2005 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.
Below is a profile of Adelman from the February issue of DGA Monthly.
2005 Frank Capra Achievement Award recipient Herb Adelman
In 1961 when President John F. Kennedy, delivered the challenge in his inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country," future Associate DGA National Board Member Herb Adelman took that message to heart. He spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia working in educational television and audiovisual education. When he returned to the U.S. for a job in Washington, D.C. working on federally funded social programs, he took a two-week vacation to work as a PA on director Jack Starrett's crime drama feature The Dion Brothers that was shooting in town. There he found out about the DGA training program and the rest, as they say, is history.
In 1977 Adelman was accepted into the Training Program, where his first assignment was on Irwin Allen's disaster feature The Swarm. One wonders if his Peace Corps experiences came in handy as he found himself working with millions of bees and an all-star cast including, Michael Caine, Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Olivia de Havilland and Fred MacMurray. Adelman went on to work with Robert Aldrich on the comedy-western, The Frisco Kid, Buzz Kulik on the television mini-series, From Here to Eternity, and the classic science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica where he would graduate from trainee to Key Second Assistant Director.
Even as he was building his early career, Adelman never forgot his larger mission. Upon his acceptance to the Guild, he immediately started attending AD/UPM/TC Council meetings and was quickly elected to the Council. In the spirit of 'giving back' he returned to the AD Training Plan in 1980 where he served as a Trustee of the program for the next ten years.
"I'll always be grateful to the Guild and the Training Program for reaching across the country and providing me a unique opportunity and a wonderful career I wouldn't have had otherwise," he said. "I get great satisfaction seeing all the new trainees passing through my shows... It kind of gives me a glimpse back twenty-seven years."
As Adelman's professional credits grew, so did his sense of duty. The late '70s and early '80s would see him working first as a Key Second AD on television pilots like the action series Knight Rider, movies-for-television like Reza Badiyi's re-make of Of Mice and Men, and features like David Steinberg's comedy, Paternity. This same period would find him getting deeply involved in Guild matters as a member of the AD/UPM/TC Council West. In 1982 Adelman would make the transition to First Assistant Director on the groundbreaking series Hill Street Blues.
The remainder of the '80s would find Adelman showing his versatility, working in features like David Anspaugh's college basketball drama, Hoosiers, and Roger Donaldson's thriller, No Way Out, mini-series like Thomas Carter's A Year in the Life, and movies-for-television like Joe Sargent's, A Song for You, The Karen Carpenter Story. But he still found time to serve on the AD/UPM/TC Council and as an elected member of the DGA National Board of Directors as both Associate Member and Member. He also co-chaired both the 1984 and 1987 DGA AD/UPM/TC Negotiating Committees, as well as the Pre-Negotiating Committee, which was born out of a proposal he made back in 1980.
"I'll always look back on my negotiating committee experiences with a real sense of accomplishment... and it's the Guild members with the advice of staff who establish negotiating goals, priorities and strategies. In 1984, for safety reasons we went for limits on the hours ADs could work and for contractual rest periods. Before that, ADs could work any number of hours and have a very short turn-around without penalty. That was the year we negotiated the 13-hour day, the 14-hour day, the 16-hour day and the rest period provisions that are in the current contract. I'm exceptionally proud of having had a part in accomplishing that."
As the '80s gave way to the 1990s, Adelman made the jump from Assistant Director to Unit Production Manager and producing. For more than a decade he has been a part of critically acclaimed television series such as In the Heat of the Night, Chicago Hope, Diagnosis Murder, Space: Above and Beyond, Nothing Sacred and The Pretender. He presently serves as Unit Production Manager and Co-Producer of the Emmy-nominated series Joan of Arcadia.
Adelman has also continued his long established tradition of Guild service into the 21st Century, having been elected to ten terms as a member of the AD/UPM/TC Council West, acting as 2nd Vice-Chair from 2001-2002 and Secretary-Treasurer, 2003-2004. There he proposed the creation of the highly successful New Member Orientation seminars. These seminars give new AD/UPM members a better sense of the history and traditions of the Guild and their role and responsibilities as Guild members as well as the many benefits of Guild membership.
Since his admission as a Guild member in 1979, he has served on the Norman Jewison "Futures" Committee and the Political Action Committee, which he helped establish. Adelman has been elected a delegate to the National Convention seven times, elected to three terms as a DGA Board Member and an additional seven terms as an Associate Board Member. In addition to his Associate Board Member duties, he currently serves on the National Board's Residency Committee, as well as the AD/UPM/TC's Administrative, Currency Training, Long Form, New Member Orientation, Runaway Production, Investigative, and Visual Effects/Digital Technology Committees.
Although a look at his history shows a continued propensity for giving back and service to others that made him a natural candidate for the honor, his reaction to receiving the Capra Award is downright Adelman-esque.
"Although I'm thrilled to have been awarded the Frank Capra Award... and I don't plan on giving it back... like most awards in life, it represents recognition not of one person's accomplishments but rather the accomplishments resulting from a productive collaboration. In this case, I've had the good fortune of working with the best members of all categories of the Guild and its staff. I should be sharing the award with them rather than receiving it."