INT: Interviewing DELBERT MANN on Monday, November 19, at the DGA in Los Angeles. ROBERT BUTLER is interviewing.
DM: I am DELBERT MANN, director of infinite number of years, going back to the golden age of TV.

INT: Why directing?
DM: It's a tough question to answer. I have always thought that I'm the luckiest man in the world to have been able to make my life and my living doing the job I love the most. I'm grateful for the years I've had doing it. Nobody is as lucky as I. [INT: As an actor, what was your end goal?] I did a lot of acting in high school and college and before I went into the service. I just enjoyed it thoroughly. I played everything from non-speaking parts to leads at the community theater in Nashville. I was really not temperamentally a good actor even though I played a lot of roles. I never thought of being an actor. During the war we were flying over Germany on a special mission. Rather than bombing as a group, three planes would have an individual target. The aim was to impede the Germans from bringing up reinforcements against Patton, about August of '44. That morning I had breakfast with someone from another crew who I really did not know. We got to talking about what we'd do after the war. I ask him, he says he'd like to be a poet. I was fascinated. I said I didn't know what I wanted to do, I loved theater more than anything else. We needed to talk after this. While flying, I was watching the ships ahead of us and I knew which plane was carrying my new friend. As they opened their doors, the plane got hit and it exploded and I saw no parachutes. I know that as I took over the plane, I was saying to myself, God, life can be short. You've just got to do what you really want to do. I made up my mind right then that I wanted to get some education in theater.

DM: I wanted to go to Yale drama school. My mind was made up to get some theater training, as a director but not as an actor. [INT: So at that moment you were thinking director.] Yes. [INT: So you had leadership from the service?] Yes, to some extent it was. And the directors I had worked with at the community theater I was influenced by. They helped me get into Yale after the war was over. Studying directing at that point, thinking only in terms of theater. [INT: You didn't put yourself in those shoes quite yet?] Not at that moment.

INT: What was the first movie that made you aware of storytelling?
DM: The one I remember most vividly was in 1928, one of the first talking pictures, was WINGS, with RICHARD ARLEN and BUDDY ROGERS and CLARA BOW. And the reason I saw that was Dad had been teaching and he had BUDDY ROGERS as a student and he flunked him, then he moved to Hollywood. So Dad was fascinated by him. It made quite an impression on me. I'm quite sure that when I chose which branch of the military to go into, it influenced me to choose aviation.

INT: Let me jump to something else. I read a quote in your book that said "I still feel I know nothing". Explain?
DM: It's just a means of trying to say that I really don't feel that I know anything. It's just going on instinct and experience and just doing the best you can from day to day. Each picture that I do, each day that I work, each scene that I direct, I learn something new. [INT: Elaborate on instinct.] Instinct is just a gut feeling about what makes a scene work, about staging a scene, about relating to actors. And how do I handle whatever the particular problem is at this moment. Just have to take a shot and do whatever you feel is right. There is no book that says do it this way or do it that way.

INT: What percentage is creative and what is practical?
DM: I really can't answer that, it varies so completely from moment to moment and day to day.

INT: FRED COE? Tell us about him.
DM: FRED COE, without any question, was the best producer director of the early days of live TV. I knew him in Nashville when I was in high school. We acted together in the community theater. We acted in WINTERSET, my debut on the stage. FRED and I became very close friends. He did go to YALE, came home in the summers and staged an experimental Shakespearean production. I wanted to participate in what FRED was doing, so I became sort of his assistant assistant director. I played in JULIUS CAESAR and TWELFTH NIGHT. When I was in the service we kept in touch, we were in South Carolina. He went to New York in 1944 to be a theater director. He was discouraged until TV came along. He got a job at NBC and very quickly became the best director in all of live TV. He became a producer, and in 1948-49, the beginning of the golden age of television, FRED produced and directed a one hour show every Sunday for the PHILCO TV PLAYHOUSE. It was a monstrous job and almost physically killed him.

DM: I had gone to YALE on FRED's recommendation, and he eventually recommended me for his old job in South Carolina and for 2 years directed in Columbia I enjoyed doing it. After 2 years I suddenly thought if I wanted to make this my life, the pay was miniscule. I called FRED in New York and he said he could get me a job in TV. I literally said "What's that?" We didn't have TV in Columbia. I went to New York, met ROBERT SARNOFF, and he hired me as a floor manager, potential director. FRED took me under his wing and I watched what was happening. The summer of '49, all the shows were unsponsored. Which meant the directing staff was taking its vacation and the new directors were getting their feet wet on network TV. I had a chance, under FRED's eye, to start directing little half hour shows. The first was THEATER OF THE MIND. It was a 15 minute dramatization of a psychiatric problem, and the other 15 minutes was an expert panel discussing the problem. The third member of the panel was FAYE EMERSON. She was very nice, we worked together after that. In that summer FRED was looking for 2 directors to replace him on the PHILCO show. He had GORDON DUFF. He tried several other directors, but was unsatisfied, and in that fall, he gave me the opportunity to direct.

INT: This is an example of your regard for timing and luck?
DM: It's a perfect example. Timing over which I had no control. Happened to be in New York when TV was just starting. Luck, and friendship of FRED COE that meant everything to my career. I don't know what I would have done if Fred hadn't been there to become my friend, to become my director, to get me into YALE, to get me to New York, to get me into TV directing.

INT: He saw that connection between directing and something colliding to make--he saw that in you as opposed to the others he dismissed?
DM: I think he needed in that job someone he could train. I was brand new, he knew I could direct, and he gave me the job because I was malleable and flexible enough that he could train me.

INT: You co-directed with him on THE LAST TYCOON?
DM: I had directed small things, but was assigned to LIGHTS OUT. I had a chance to do this and he co-directed it with me. He was going to Washington to demonstrate color. He set up my first directing job, THE LAST TYCOON. He then let me stage the show while he was down in Washington. He would come back on Thursday or Friday to see what I had done, to make changes. He then put the show on camera on Saturday and Sunday. I sat behind him and watched what he did. It was the best training that I could have possibly gotten.

INT: From theater, and now putting it through lenses.
DM: The fascinating thing about live TV, yes it was transmitted by the mechanics of filmmaking, similar in nature, but the technique of lenses and lighting. Live was much more closely related to theater. You had to rehearse the show all the way through without a stop. You simply had to use theater techniques and most of the young actors who were in New York were theater oriented. EVA MARIE SAINT, PAUL NEWMAN, CHARLTON HESTON, all began in theater. So those of us with theater in our training got these jobs. [INT: So you see yourself as a director who happens to use cameras, but with people in the story?] Yes, spot on. I see myself working with actors. My use of camera is quite limited. I've had to push myself to explore the uses of camera rather than being someone who is film oriented. I've always been very grateful that my training is what it was. People who go to film school do not always learn to work with actors. Theater is directors and actors at work.

INT: Behavior, storytelling, and leadership are the elements you learned first?
DM: Absolutely. And I'm very grateful. [INT: Your first single show was THE WONDERFUL MRS. INGRAHAM?] Yes, with FRED COE sitting behind me in the control room. He was a marvelous teacher. He did not want to impose on his students, but wanted us to direct as he would direct. Which meant a very simplified pattern of camera work. He wanted each camera shot to be motivated. It was marvelous, rigorous training for me. [INT: High standards that you were instructed by?] Absolutely. He'd tap you on the shoulder and say "Did you really like that shot?" I'd finally say "Hell no, I hate the shot, what's wrong with it?"

INT: What filmmakers did you admire at that time?
DM: Did not go to too many movies in those years, no time. Had gone every weekend during college days, that was the principal form of entertainment. I didn't pay that much attention to film directors or techniques. The ones I really noticed were by people like JOHN FORD, WILLIAM WYLER, JOHN STURGES, FRED ZINNEMANN, and GEORGE STEVENS. Yes, WILL WELLMAN. But WYLER was an extraordinary director.

INT: As a greeener person, going to movies as a civilizian, were the movies personal at all?
DM: Not to my memory. I enjoyed it. I was not studying it, that all came later.

INT: Gives a summary of Del's experience. Tell us about that as a body of work?
DM: It sounds impressive when you say it! I have always felt myself so lucky that I began in live TV. That gave me the best possible training for working with actors and solving whatever problems appeared on the set in terms of temperament or difficulties of that nature. I felt that I gradually learned how to do a good deal of those things. I learned to use camera. But when I went into filmmaking, I realized how little I knew about the free camera. My concentration has always been on the actors telling a story to the audience. I must do everything as the director to keep distractions from happening for the actors while they are working. The one thing that really causes me to boil over is somebody being careless, making noise, walking around where the actor can see them and I will not tolerate that. Sit down and shut up and don't make a move. Because my concentration is on the actors. The tension they are under, the need to concentrate without distractions of sound or visual or anything else. So I'm very grateful for all of those hours of live TV experience which translated into my experience as a filmmaker.

INT: Why are the actors seemingly the most delicate?
DM: Actors are an unusual breed. They have to be to get into that profession in the first place. They have to be sensitive and aware and professional about what they're doing. Being precise and creative, understanding. It's a very demanding task. You have to have certain sensitivities to be a good actor in the first place. The pressures of the live TV era were unique. Every one of them who said they were so frightened all conclude by saying they would have loved to do it again. [INT: So you're happy you acted first?] Yes, it's the best experience for any director. Even the panic of working in front of a film camera or on a stage, let alone live TV. It stimulated performances that were unique. The energy level is unique. Even in the worst shows the performances were often electrifying. The energy level and the concentration were so high that the performances were often quite extraordinary.

INT: Why are the English a little more practical than we American actors seem to be?
DM: I think the British actors by and large are the best that I have ever had contact with. All theater trained, theater oriented, they have trained in the classics and have performed onstage over and over again. They are the most professional people I know. The American actors that come to that standard are ones who came from theater and often return to theater every opportunity they have. People like HENRY FONDA and FREDRIC MARCH. They got used to playing to an audience and they needed that stimulation. My favorite word is professional. It's the greatest compliment I can pay to anyone.

INT: Henry FONDA's concentration?
DM: One of the best actors I've ever worked with, you never see the wheel's turning. FONDA had the most intense focus of almost anybody that I have ever known. I remember one scene where he was playing a dying old man and he walked onto a porch and he walked waveringly, very unsteady on his feet, to the edge of his porch, to wave goodbye to his daughter, and he reached for the post of the porch, but we did that a dozen times, and each one was fresh and new and felt just as intensely and he looked like a dying old man. It was just an extraordinary bit of professionalism from a true professional. He was a special man.