Action! A Director's Journey To Success

As a child I was sure the sun really didn't rise or set. It just dissolved from one day to the next. My dad was a film editor and I spent a good deal of my kidhood on the cutting room floor with some great childhood "companions". MGM, in the 40's, was my after school hang. The back lots of MGM, 20th, Warner's and Universal were a part of my world long before I imagined I would be part of theirs.

My dad wrote, directed and edited trailers at a time when the business of entertainment had not yet become dominated by decision makers who feared making a decision. The entire profession seemed way too much fun to take seriously however, and therefore I decided I was going to grow up and become a teacher.

Eventually I wound up at UCSB in Anthropology and Archaeology. More eventually, I wound up having to support two young daughters.

As the demand for Archaeologists in Los Angeles was minimal, I had to get creative. So I dug up the want ads in the Sunday Times. CBS was looking for a file clerk in their Personnel Dept. I applied and I got the job. That was 1965.

At that time, creative positions for women in television were almost non-existent. CBS didn't know exactly how to categorize me. I did not take shorthand, which ruled out my being a secretary. I did not type well, so I definitely was not a typist. Answering phones gave me the hives, so I had no future as a receptionist. They offered to send me to stenographer's school but I refused. Lord knows where I'd be today if I'd said yes . . . but I'd probably have a great pension.

CBS kept me anyway. I worked for two years as a file clerk in personnel. Then, they sent me from department to department as a fill-in for anyone going on vacation. The secretaries always loved to have me replace them because when they returned, they were really appreciated! I worked at KNX radio and KNXT News. I worked on talk shows and game shows. They even auditioned me as a weather girl. Looking at that audition convinced me I belonged on the other side of the camera.

Working at CBS had its perks, even then. I got to watch rehearsals of some great shows. I especially loved watching Danny Kaye or Judy Garland rehearse their shows at CBS. It seemed I had come full circle from watching Judy shoot scenes for Meet Me In St. Louis as a kid to watching her rehearse for her specials to support my kids.

One day, Ralph Story, (remember him?) needed a researcher. I applied. Ralph came to interview me and asked me dozens of current event type questions. I think I missed them all, but he said I had a great imagination and hired me. That was 1969 and the end of my career in an office . . . or so I thought.

I ended up being an Associate Producer for Ralph's Story in Hollywood when he moved to ABC. Ironically one of the first assignments we did was shoot a piece on the destruction of Lot #3 at MGM. I thought, "What is this, some kind of rite of passage?" Here I was just getting started on my own career, having to watch the backdrop to my childhood being bulldozed away.

I figure I owe my success to shows getting canceled. When Ralph's show went off the air, I trained as a script supervisor and ended up on a day-time soap at NBC, Return to Peyton Place. I spent two years there and when they canceled that show, I went to work with Jay Sandrich as a script supervisor for a pilot sitcom. I spent the next five years on and off working various projects with Jay. I was watching one of the best and getting paid for it, too. This was heaven.

During one of my heavenly lulls, I took another office job, organizing the Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman headquarters. I had one stipulation: NO SECRETARIAL DUTIES. The first day, they sat me down with a Dictaphone to transcribe a writers' meeting. The second day, Norman Lear rightfully had me fired. The third day, Jay called with a pilot project: Soap. That was the last office job I had.

A year later, I did the pilot of WKRP, again with Jay. When Jay went back to do Soap, Ted Kaye (The AP) asked me to stay with WKRP as their Associate Director. Big break!

I spent a lot of time in the editing room. It was like going home. Only this time, I wasn't sitting on the floor playing with snippets of Clark Gable.

Around the third season, Hugh Wilson gave me an offer I truly couldn't refuse; I got my first shot at Directing. The particular script I directed happened to get special recognition for its content. In my first publicity release as a director, they talked about what a great show we had done. It ended with, "good going guys." They got the sex wrong, but what the hell, they did say it was good.

I wasn't the first woman sit-com director, but I was the first to work steady as a director. In 1981, I was nominated for an Emmy for an episode of Archie Bunker's Place, a Norman Lear show. I didn't get it. I think I was mainly disappointed because I didn't get the chance to get up and publicly and personally thank Norman Lear for firing me back on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!

The most asked question I get is, "Is it hard being a woman director?" First off, it's hard simply being a director. But yes, yes, the pressure was really on in the beginning, because if I failed, I failed for all women.

To illustrate: Early on in my career, I did a project for a particular network. The show was canceled after I had directed eight episodes. The producers and writers of that show all went immediately on to other projects for the same network. However, it took three years before they would give me another shot. What was worse, they didn't give any other women an opportunity to direct at that time either. That was tough.

We all hit dry periods. Whenever that happened, I would take an acting class. I even took a lighting course. One season I spent observing single camera episodic. That's how I got my first St. Elsewhere. Then I spent a year doing nothing but single camera.

It's been almost 13 years since I directed my first episode (WKRP). Through it all I managed to land on my feet. Maybe, because I really never expected anything. I still believe now what I did then ... you go in, do the best possible job, have a great time doing it, then move on.

If it comes, it comes. If it doesn't, there's always Archaeology.

Linda Day has just completed directing the Fox pilot" Daddy Dearest."