| Issue #2- April 6, 2007 |
Who’s Here
Susan Lacy
TV Producer
By Joan Zandell
Imagine a woman with an ambitious dream — to document the people who changed our culture by bucking the tide of convention. While struggling to overcome their personal demons, they created the art and myths of our time. At a time when advertising driven media is focused on the bottom line, and catering to the lowest common denominator is it’s raison d’être, please visualize the degree of passion and focus needed to manifest a dream that, by its very nature, takes the high moral ground, while maintaining its integrity and vision. The creator is Susan Lacy, and her dream realized is “The American Master’s” series produced by WNET for PBS.
Sag Harbor resident Susan Lacy grew up in NYC and, later, Baltimore, Maryland, as one of three children. Her father, Wilfred Wagner, a member of the renowned Wagner family, was a violinist who emigrated to the U.S. from Germany prior to WWII. As a young man, he read Hitler’s Mein Kampf — seeing the writing on the wall, he promptly set sail for England. From there, he continued on to the United States, where he was drafted and assigned to an intelligence unit that eventually returned to Germany to fight the Nazis. One evening, after the war was over, he attended a classical piano concert.
“He always said that he knew the moment he heard her play that he would marry her,” said Ms. Lacy during a telephone interview this past weekend. “He fell in love with her instantly, and she became his wife. They made beautiful music together for the next 50 years,” continued the award-winning producer. “Music has always been a huge part of my life.”
Living in a creative family had its stresses. Not only did everyone play a minimum of one musical instrument, but they were also expected to excel. “My brother became a composer and I became a top-notch sight reader,” said the television producer, “we also learned to appreciate painting and read the best of the German writers.”
Ms. Lacy’s uncle, who settled in London, not only wrote a biography of Schiller, he rebuilt a personal library that contained all the books burned by Hitler during WWII. “He was a personal friend of Thomas Mann and amassed over 30,000 books.”
As a child, her family did not own a television. She recalled going to neighbors, “to watch Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts.” Her father eventually broke down, and admitted to enjoying the 1950s television show “Have Gun, Will Travel.”
Ms. Lacy attended the Women’s college of the University of Virginia, where she majored in American Studies, then moved to Washington, D.C. for a Master’s program at George Washington University, where she worked for both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. At GWU, Brian O’ Dougherty became her thesis advisor. (Mr. O’ Dougherty, a resident of Southampton, went on to become the head of the Fine Arts Department at Southampton College under LIU and was also involved with the NEA.)
“I was the editor of my college newspaper and active in the anti-war movement. I remember, I was in the library working on my Master’s thesis, which was entitled, ‘Frank O’Hara, A Poet Among Painters,’ and I heard people outside demonstrating. I asked myself how important was what I was doing compared to what was going on outside? I decided to go downstairs and join the march. I ended up being thrown into jail and losing my thesis.”
In the years that followed, Ms. Lacy married and followed her husband to Rome, where he was the head of the American Academy, and then back to New York City, where he served as president of Cooper Union. They had a little girl, Jessica.
“I was planning on being a journalist,” said Ms. Lacy. “Then, in 1979, I wrote an article about television in which I said I thought it could do better. Of course, in those days,” she continued, “there were only four stations — ABC, NBC, CBS and NET. As a result of that article, I was asked to come to WNET and put my money where my mouth was. I joined the staff as a Senior Program Executive on its ‘Great Performances’ series, and later worked as the Director of Program Development for ‘American Playhouse.’
“While working on ‘American Playhouse,’ where I picked the best drama projects, I realized that, of the proposals I received, many were biographies about artists. I had an intellectual interest in American studies, culture and politics. I knew I wanted to document American cultural history. I knew I wanted to make my own documentaries. I knew I wanted to make movies about the pre-eminent artists of our time. The problem was getting the funding.”
“Then, I was offered a position at Sundance. I accepted it and continued to believe in my project so much that, and (only a woman would do this), while working for Sundance, I asked WNET, if I raised the money, whether they would do the series. Thanks to the NEA and Rosalind P. Walter, several years later, the first season of ‘American Masters’ went on the air. In the summer of ’86, we premiered in the 8-10 time slot. Getting that time slot was a very, very big deal. The pieces were well made — they were something you could sink your teeth into. We got good reviews, and the next thing we knew, it was a hit.”
One afternoon, at a parent teacher’s meeting in 1986, shortly after Ms. Lacy and her first husband divorced, Ms. Lacy met Halsted Welles, a landscape designer. “We liked one another right away,” she said, and shortly thereafter, joined families. “His father wrote the movie The Hanging Tree, he also used to write for ‘Studio 1’ and ‘Playhouse 90,’ and we were the inspiration for the movie One Fine Day. All our kids are out of college now,” she said, her smile palpable, “they went to Smith, Brown and Yale, and we have two grandchildren from our son. One of my daughters is an agent at ICM in L.A., she represents documentary filmmakers and we work on projects together, and the one who went to Yale has just decided to be a documentary filmmaker.”
Over the 21 years that “American Masters” has been produced for PBS by Thirteen/WNET New York, the programs have won 17 Emmys, including the award for Outstanding Prime-Time Non-Fiction Series for 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2004, and, garnering along the way, two Grammys, seven Peabodys and an Oscar. It has become a cultural legacy in its own right. For the episode about Bob Dylan, Ms. Lacy brought in Oscar-winning director Martin Scorcese. “I always knew I wanted Marty to direct it. And, luckily, he agreed.” Among the 140 artistic giants documented are Charlie Chaplin, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Buster Keaton, Billie Holiday, Eugene O’Neill, D.W. Griffith, Helen Hayes, Aaron Copeland, Philip Johnson, Georgia O’Keefe and Leonard Bernstein (which Ms. Lacy also directed).
When asked what is was about artists that made her want to document them, Ms. Lacy had this to say. “It takes such courage to be an artist. What is the ‘Rosebud’ in each artist’s life? They are driven by something else than the rest of us. They show us the things that matter and they embody the complexities of all human beings. In the end, it is the creators who have the most dramatic and interesting lives.”
In the works is a new literary grouping entitled, Novel Reflections on The American Dream. Meanwhile, coming up on the “American Masters Series” on Wednesday, May 2 at 9 p.m. is “The House That Ahmet Built,” about Southampton resident and creator of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun. On Wednesday, July 11, at 9 p.m., to celebrate his 92 birthday, is an episode about Les Paul. On July 18, tune in for David Hockney, and July 25, John James Audubon.
For additional information, visit www.thirteen.org.
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