The Man in the Shadows: Fred Coe and the Golden Age of Television

by Jon Krampner

Today television drama consists mainly of formulaic series and TV movies filmed in Hollywood. During the 1950s, however, there was a Golden Age of Television - live electronic theater based in New York and broadcast to living rooms across the country. This book is the first biography of the man who did the most to make that Golden Age Fred Coe (1914-1979). Coe, the greatest producer of this era, was the mastermind of Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, the best of a crop of live New York dramatic anthologies that included Studio One, Kraft Television Theatre, and Robert Montgomery Presents. Born in a small town in the Mississippi Delta and raised in Nashville, Coe went on to nourish such impressive talents as writers Paddy Chayefsky, Horton Foote, Tad Mosel, and JP Miller, directors Delbert Mann and Arthur Penn, and countless major actors. Among the enduring live dramas he produced are "The Days of Wine and Roses" (for Playhouse 90), "Marty," and "The Trip to Bountiful" (for Philco-Goodyear); Mary Martin's acclaimed Peter Pan; and the situation comedy Mr. Peepers. Coe later made several films and became an important producer on Broadway, with The Miracle Worker, Pulitzer prize-winning All the Way Home, and A Thousand Clowns (which he also directed) to his credit. To a large extent, though, the rise and fall of Fred Coe parallels the rise of live television drama in the late 1940s and its fall at the end of the 1950s. Jon Krampner's lively book brings the postwar New York era to life along with a gallery of memorable characters. He provides the most sustained look yet at the causes of the growth, efflorescence, and decline of a remarkable period in American television history.

243 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

Jon Krampner was born in the early 1950's in New York City. He grew up in Brooklyn, where he attended Berkeley Institute, Ditmas Junior High School and Erasmus Hall High School.

He got an A.B. in English Lit. from Occidental College in Los Angeles and an M.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He spent the Carter administration getting fired from small and undistinguished newspapers across the West: The Texarkana Gazette (the only one that he quit), the Las Vegas Sun, the Ely (Nev.) Daily Times, and the Sonora (Cal.) Daily Union Democrat (known by its acronym, the Dud).

In the '80's, he moved to Los Angeles to work for six years in the public information office of the University of Southern California, the longest he ever lasted at a 9 to 5 job.

After six years at USC, he quit. For two years he bounced around and did a little freelance writing, then took a part-time job teaching English as a Second Language in the adult division of the Los Angeles Unified School District. He held this position for more than 25 years, retiring in 2015.

Teaching ESL provided him with the economic basis to produce his critically esteemed but non-bestselling books, The Man in the Shadows: Fred Coe and the Golden Age of Television (Rutgers University Press, 1997), Female Brando: The Legend of Kim Stanley (Watson-Guptill/Backstage Books, 2006) Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food (Columbia University Press, 2013) and Joe Wilson: What He Didn't Find in Africa (a 9,000-word eBook, 2015).

His latest book, Ernest Lehman: The Sweet Smell of Success, is being published by the University Press of Kentucky on September 27, 2022.

Reviews

[Tom Strelich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on a gifted, flawed, and largely forgotten talent and his impact on a short but pivotal time in modern culture. Well researched and delightfully readable, the author beautifully interweaves the facts about Fred Coe with the fictional stories he created and how the drama in his life reverberated and resonated in the drama he created in the studio, the stage, and the screen.

[Muffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a totally solid biography and probably the best possible for the subject. It’s unfortunate that there isn’t more available record about Coe’s thinking about his own work, and seemingly less about his weird attachment to his first wife long after leaving her and then later leaving his second wife too. As the introduction indicates, the fact that Coe appeared to take no notes and keep no journals makes insight into him difficult and it makes for a pretty slim volume. Also unfortunate is the repeated comparisons to DW Griffith, a comparison that ages pretty poorly. Still an interesting read about a fascinating era!

[Candace Lynn Talmadge · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a lot of books about the history of the film industry, collections of greatest movies, etc.

Not so much about the past of television, and even fewer about those responsible for TV content in its infancy.

That's why this book about the not-very-well-known Fred Coe and his role in live television is so important to anyone who wants a more comprehensive understanding of the entire entertainment industry.

The writing is outstanding and the research thorough. If you are an entertainment industry buff with a taste for the offbeat but fascinating, make time ofr this book. You'll enjoy it immensely and learn a few things you didn't know about how the industry works.