Television Documentary Output
In sheer quantity the number of documentaries shown on television in the first decades of
the television era casts all the films of the silent era into the shade. In Special Edition: A
Guide to Network Television Documentary Series and Special News Reports, 1955-
1979, Daniel Einstein lists 7,000 individual program titles and 120 series on the three
American commercial networks for the years between 1955 and 1979; and in The
Expanding Vista: American Television in the Kennedy Years Mary Ann Watson
calculates that in the 1961-1962 season, the three networks produced 254 hours of
17
documentaries between them, enough for a one hour film every weekday in the year.
Servicing this flow of documentaries required an enormous increase in
professional talent to work as writers, directors, producers and researchers. Some came
from the film industry, many more from radio and print journalism, but all had to learn
what worked best in television.
One outstanding documentary maker, Al Wasserman,
may serve as an example of the range of subjects and dedication displayed by those
working in this form. Wasserman began as a writer of educational scripts after World
War II, entering television in 1953. His first major film credit was for First Steps (1947),
the United Nations’ first film, which won an Academy Award. Over a period of 40 years
he was responsible as writer, director, or producer, or a combination of the three, for over
120 documentaries. Some were short items for 60 Minutes, where he worked from 1975
to 1985, some were films for the networks of thirty minutes or longer, and some were
freelance work. His last broadcast was an item for the short-lived NBC magazine show
1986. Among Wasserman’s credits are many of the best known television documentaries
from this period: Out of Darkness (CBS, 1956), a study of mental illness, television’s
first 90 minute documentary, which was narrated by Orson Welles and is still regarded as
one of the finest documentaries on this subject; Biography of a Cancer (1960), one of the
first CBS Reports; U-2 Affair (1960), which inaugurated the NBC White Paper series,
with Irving Gitlin as Executive Producer and Chet Huntley in the role initiated by
Murrow of on-camera authority-figure; Sit-In (1960), Angola: Journey To A War (1961),
The Battle of Newburgh (1962), Adam Clayton Powell (1964) - all NBC White Papers.
For NBC's Dupont Show of the Week Wasserman produced High Wire: The Great
Wallendas (1964), about circus performers, and Flight Deck (1964), about the flight deck
crew of the aircraft carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt on a training voyage across the Atlantic
to join the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Flight Deck, was Wasserman’s first
documentary in color.