John Korty, director of 'Miss Jane Pittman,' is dead at 85
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, October 4, 2024


John Korty, director of 'Miss Jane Pittman,' is dead at 85
The filmmaker John Korty in an undated family photo. Korty, a director best known for ambitious made-for-television projects, including the 1974 film “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” which won nine Emmy Awards, died on March 9, 2022, at his home in Port Reyes Station, Calif. He was 85. The Korty Family via The New York Times.

by Neil Genzlinger



NEW YORK, NY.- John Korty, a director best known for ambitious made-for-television projects, including the 1974 film “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” which won nine Emmy Awards, died March 9 at his home in Port Reyes Station, California. He was 85.

His brother, Doug Korty, said the cause was vascular dementia.

“Miss Jane Pittman,” a CBS presentation based on the Ernest Gaines novel in which a Black woman recounts more than a century’s worth of memories, featured an acclaimed performance by Cicely Tyson as the title character. John J. O’Connor, reviewing the film in The New York Times, called it “a splendid night for television.”

“John Korty’s direction is cool and restrained,” he added, “never underlining and always avoiding what could easily be mawkish.”

The Emmys that the film won included one for Korty for best directing of a single program, comedy or drama.

Korty also won both an Oscar and an Emmy for “Who Are the Debolts? And Where Did They Get 19 Kids?,” a documentary about a couple whose many children included hard-to-place adopted ones with disabilities or other challenges. U.S. television networks were not interested in the documentary when Korty first offered it; it was initially released as a film in Japan, then shown at the San Francisco Film Festival in 1977, where it received a standing ovation.

That brought it an Oscar for best documentary feature, but Korty still wanted to get it in front of TV audiences. With some persuasion from Henry Winkler, whose role as Fonzie on “Happy Days” had made him one of the network’s biggest stars, ABC finally broadcast a cut-down version in late 1978; that version won the Emmy for outstanding individual achievement for an informational program.

Although Korty also directed lighter fare and the occasional Hollywood feature, including “Oliver’s Story,” the 1978 follow-up to the hit 1970 movie “Love Story,” he gravitated toward television movies that touched on social issues.

In addition to “Miss Jane Pittman,” which covered a century’s worth of the Black experience, he directed “Go Ask Alice” (1973), about teenage drug addiction; “Farewell to Manzanar” (1976), about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; “Second Sight: A Love Story” (1984), about a blind woman; “Resting Place” (1986), about a family’s attempt to have a Black officer who was killed in Vietnam buried in his hometown’s all-white cemetery; and “Eye on the Sparrow” (1987), about a blind couple trying to adopt.

“I wouldn’t give up television movies,” Korty told the Times in 1986. “There is nothing like the response you get. Fifty million people saw ‘Jane Pittman’ in one night. That’s very different from even the biggest hit movie.”

In the best of his television work, Korty sought to illuminate subjects and perspectives not often addressed in the mainstream. In an essay he wrote for the San Francisco Examiner in 1978, he said that was his hope for the “Debolts” film, in which he showed the children’s disabilities in unflinching detail — rare for TV at the time.




“It seems that most physically handicapped people have their greatest struggles not with their crutches, but with their identities — being accepted as individuals rather than as a distasteful class of outcasts,” he wrote. “We hope that by the end of our film the audience will forget who is on crutches and who isn’t.”

John Van Cleave Korty was born June 22, 1936, in Lafayette, Indiana. His father, Richard, was an engineer, and his mother, Mary (Van Cleave) Korty, was a nurse.

“I started drawing when I was 5 years old,” Korty said at a 2013 panel discussion of his work, “and for many, many years, I thought I was going to be what you’d call a commercial artist.”

But in 11th grade, a teacher showed the class some of the innovative animated films of Norman McLaren, and Korty found a new interest. He soon made his first animated film, but, as he told the Abilene Reporter-News of Texas in 1986, he could not afford new film stock. Instead, he somehow obtained a reel of a Mickey Mouse cartoon and dumped bleach on it in his parents’ bathtub to erase the images, then hand-painted images on its 2,600 frames. The trick worked, he said, but it took him a week to scrub the bathtub clean.

He earned a bachelor’s degree at Antioch College in Ohio, where he continued to experiment with animation. In about 1963, he settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he set up his own studio. One of his earliest professional efforts, “Breaking the Habit,” a documentary about smoking produced in cooperation with the American Cancer Society, was nominated for the short-subject documentary Oscar in 1965.

Korty directed the independent features “The Crazy-Quilt” (1966), “Funnyman” (1967) and “riverrun” (1968) before he made his first television movies, drawing some critical acclaim and the attention of other young filmmakers who were interested in working outside the Hollywood system. Among them were Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, who came to visit his setup in 1968.

“They showed up in two station wagons, and when Francis walked in, his mouth dropped open,” Korty told the Marin Independent Journal in 2011. “He said, ‘My God, you’ve done exactly what we want to do: get out of Hollywood and set up a studio. If you can do it, we can do it.’”

A year later, Coppola and Lucas would found their American Zoetrope studio in San Francisco. Korty had an office there for several years and went on to work with Lucas. He and Charles Swenson directed “Twice Upon a Time,” an animated feature made with Lucas’ Lucasfilm company in 1983, and the next year, Korty directed “Caravan of Courage,” a Lucasfilm TV movie based on the Ewok creatures from the “Star Wars” movie “Return of the Jedi.”

Although the success of “Miss Jane Pittman” brought Korty offers to direct Hollywood films, he rarely accepted. “Oliver’s Story,” which he directed in 1978, was an exception. It was a bigger-budget movie than he normally attempted, with big stars — Ryan O’Neal, Candice Bergen — and Korty was not entirely comfortable.

“It’s the first movie I’ve ever made that I’ve felt not a part of,” he told The Sacramento Bee in December 1978 as the early reviews, many of them unflattering, were coming in. “I know I put things in this movie that I liked and the audience wouldn’t — and vice versa.”

Korty’s marriages to Carol Tweedie in 1959 and Beulah Chang in 1965 ended in divorce. In 1989, he married Jane Silvia, who survives him, along with his brother; a sister, Nancy Korty; two sons from his second marriage, Jonathan and David; a son from his third marriage, Gabriel; and three grandchildren.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

March 25, 2022

Beneath the Surface: A group exhibition of artwork that will stand the test of tIme

Xavier Hufkens to open expanded gallery at historic flagship location in Brussels

Kahlil Robert Irving roves across millennia at MoMA

Art Basel announces name, leadership team and selection committee for new art fair in Paris

Fairchain is the first-ever fine art tansaction tool to offer artists and galleries royalties on physical works

Baltimore Museum guards take seats at the curators' table

From the border, the Whitney Biennial asks what American art can be

Sotheby's announces highlights of the Modern & Contemporary Auction

National Treasures worth over £1 million saved from export in 2020-2021

Baltimore Museum of Art announces Interim Co-Directors Asma Naeem and Chris Dietze

Auction firm executive Julie Abrams joins collectibles insurer Hugh Wood Inc

Ahlers & Ogletree's announces Spring Estates & Collections Auction

Their family business? The other dimension.

Art Brussels 2022 announces content of its 38th edition

Galleria Poggiali opens the first Italian solo exhibition of Miguel Angel Payano Jr.

Hake's record-setting March 15-16 auction hits $3.2M, led by Star Wars figure that sold for $204,435

Ilana Savdie joins White Cube

Sworders' to offer The Christopher Butterworth Collection

Sotheby's & Liverpool Football Club team up for first-of-its-kind NFT digital collectibles and fan community

Manuel Mathieu joins Pilar Corrias with upcoming solo exhibition

Jennifer Mora appointed Senior Director at Lehmann Maupin

Major international art commissions announced for opening of Sydney Modern Project

100 years of 'Nosferatu,' the vampire movie that won't die

John Korty, director of 'Miss Jane Pittman,' is dead at 85

Most Popular Casino and Gambling-Themed Art Pieces

Some interesting facts regarding the Greek gods

Top 4 cannabis-inspired artists: Get high on weed art

What is a Gmail PVA creator? How is it useful for us?

Why is procreate the perfect drawing application

How To Pin A Comment On Instagram




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful