Nancy Malone
AWD Board Of Directors
Article: Nancy Malone Honored by Paley Center
Nancy Malone's favorite quote (from early stage and film actor Laurette Taylor) perfectly captures her persistence and hunger for accomplishment: "You are either born eager or meager--a little satisfies the latter and nothing the former." Judging by Malone's long list of accomplishments, there can be little doubt which side of the fence she was born on. A model/actor from the age of six whose first brush with fame came as the cover girl on LIFE magazine's tenth anniversary issue in 1946, Malone starred in Naked City, one of early television's most acclaimed shows, and then--frustrated with the lack of television opportunities for female actors--reinvented herself as a writer, producer, director, pioneering television executive, and ceaseless advocate for women in film and television. As a cofounder of Women in Film, the first female vice president of television at 20th Century Fox, an Emmy-nominated performer on Naked City, one of the most prolific directors of episodic television of the eighties and nineties, and an Emmy-winning producer, Malone has achieved uncommon success for a person of either gender working in the entertainment industry, but especially for a woman who built a career in the prefeminist days of the sixties and seventies.
Born in Queens Village, New York, on March 19, 1935, Malone attended Our Lady of Lourdes School, then began her acting training at the Stella Adler Conservatory and continued at the Actors Studio. At the age of six she began appearing on live radio and television programs, and at a young age was cast as Margy Martin on CBS-TV's first soap opera, The First Hundred Years. She made her Broadway debut in 1952 in the title role in Ronald Alexander's comedy Time Out for Ginger (her costars in the Chicago run included a young actor named Steve McQueen). Over the next several years she continued to perform both on Broadway and in television, guest-starring on such shows as Hallmark Hall of Fame, The Alcoa Hour, Robert Montgomery Presents, and Kraft Television Theatre. In 1960 she got her big break, landing the role of Libby, an aspiring actress and the girlfriend of Detective Adam Flint (Paul Burke) on Naked City, an innovative police drama filmed on location in New York. Malone stayed with the program until it went off the air in 1963, earning an Emmy nomination for outstanding performance by a supporting actress.
During this time, Malone continued making guest appearances on other programs, including such classic Kennedy-era programs as Route 66, 77 Sunset Strip, and Dr. Kildare, and from 1961 to 1963, she even doubled up with a recurring role on the CBS daytime soap The Guiding Light. From 1965 to 1966, she starred on the short-lived ABC nighttime soap The Long Hot Summer, winning a Cinema Editors Award for her portrayal of Clara Varner. Following that show's cancellation, she made dozens of guest appearances on popular TV series of the sixties, seventies, and early eighties, including The Andy Griffith Show, Hawaii Five-O, The Partridge Family, Lou Grant, and Family. She also appeared as Aunt Sissy in the 1974 TV adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and in such theatrical films as The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973) and The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972).
While acting remained a passion, she grew increasingly frustrated with the roles she was being offered as a mature woman, telling former ABC president Tom Moore, "I just can't wrap my mouth around 'How-do-you-want-your-coffee-darling?' once more." She must have made an impression, because in 1971, Moore offered her a job as story editor at Tomorrow Entertainment, an independent production company he was running. Malone knew she was taking a risk: "Acting isn't something you drop and then pick up again; you have to work while you're hot. And I was hot. If Tomorrow failed in a couple of years, where would I be?" While she continued to act, she thought long and hard about her future and eventually took the job, which turned out to be one of the best career moves she ever made. It was at Tomorrow that she learned to write and produce, and her knack for the job and ability to learn quickly led to her promotion to director of motion pictures within Tomorrow Entertainment.
In 1973, Malone decided to create a support network for women in the industry to meet and discuss their goals and aspirations. Along with Tichi Wilkerson-Kassel, former publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, she formed Women in Film, aimed at "developing pathways and opportunities to encourage current and future generations of women to explore and pursue careers in all fields of the entertainment industry." Meanwhile, Malone's behind-the-scenes career soared. In 1975, using the experience she gained at Tomorrow, Malone formed Lilac Productions and immediately began producing films for television. Her producing credits include the telefilms Like Mom, Like Me (1978), Winner Take All (1975), and Sherlock Holmes in New York (1976), plus the television series The Bionic Woman (1976), which featured one of television's more iconic female heroes. Malone also shared an Emmy for outstanding variety, music, or comedy special for her role as supervising producer on the 1993 special Bob Hope: The First 90 Years. Two years after forming Lilac, Malone had a banner year, making history as the first female vice president of television at 20th Century Fox, and also winning Women in Film's first-ever Crystal Award.
After completing the American Film Institute's directing workshop for women, Malone added the title of director to her resume. She has directed dozens of episodes of popular dramas, including Dynasty, Diagnosis Murder, Touched by an Angel, Melrose Place, Star Trek: Voyager, and Judging Amy. As a director she has been nominated for two Emmy Awards, for episodes of Sisters (1993) and The Trials of Rosie O'Neill (1992). Her dramatic short, Merlene of the Movies (1981), won various honors, including a Houston Film Festival award. Her television movie There Were Times, Dear (1985), starring Shirley Jones and Len Cariou, was a pioneering film about Alzheimer's disease and raised over $3 million for charities. The film also won the John Muir Medical Film Festival Trustees Award and the Cine Golden Eagle Award.
Malone has served on the Women in Film board of directors and as liaison to the advisory council for the board of trustees. She is also on the faculty of the American Film Institute, helping students develop acting, producing, and directing techniques. She has been an instructor at UCLA, San Jose State University, the Irwin Piscator Institute of New York, and the Stella Adler Conservatory. If indeed experience is the best teacher, Nancy Malone has an inexhaustible font of wisdom to share.
