In the early years of television’s history, motion picture executives were acutely aware of the economic threat posed by an entertainment medium in the home and drew up strategies to challenge this incursion by the broadcast industry. Paramount first considered owning a chain of television stations and then tested a system of pay television, 20th Century-Fox and Warner Brothers collaborated on plans to develop theater television in the early 1950s, and in 1949 Columbia, under the leadership of Ralph Cohn, a former B-movie producer, organized Screen Gems to produce television commercials. Moguls tried to make moviegoing a spectacular experience, exploiting wide-screen and stereophonic technologies. But it was the “eager and imaginative minds” of television who would create a dramatic form and then have a major impact on the motion pictures.

Television first defined its identity with the production of live dramas on such anthology series as Studio One (1948–58), Kraft Television Theatre (1947–58), and Playhouse 90 (1956–61). Critics contended that the immediacy of television brought forth a special relationship between the spectator and the play. The productions were orchestrated by a generation of young directors with some training in theater and film who wedded the character studies of writers such as Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling to the inward method-trained acting styles of Paul Newman, Kim Hunter, James Dean, and many other disciples of Konstantin Stanislavski. When Marty received the Academy Award in 1955, it was the first time a script that originated on television (Goodyear Playhouse, 1953) was adapted by the large screen; in both instances, the partnership of Chayefsky and director Delbert Mann brought the material to life. Television talent was now welcome with open arms in Hollywood, and such TV- originated productions as The Miracle Worker and Days of Wine and Roses became award-winning films. The most prominent of the television directors journeyed to film, bringing the same psychological realism to the large screen. Among the key directors (with their signature movies in parentheses) whose work defined the new maturity of 1960s Hollywood were John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate [1962] and Seven Days in May [1964]), George Roy Hill (The World of Henry Orient [1964] and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [1969]), Sidney Lumet (Long Day’s Journey into Night [1962] and The Pawnbroker [1964]), Robert Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird [1962] and Baby, the Rain Must Fall [1965]), Arthur Penn (The Miracle Worker [1962], which he also directed on television, Bonnie and Clyde [1967]), and Franklin Schaffner (The Best Man [1964] and Patton [1970]). These directors, once again melding text and performance as they had on television but with a larger budget, constituted the first wave of new talent that rejuvenated American cinema after the studio system had broken down.

As live television received critical legitimacy on the East Coast, independent companies on the West Coast, including Jerry Fairbanks Productions, the Hal Roach Studios, and Ziv Television Programs, produced films for television, reels that could be cycled from one local station to another in the earliest version of “syndicated” TV. These budget-conscious producers often employed forgotten Hollywood veterans to give luster to their equivalent of the B movie. Jerry Fairbanks, a freelance cameraman and producer of an Academy Award– winning short, hired an established Hollywood name, Edmund Lowe (the suave silent film star of What Price Glory), for his Dumont series Front Page Detective (1951–53). Hal Roach Jr., a former Laurel and Hardy director, asked Charles Barton, the Universal director of Abbott and Costello comedies, to oversee the translation of the radio program Amos ’n’ Andy to a visual medium (1951–53). For television’s biggest hit of the 1950s, I Love Lucy (1951–61), producers Desi Arnaz and Jess Oppenheimer requested Fritz Lang’s cinematographer, Karl Freund, to devise a technique for filming with three cameras before a live audience.

Film studios and guilds took immediate notice of the employment possibilities of television. Members of the Directors Guild of America received their name in the title for the 1955 series Screen Directors Playhouse. Many Hollywood legends, including John Ford, Leo McCarey, and George Stevens, made half-hour dramas for the Playhouse. The newly appointed president of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Leonard Goldenson (formerly head of the United Paramount Theaters), and executives at Warner Brothers determined how to financially recycle popular film genres each week on television and employed unsung directors to oversee production. Richard Bare, who had directed such forgettable movies as Smart Flaxy Martin (1949) and Girls Don’t Talk (1958), was in part responsible for the resurgence of the western on television with the success of his Cheyenne (1955–63). By the mid-1950s, more than 40 percent of Hollywood’s directors, actors, editors, and cameramen worked on television projects. Even cult directors, such as Ida Lupino, Phil Karlson, and Jacques Tourneur, brought their offbeat sensibilities to television.

Television became genuinely respectable for the film industry when the most recognizable director of all time, Alfred Hitchcock, hosted an anthology series for ten years, beginning in 1955. Hitchcock’s agent, Lew Wasserman, who would later run Universal, masterminded Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which featured the droll introduction by the “Master of Suspense” and then a macabre tale, evocative of the director’s dark spirit. Hitchcock directed 18 episodes for Presents and two programs for other series. Working three days with an efficient supporting team, Hitchcock was able to explore his familiar themes of duplicity and murder, and he employed most of his TV crew to produce his cinema masterpiece, Psycho (1960).

Dramatic series, produced by Hollywood studios, afforded young talent the means to helm their own productions and, occasionally, develop personal themes. Robert Altman directed a variety of genres for television, including westerns (Bonanza), detective stories (Hawaiian Eye), and war stories (Combat). Later, in the 1970s, he would subvert the formulaic rules he learned in those three genres in the films McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), and M*A*S*H (1970), respectively. Other well-known directors also learned generic conventions that would come in handy in their film careers. Sam Peckinpah directed episodes of Route 66, Have Gun—Will Travel, Gunsmoke, and The Westerner, which he also created. Blake Edwards created the pilots for Richard Diamond and Peter Gunn, which he later brought to the large screen. Michael Ritchie’s quirky adventures for Run for Your Life and The Outsider laid a groundwork for the films The Candidate (1972) and Smile (1975).

In the mid-1960s, the studios worked with the networks to develop movies made especially for television. The first proposed television movie, The Killers, was directed by Don Siegel and starred Ronald Reagan and Angie Dickinson, but it was deemed too violent for television and was released theatrically in 1964. Two network executives, Barry Diller and Michael Eisner, refined the scope and concerns of the television movie and later became two of the most powerful moguls in Hollywood. Directors were able to impart a distinctive vision on the TV movie, which often yielded assignments to the large screen. Steven Spielberg, who had directed episodes of Columbo and Owen Marshall, received acclaim for the visual audacity of his made-for-television movie Duel (1971). Michael Mann, after stints as a writer on Police Story and Vega$, first attracted notice as writer and director of the TV prison drama The Jericho Mile (1979), which led to his 1983 feature Thief. Many directors have shuttled back and forth between movies and television and have delivered their most personal work on the small screen, including Buzz Kulik (Brian’s Song [1971]), John Korty (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman [1974]), Joseph Sargent (Amber Waves [1980]), and especially Lamont Johnson (That Certain Summer [1972], The Execution of Private Slovik [1974], and Off the Minnesota Strip [1980]).

The man most responsible for adult comedy on television, Norman Lear, had left television in the late 1950s to become a film director. His film work—including Come Blow Your Horn (1963), The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), and Cold Turkey (1971)— never matched his satirical temperament, which found its perfect outlet in the situation comedy All in the Family (1971–83). Lear did not return to film, but two influential comedy producers, James Brooks and Garry Marshall, have found creative success in both media. The same mixture of drama and comedy that Brooks brought to The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–77) was evident in his films Starting Over (1979), Terms of Endearment (1983), Broadcast News (1987), and As Good As It Gets (1997). Marshall’s fondness for mismatched pairs, exemplified by Felix and Oscar in The Odd Couple (1970–75) and Ritchie and the Fonz in Happy Days (1974–84), has also been apparent in such films of his as Nothing in Common (1986) and Pretty Woman (1990). Lear and Marshall also mentored other directorial careers. Their comic rhythms have also been brought to the screen by their leading actors, Rob Reiner of All in the Family, Ron Howard of Happy Days, and Penny Marshall of Laverne and Shirley.

Feature film directors have had a presence in other TV genres. Several of television’s most exemplary musical programs were crafted by directors who afterward rarely ventured into that genre again. Jack Smight, known for his mystery films Harper (1966) and No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), directed two of the definitive jazz programs, the smoky The Sound of Jazz with Billie Holiday and the very cool The Sound of Miles Davis. Norman Jewison, who began his career in British and Canadian television, directed Judy Garland’s only duet with Barbra Streisand. Fred De Cordova, who earlier had directed Bedtime for Bonzo (1951) with Ronald Reagan and then TV series for George Burns and Jack Benny, produced for 20 years the most popular talk show of all time, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

As live television affected Hollywood in the 1950s, so too did Music Television (MTV) in the 1980s. The music video disrupted the linear narrative and put a primacy on the visual, making the video creator a new hero in Hollywood. British director Julien Temple journeyed from videos for Culture Club and the Rolling Stones to his first feature, Absolute Beginners (1986). David Fincher used Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis as the source of inspiration for his Madonna’s video “Express Yourself” and later reworked the noir genre in his textured Seven (1995). Videos have borne the established director’s imprint as well, including John Landis and Martin Scorcese’s extended narratives for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and “Bad”; John Sayles and Brian De Palma’s different deconstructions of the Bruce Springsteen phenomenon, as working-class hero and lumbering icon, respectively; and Spike Lee’s energetic “Hip Hop Hooray” video for Naughty by Nature. Spike Jonze transferred the offbeat, surreal sensibility of his videos for Weezer and Fatboy Slim to his feature film directorial debut, Being John Malkovich (1999). Quick cuts and eye-grabbing visuals have also been the domain of the TV commercials, and three graduates of British advertising—Ridley Scott, Alan Parker, and Adrian Lyne—have invigorated the look of popular film.

In 1984 Michael Mann returned to television and brought the MTV synthesis of image and music to series television in his stylishly innovative Miami Vice. During the rest of the 1980s, a niche was reserved for “designer television,” usually series originated by film auteurs. Spielberg produced his own series, Amazing Stories (1985–87), and enlisted Scorcese, Robert Zemeckis, and Paul Bartel to contribute supernatural tales. Altman also returned, this time to cable television, and satirized American politics with Garry Trudeau in Tanner ’88 (1988), a project that was conceived in video to match the look of network news. Network executives also went to cult directors for ideas to entice a mainstream audience beginning to turn to cable. Sayles, a leader in the independent film movement, created Shannon’s Deal (1990–91), a series focusing on an imperfect lawyer who dropped out of corporate practice. The avant-garde David Lynch of Blue Velvet (1986) fame unleashed some of the most surreal and unsettling images ever seen on network television in his video noir Twin Peaks (1990–91); a decade later, Lynch reconfigured one of his rejected television pilots into an award-winning film, the dreamscape Mulholland Drive (2001). Some of the traveling went the other way, as quality TV producers sought to make it among cineastes. Edward Zwick, who brought suburban angst to prime time with thirtysomething (1987–91), My So-Called Life (1994– 95), and Once and Again (1999–2002), directed several epic adventures for the big screen—including Glory (1989), Legends of the Fall (1994), and Courage Under Fire (1996). Gregory Hoblit, who was the directorial eye behind many Steven Bochco productions, was successful with his 1996 urban thriller Primal Fear, no doubt leading the way for other directors of such visually compelling series as E.R. and NYPD Blue to try their hand at film directing. In a career of generic surprises, Quentin Tarrantino—who auditioned Pulp Fiction star John Travolta by playing with him the board game of Travolta’s sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter—directed the 1994 season finale of the mainstream medical melodrama E.R.

Many foreign directors have used television to explore alternative forms of storytelling. Ingmar Bergman of Sweden has been interested in television’s ability to weave a narrative over time, and in one of his most celebrated works, Scenes from a Marriage (1974), he chronicles the emotional upheavals of an ostensibly perfect union over six episodes. Rainer Werner Fassibinder created two works that also utilized television’s expansive narrative: a Marxist soap opera, Eight Hours Are Not a Day (1972), and his 15- hour epic of the Weimar years, Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), based on Alfred Doblin’s novel. One of the fathers of the new wave, Jean Luc-Godard, has created a series of meditative essays on the history of cinema for French television. Roberto Rossellini, one of the pioneers of Italian neorealism, used television to create a series of stylized historical portraits from Socrates to Louis XIV. Ken Russell produced a series of wildly expressionistic dramatized biographies on such artists as Elgar, Isadora Duncan, and Delius for the British Broadcasting Corporation that served as a template for his even more flamboyant films, including The Music Lovers (1970) and Lisztomania (1975). Before becoming an internationally recognized director, Kryzsztof Kieslowski received his training in Polish television; in the late 1980s, he returned to his mentoring medium to explore dramatically the contemporary relevance of the Ten Commandments in a multipart series, Decalogue (1988), now considered one of his masterworks.

Many screenwriters have found the more permissive atmosphere of television since the 1990s conducive for character development and narrative complexity. After his gimmicky idea of a “Valley girl” superhero received only a lukewarm reception in the film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), Joss Whedon adapted the story to become an exploration of evil and female empowerment in a television series with the same name (1997–2003). Aaron Sorkin forsook his career as a screenwriter of such quality films as A Few Good Men (1992) and The American President (1995) to produce weekly television, most notably his study of the intricacies of the U.S. presidency in the iconic series The West Wing (1999– ). Having received an Academy Award for his screenplay of American Beauty (1999), Alan Ball decided to continue his dissection of middle-class dysfunction as creator and executive producer of the HBO drama Six Feet Under (2001– ).

For more than two decades, the lines between television and film have been blurred structurally and aesthetically. Most film studios now own some type of television network, and talent flows freely between the two media. Barry Levinson extended the tapestry of his cinematic Baltimore, Maryland, trilogy (Diner [1982], Tin Men [1987], and Avalon [1990]) to television with the equally visual Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99), also set in Baltimore. No longer is film the arena for spectacle and television the home of the close-up. In fact, films screens have been shrinking in the multiplexes, and the television monitor dominates a home’s entertainment room. Such films as Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration (1998) and Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000) were shot on digital video and transferred to film for theatrical projection. Director John Frankenheimer, who mastered live television in the 1950s and feature film during the 1960s through the 1980s, triumphed again through the 1990s and the first years of the 21st century, this time as creator of successful made-for-cable movies, including Against the Wall (1994), Andersonville (1996), and dramatic portraits of George Wallace (George Wallace [1997]) and Lyndon Johnson (Path to War [2002]). His career proved that both film and television, whatever the reigning technology, offer unique opportunities for creative expression.