John Secondari played a major role in the early growth of television news at the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) during the 1960s. As executive in charge of the network's first regular documentary series. Secondari forged a coherent house style that featured a heavy emphasis on visualization and dramatic voice­ over narration. He later carried these qualities over to a series of occasional historical documentaries that earned him wide recognition and numerous national broadcasting awards.

     Born in Rome in 1920, Secondari was educated in the United States and served in the army during World War II. Afterward, he worked in Europe, first for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and then as the chief of information for the Marshall Plan in Italy. He quit in 1951 to devote himself to fiction writing on a full-time basis. Over the next six years, he authored four books. one of which was turned into the popular Hollywood feature film Three Coins in the Fountain. During this period, he also wrote scripts for television anthology dramas, such as The Alcoa Hour and Playhouse 90. Both his background as a fiction writer and his fondness for Italy would figure prominently in his documentary career at ABC.

     Secondari joined the network's Washington news bureau in 1957 and started producing documentaries toward the end of the decade. At the time, ABC's new s operation was tiny by comparison to its rivals, and its output was therefore quite  limited.  In the early  1960s. As television news expanded rapidly and as network news competition escalated, the smallest of the three major networks relied heavily on its documentary  unit  in order to sustain its stature as a bona fide news organization. ABC's major contribution to prime-time information during this period was the weekly Bell and Howell Close-Up! series , which Secondari took charge of shortly after its launch in 1960 .

     Underfunded by comparison to his network  rivals and lacking a seasoned  staff of  broadcast  news  workers, Secondari nevertheless mounted a creditable series and even made some significant contributions during documentary's television  heyday.  He  accomplished this in part by tapping freelance contributors such as producers Robert Drew and Nicholas Webster. Drew's cinema verite style offered dramatic glimpses of Cas­tro's Cuba. the Kennedy White House, and the cockpit of an X-15. Similarly, Webster provided first-person accounts of racism in New York City, the school system in Moscow, and the revolving door in the U.S. penal system. In these and many other Close-Up! documentaries, the camera escorted the protagonist through the routines and challenges of everyday life. The style emphasized intimacy and visual dynamism, qualities explicitly requested by the series sponsor Bell and Howell, a major manufacturer of amateur motion picture equipment. The same qualities could be seen in the output of regular staff members in the ABC documentary unit. A critic for Variety once commented on the  house  style of  each  network's  flagship  series, not­ing   that   CBS   Reports   could   be   described   as  the Harpers of television documentary, NBC White Paper as the Atlantic , and Bell and Howell Close-Up! as the Red Hook. Indeed, the emphasis on dramatic visualization at ABC was accompanied by a commitment to florid voice-over narration that sometimes seems excessive . Several critics noted that at the end of "Comrade Student" (a profile of Soviet schools), Secondari's commentary turned self-consciously propaganda . Similarly, a documentary about the Italian Communist Party-on which he collaborated with his wife, Helen Jean Rogers-closes with a paean to the spirit of republican Rome that reputedly dwells in the souls of all Italians and serves as the last bulwark against leftist revolution.

     This penchant for the dramatic continued to mark Secondari's  work  as  he  moved  to  historical  topics  with a series titled the Saga of  Western  Man.  Coproduced with Rogers. It began in  1963  with each episode  focusing on a particular year, person, or incident  that  Secon­dari  believed  had  significantly  influenced   the  progress of Western civilization. Using the camera ·as  if  it  were the eyes of someone who had been present in the past," Secondari  transported  the  viewer  to  historical   locations while voice -over narrators read authentic journal entries or letters from the  period.  For  example,  Secon­dari outfitted historical ships  in  Spain  and  put them to sea with his camera crew in  order  to capture  the sensat io ns of Columbus's transoceanic voyage. These historical reenactments were then edited together with close - up shots scanning the canvases of period paintings.  Meanwhile, the audio track featured  music  and  actor  Fred­eric  March's  dramatic  readings  from   the   navigation logs of Columbus. These techniques - which were also being developed by National Broadcasting  Company (NBC) producers Lou Hazam and George Yicas - generated  widespread  critical  acclaim   and   numerous awards  for  the  series.  thereby  encouraging   ABC   to sign on for a second season. By year's  end ,  however,  some critics began to complain that the method  was wearing thin . The Saga of Western Man was scaled back and continued on an  occasional  basis  until  the end of the I 960s. when Secondari  and  Rogers  left  ABC to form their own production company.

     Secondari died in 1975 at the age of 55. In all, he garnered some 20 Emmy and three Peabody awards. Perhaps most important. however. was his contribution to the development of the historical television documentary. Secondari 's style not only anticipated the later efforts of such producers as Ken Burns but also laid the groundwork for the emergence of the television docudrama in the 1970s.