Lela Swift
Lela Swift was a television director and producer, best known for her work on Dark Shadows, which she also produced from 1970–71, and Ryan's Hope.
Early life
She was born in 1919 as Lillian Siwoff in New York City, New York. Her brother was baseball statistician and owner of the Elias Sports Bureau, Seymour Siwoff.Career
Swift started her career in the secretarial pool at CBS. She worked behind the scenes on news programs there. She worked through the studio system ranks at CBS and served as an assistant director on several anthology series. Her directorial career began in 1950.In 1961, she moved to NBC and worked on the Special for Women series. In 1963, she directed a show, hosted by Dr. Herbert L. Shore, featuring a commentary on the contemporary drama in Africa, illustrated by several scenes from the satiric comedy "The Trials of Brother Jero" by Wole Soyinka produced for National Educational Television and the New York State Education Department by Channel 13 and other episodes in the "Culture and Continents" series. In 1966, she joined Dan Curtis to work on ABC's Dark Shadows television series. It lasted five seasons with 1,225 episodes. Swift directed almost half of the episodes during its run.
She later served as one of the directors for the series Ryan's Hope, a daytime drama about a large working-class Irish-American family that lasted 14 years.