Mildred Freed Alberg
Mildred Freed Alberg was an American producer who worked primarily in television, including creating the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Described by actor Maurice Evans as "television's pathfinder", she received two Peabody Awards, seven Sylvania Awards, six Christopher Awards, and five Emmy Awards, in addition to other professional recognition.
Early years
Alberg was born in Montreal, Canada, on January 15, 1921, the daughter of Harry and Florence Freed. Her father founded the Freed Paper Box Company in Montreal. She was the third child of the couple's three daughters and one son. Her father and one sister died in 1931, after which her brother assumed responsibility for the family. A self-described "voracious reader", she moved to New York City in 1939 because Montreal's libraries did not have enough resources for English-speaking people. The day after her arrival a newspaper ad led to her being hired as a typist for two ghostwriters for George Abbott. She went beyond typing to discuss with them her thoughts about the material that she typed, essentially becoming another ghostwriter. After Alberg had been in that job about one year, her two employers moved to California, and they found a job for Alberg that had her typing novels for a publisher in New York. She supplemented her work and personal reading with evening courses, some at theater school and some at The New School for Social Research. Her interests gradually focused on classes related to theatrical arts, and she developed an interest in writing scripts and producing for radio.Career
Alberg was a ghostwriter for Floyd Gibbons. She ventured into broadcasting in the early 1940s as producer of a series of debates that initially presented only a conservative perspective. After she asked, "Don't you think you should have two sides if you call it a 'debate'?" she was asked to participate in the next broadcast. During World War II she wrote dramatizations and public service announcements for radio. After the war she began working for the international humanitarian relief agency CARE, and in 1947 she was promoted to be that organization's director of information. She stayed with CARE until 1951, and her responsibilities expanded to include producing dramatizations based on case histories of CARE's operations. The shows were broadcast on ABC Radio. In 1953, Alberg's production company, Milberg Engerprises, Incorporated, was founded. She was its president.''Hallmark Hall of Fame''
When Alberg watched a television presentation of Julius Caesar in the early 1950s, she became irritated by the way William Shakespeare's play had been cut to fit into a one-hour broadcast. She was one of the first people to convince leaders of a major TV network that people would watch dramas longer than 60 minutes She and NBC then broke new ground in TV in 1953 with Maurice Evans starring in a two-hour production of Hamlet. Her husband, Somer Alberg, had introduced her to Evans, who agreed to do that play on TV provided that it would not be limited to an hour. His agreement provided the impetus for her to tell NBC executives, "You bleed your plays to death. You don't give them a chance." With two hours, she promised, "I can get you the greatest play in the English language with one of the best actors in the English-speaking world." As producer of the program, Alberg initiated the play, suggested casting, and assigned people to work on costumes, makeup, and sets. She was liaison among the advertising agency, the network, and the sponsor. She helped the director get each production under way, then stayed away until final rehearsals. The April 26, 1953, presentation of Hamlet was "an unqualified success", with more people watching the play that night than had seen all of its theatrical productions combined.A review in Time in 1958 said:
Back in 1952 Hallmark was a series of half-hour plays of vaguely inspirational intent presided over by Sarah Churchill. Hallmark’s Executive Producer Mildred Freed Alberg, then only a freelance TV scriptwriter, persuaded Actor Evans to try his famed Hamlet on TV, sat down and wrote an impressive two-hour adaptation of the play. She persuaded Hallmark Cards’ canny President Joyce C. Hall to back her. In those days, two hours of Shakespeare was a heady gamble, but Evans’ Hamlet was a whacking success, and Hallmark was credited with breaking TV’s time barrier. Since then, Hall of Fame has put on some of TV’s best dramatic shows... Mrs. Alberg’s credo: “Other shows try to make popular things good. We try to make good things popular.” They have.
Hallmark and NBC agreed on a series of other Shakespearean plays starring Evans. Those productions included Macbeth and Richard III in 1954. The next year, "The Hallmark Hall of Fame became a long-term, regular feature on NBC" with Alberg its executive producer. Evans returned to star in The Taming of the Shrew and Dial M for Murder. Other productions in the series included Ah, Wilderness!, Alice in Wonderland, Born Yesterday, The Green Pastures, Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, The Lark, The Little Foxes, Man and Superman, and There Shall Be No Night. The Ah, Wilderness! episode was the first 90-minute TV production of a play by Eugene O'Neill.