WALTER E. GRAUMAN 

BACK to Home Page

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Director - Features

Lady in a Cage - Paramount
633 Squadron, Mirisch - UA
A Rage to Live, Mirisch - UA
The Last Escape, Mirisch - UA
I Deal in Danger - 20th Century Fox
The Disembodied - Allied Artists

Pilots and Television Series

Columbo
The Untouchables
The Fugitive - Pilot
Streets of San Francisco - Pilot
Barnaby Jones - Pilot
East Side, West Side
Naked City
The New Breed - Pilot
Route 66
Honey West - Pilot
Manhunter - Pilot
Most Wanted - Pilot
Bare Essence - Pilot
Harrigan & Son - Pilot
Silent Force - Pilot
Scene of the Crime - Pilot
Murder She Wrote - 53 1-hour Episodes
Plus over 275 1-hour Filmed Dramatic Programs, i.e. - V - Trapper John M.D. - Twelve O'clock High - 11th Hour - Lancer - Hotel de Paris - Man Without a Gun - Colt 45 - Cover Up - Steve Canyon - Peter Gunn - Burkes Law - The June Allyson Show - Empire

Live Television Drama

Eighty Matinee Theatre l-hour Programs
Alcoa-Goodyear Playhouse
Philco Playhouse

Director/Creator/Executive Producer

Blue Light - Series, ABC
Felony Squad - Series, ABC
Six Movies-of-the-Week, ABC
World Premiere, NBC
Eleven Two-Hour Movies, CBS

Movies for Television and Mini-Series

The Forgotten Man - Director/Producer/Creator
Daughter of the Mind - Director/Executive Producer
Crowhaven Farm - Director/Producer
The Old Man Who Cried Wolf - Director/Producer
Dead Men Tell No Tales - Director/Executive Producer
Paper Man - Director/Executive Producer
Daughter of the Mind - Director/Executive Producer
They Call It Murder - Director/Executive Producer
Nightmare on the 13th Floor - Executive Producer/Director

Movies for Television and Mini Series - Director

Are You In The House Alone? - 2 hrs
Crisis in Mid Air - 2 hrs
Golden Gate Murders - David Janssen/Susanne York, 2 hrs, CBS
Irwin Shaw's Top of the Hill - Wayne Rodgers, 4 hrs
Memory of Eva Ryker- Natalie Wood, 3 hrs, CBS
Pleasure Palace - Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, 2 hrs, CBS
Outrage - 2 hrs, CBS
Force Five - 2 hrs, ABC
The Covenant - Jose Ferrer, 2 hrs, NBC

CBS Movies and Mini-Series - Director/Producer

To Race the Wind - Steve Guttenberg - 2 hrs, CBS
Valley of the Dolls, 1981 - 5 hrs, CBS
Bare Essence - 2 hrs, CBS
Illusions - 2 hrs, CBS
Who is Julia? - 2 hrs, CBS
Shakedown on Sunset Strip - 2 hrs, CBS

Nominated three times by Directors Guild and Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Best Direction.

TEACHING

· Guest Lecturer, Directing and Producing, San Francisco State University

· Guest Lecturer, Drama Directing, California State University, Northridge

AWARDS

· During World War 11, awarded tbe Distinguished Flying Cross. As a pilot flew 56 combat missions with the 12th Air Force in Europe.

· Awarded tbe Air Medal with Oakleaf Clusters representing the Air Medals being awarded eight times,

· County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors Distinguished Commendation for "Spotlight Awards" 1993

· Dedicated Citizen Commendation from the Mayor of Los Angeles for civic activity regarding enhancing the image of the city of Los Angeles.

FROM: "The American Vein", Directors and Directions in Television

BY: Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahimagi

PUBLISHED: 1979

CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF WALTER GRAUMAN

As TV guides only rarely print more than actors credits, and as The Untouchables waited for the end-titles to list the creative personnel, it was an interesting test for auteur hunters to watch that series. It is easy to recognize style retrospectively; we looked forward to testing our understanding. Whenever a segment unfolded that was, surely, helmed by a Karlson, or a Wendkos, or a Garnett, it has always turned out to be Walter Grauman.

The best of Grauman's The Untouchables. also have fine scripts (Ben Maddow, "Head of Fire, Feet of Clay," "The Noise of Death," David Zelag Goodman, "The Antidote") and combine a serpentine and unconstricting visual sense, with lowering close-ups which do not dominate the scene. In these shows, even the occasional David Lean-like angle actually works. It is likely that Grauman was one of first to create a perfectly judged style which could justly be considered "pure TV."

Grauman could also make lines like "There's one thing I like about you, Ness -- you're the one copper who never told me to keep my nose clean," and "I heard! They just locked me up, they didn't cut off my ears," zing like Damon Runyon. Another line, from the wife of a racketeer: When he dies, I'm going down the street and commit a mortal sin so I can go to Hell and marry him all over again" which, as read (by an actress who actually seems to care) and as directed by Grauman, comes over as wonderfully moving, so deep is the love expressed. It indicates, perhaps the director's main achievement with the series -- to make us sympathize with the lowlife, so that it is of more than academic interest that Ness and Co. have a set of dubious morals and get them in the end.

Grauman also did some fine work on The Fugitive, particularly "Landscape with Running Figures," Crowhaven Farm, Dead Men Tell No Tales (with elements of Hitchock in North by Northwest mood) and The Streets of San Francisco. He helped initiate an art.

BACK to Home Page