Fred Coe
Born	Frederick Hayden Hughs Coe (1914-12-23)December 23, 1914 Alligator, Mississippi
Died	April 29, 1979(1979-04-29) (aged 64) Los Angeles
Occupation	film director

Frederick Hayden Hughs Coe (December 23, 1914 – April 29, 1979) was an American television producer and director most famous forThe Goodyear Television Playhouse/The Philco Television Playhouse in 1948-1955 andPlayhouse 90 from 1957 to 1959. Among the live TV dramas he produced wereMarty andThe Trip to Bountiful forGoodyear/Philco,Peter Pan forProducers' Showcase, andDays of Wine and Roses forPlayhouse 90.

Frederick Hayden Hughs Coe^[1] was born on December 23, 1914, inAlligator, Mississippi. His father, F. H. H. Coe, was an attorney; his mother, Annette Harrell Coe, was a nurse.^[2] Coe grew up inBuckhorn, Kentucky, andNashville, Tennessee. He attended Peabody Demonstration School in Nashville andPeabody College, before studying at theYale Drama School.^[3] While he lived in Nashville he was active with the Nashville Community Playhouse and founded the Hillsboro Players.^[1]

Coe went to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1940 after his graduate work at Yale. There he was director and manager of the Town Theater, which he developed into a venue for new plays.^[1] Coe served in theU.S. Army Air Forces duringWorld War II.

He started as a production manager at NBC in 1945.^[4] Coe made his mark in the early years of network television whenLights Out moved from radio to TV on July 3, 1946.Variety reviewed:

Credit for the show's all-around excellence belongs jointly to scripter Wyllis Cooper and producer Fred Coe. Cooper was the last writer of the radio version with an eight-week series on the NBC net last summer. (Show returns for eight weeks Sat. (6) as replacement for Judy Canova). He followed Arch Oboler at the task and has made the switch from radio to tele without a single letdown in the program's eerie quality. Coe, whose light on NBC television has been partly hidden in the past by Ed Sobol and Ernie Colling, both of whom won ATS awards this last year, has come into his own with this show and should now rank right at the top of the heap. Story, titledFirst Person Singular, concerned a psychopathic killer whose wife's constant nagging, extreme sloppiness, etc., led him to strangle her in their apartment on one of those blistering summer evenings. Killer was never seen, with the camera following the action and taking in just what the eyes of the murderer would see. Thoughts in the killer's subconscious, meanwhile, told what might go on in the mind of such a person as he contemplates his crime, is convicted in court and then hanged. Coe achieved some admirable effects with the camera, drawing the viewer both into the killer's mind and into the action. Use of a spiral montage effect bridged the gap between scenes very well and the integration of film to point up the killer's dream of a cool, placid existence and to heighten the shock effect as the hangman ended his life was excellent. Technical director Bill States was on the beam with the controls in following Coe's direction.^[5]

Coe became executive producer ofMr. Peepers in 1952 and kept that job until 1955. The program won a Peabody Award in 1953. He won an Emmy Award in 1954 as Best Producer of a Live Series for his work onProducer's Showcase.^[1]

Coe encouraged writers, includingPaddy Chayefsky,Horton Foote,Tad Mosel,JP Miller, Summer Locke Elliott,Robert Alan Aurthur, andGore Vidal. Numerous important actors appeared on Coe's shows, which were directed by, among others, Vincent Donohue,Delbert Mann andArthur Penn.^[3]

Coe also was a significant producer on Broadway. His plays includeThe Trip to Bountiful,The Miracle Worker,Two for the Seesaw,All the Way Home,A Thousand Clowns, andWait Until Dark.

Subsequent to his work in television and theatre, he also produced and directed several films, many of which he previously produced on Broadway such asThe Miracle Worker andA Thousand Clowns. The latter film was his directorial debut and was nominated for fourAcademy awards.

Coe was married to, and divorced from, Alice Griggs, and they had two children. At the time of his death he was legally separated from his second wife, Joyce Beeler, with whom he had two children. He died of a heart attack on April 29, 1979, in Los Angeles, aged 64.^[3] He is buried inGreen River Cemetery inSprings, New York.^[6]

Hisbiography,The Man in the Shadows: Fred Coe and the Golden Age of Television byJon Krampner, was published by Rutgers University Press in 1997.^[7] TheUCLA Film and Television Archive haskinescopes of many Coe productions and has made some digital transfers.^[8][9] TheWisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research also has kinescopes.^[10]

• The Left Handed Gun (1958) (producer)
• The Miracle Worker (1962) (producer)
• A Thousand Clowns (1965) (director, producer)
• Me, Natalie (1969) (director)

• Finding Aid for the Fred Coe Papers at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
• Museum TV profileArchived 2009-03-25 at theWayback Machine
• Fred Coe atIMDb
• Fred Coe at theInternet Broadway Database
• Fred Coe at theInternet Off-Broadway Database (archived)
• Fred Coe atFind a Grave

• 1914 births
• 1979 deaths
• 20th-century American businesspeople
• American television directors
• American theatre managers and producers
• Burials at Green River Cemetery
• English-language film directors
• Film directors from Mississippi
• Film producers from Mississippi
• Military personnel from Mississippi
• Peabody College alumni
• People from Bolivar County, Mississippi
• People from Springs, New York
• Television producers from New York (state)
• United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II
• David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University alumni

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