San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Director a crucial force in Bay Area filmmaking
He directed Cicely Tyson’s biggest achievement in one of the television events of the 1970s, and, decades before “The Mandalorian” and “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he was the first to expand the “Star Wars” universe to the small screen.
But the most lasting cinematic contribution by Oscarand Emmy-winning filmmaker John Korty, who died March 9 at his home in Point Reyes Station at age 85, might have been that he put down roots in Marin County and wouldn’t leave. He influenced good friends George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola to do the same, helping forge the New Hollywood, which dominated the ’70s.
Korty grew up in the Midwest and was living in New York in 1963 when he decided to drive across the county in his Volkswagen bus. When he arrived at Stinson Beach, a real estate agent said, “There’s a big house up on the hill, and it’s very expensive, and the owners want three months’ rent in advance,’ ” Korty told The Chronicle in 2011.
The price for a two-bedroom lodge-style house with an ocean view and living room with 2½-story ceiling and loft? Exactly what he had been paying for a closet-size apartment in New York: $125 a month.
“I just sat down and laughed and laughed and laughed,” Korty recalled.
Thus a half-century career of some 40 films took root.
Korty first gained notice in the mid-1960s with a satiric anti-smoking short he made for the American Cancer Society, titled “Breaking the Habit,” which was nominated for an Academy Award, and the distinctive marital-relationship indie feature “The Crazy-Quilt.”
Shortly thereafter, he established his own independent
company, Korty Films, in Mill Valley and never stopped working. However, there would be no major breakthrough like those experienced by his friends, Coppola (”The Godfather”) and Lucas (”American Graffiti,” then “Star Wars”). Korty said he was offered and turned down “The Last Picture Show” and “Jaws,” but he took on a gig as the second-unit director of the Robert Redford film “The Candidate” (1972).
His biggest success came in 1974 for his sensitive handling of “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” a made-for-TV adaptation of Ernest Gaines’ best-selling novel about a 110year-old woman who decides to join the civil rights movement and recounts her life that began as a slave. Powered by an astonishing performance by Tyson — equally convincing at ages 23, 45, 80 and 110 (with makeup by Stan Winston and Rick Baker) — the film was at the time a rare mainstream attempt to put the American Black experience in historical context.
CBS’ telecast on Jan. 31, 1974, was seen by an estimated 50 million people, won nine Emmys (including for Tyson and Korty) and helped whet the appetite for a miniseries adaptation of Alex Haley’s “Roots: The Saga of an American Family” later that decade.
“The next day I received phone calls nonstop from some big people in the industry who said how incredibly moved they were,” Korty said of the day after the premiere. “It was one of the best days of my life.”
Also in the 1970s, Korty created animated shorts for PBS’ “Sesame Street” and “The Electric Company” and directed the TV movies “The People,” a Coppola-produced sciencefiction film with William Shatner; “Go Ask Alice,” an antidrug film with an all-star cast that drew big ratings; and “Farewell to Manzanar,” about the camps that interned Japanese Americans during World War II.
On the big screen during this period, he directed Jack Lemmon and Genevieve Bujold in “Alex and the Gypsy” (1976) and Ryan O’Neal and Candice Bergen in “Oliver’s Story” (1978), the sequel to “Love Story.”
But his biggest success in that decade after “Jane Pittman” was the documentary “Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?” The film chronicled Dorothy and Bob DeBolt, a remarkable Bay Area couple who adopted 19 children, many of whom were physically disabled war orphans. Thanks to Korty’s empathetic and humanistic approach, a directorial strength of Korty’s that often goes under-discussed, the film won both an Oscar and — when it was edited down to 50 minutes for an ABC special narrated by Henry Winkler — an Emmy.
Then in the 1980s, his old pal Lucas came calling. He asked Korty and animator Charles Swenson to shepherd a pet project, “Twice Upon a Time,” a dark animated tale that was painstakingly made over three years at Korty Films with a stellar crew of future directors, including David Fincher (special photographic effects) and Henry Selick (sequence director).
After “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” introduced the world to the furry Ewoks, Lucas tapped Korty to direct the TV movie “Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure,” the first TV spin-off of the “Star Wars” universe (not counting the disastrous “Star Wars Holiday Special”). For the production, Korty and his crew transformed the redwood forests of Northern California into the forest moon of Endor.
Later projects included the TV movies “Oklahoma City: A Survivor’s Story,” and “Ms. Scrooge,” which reunited Korty with Tyson, who reimagines Dickens’ bah-humbug antihero as a woman.
In his final years, Korty made short documentaries and experimented with digital video, going back to his roots as a Bay Area indie filmmaker.
Born July 22, 1936, in Lafayette, Ind., he attended Kirkwood High School in Kirkwood, Mo., and Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, before spending a stint in New York. But he thought of the Bay Area as home.
“I came out from Brooklyn Heights in 1963,” Korty told The Chronicle in 1999. “When I was given an award by the city of San Francisco a few years ago, I said, ‘I never saw San Francisco before I came here, but it was the best blind date of my life.’ ”
Korty is survived by his wife, Jane Silvia; children, Jonathan, David and Gabriel Korty; and siblings, Doug and Nancy Korty.