Life Lessons, Always Laugh Interview With Emmy Award - Winning Director Joan Darling

Please watch this episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show called Chuckles Bites The Dust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p8w1m7Febk , directed by Joan Darling and called "the greatest episode of television of all-time". When Joan Darling began her television career in the early 1970s, the directors yelling “action!” and “cut!” on her sets were invariably male. Her success behind the camera helped change that trend. In 1975 the Boston native made her directorial debut with the hit series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a satirical soap opera that explored consumerism and the desperation of American housewives. That year Darling directed the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Chuckles Bites the Dust,” artfully blending death and comedy in what TV Guide called the greatest 30 minutes in television. Darling’s credits include a 1976 classic M*A*S*H episode titled “The Nurses,” and episodes of Phyllis, Rhoda, Taxi, Magnum P.I., and Doogie Howser, M.D., among other television shows and feature films. Her efforts earned four Emmy nods for outstanding direction, making her the first woman nominated for the award. In 1985, Darling won an Emmy and a Directors Guild of America Award for “ABC Afterschool Specials,” a series of educational programs. Darling caught a break in 1960 when she successfully auditioned for a part at The Premise, the first improvisational theatre in New York. “The show was a huge success,” she remembers. “Over time, Tom Aldredge, Gene Hackman, and Ron Leibman were in it—Dusty Hoffman tried out but he couldn’t get in, so he became a coffee maker and dishwasher at the Premise instead!” Darling received terrific reviews for the show, and the experience helped her land off-Broadway and Broadway roles before she moved to Los Angeles for film and television gigs. In 1975, Darling was writing TV scripts in LA when legendary producer Norman Lear asked her to direct two pilot episodes of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Lear—producer of All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Sanford and Son—wanted to bring women into the business of directing and knew Darling had a strong reputation as an acting teacher. “Norm believed in me,” she says, “so I figured I would try for one year to establish the idea that a woman could direct.” Darling’s early episodes set the tone for both seasons of Mary Hartman. The show became a cult classic, and Darling, a desired director.“The press labeled me the first female director,” Darling recalls. “It’s not completely accurate, but there was no other female getting up every morning going to work as a director at that time. The fact that I was there and doing it, well, I was a role model.”