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Name: Ralph Nelson
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Date of Birth:
August 12, 1916
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Place of Birth:
New York City, New York, USA
Mini-bio:
In the early days of commercial television, executives sought to balance their offerings of such drivel as "Queen for a Day" and "The $64,000 Question" with high culture. In that era, the so-called Go...( read more)lden Age of Television that was soon to expire, quality drama was featured on other omnibus showcases, including "Playhouse 90," the "Armstrong Circle Theatre," and the "United States Steel Hour." It couldn't last, as TV audiences eschewed Toscanini for Liberace and "Romeo & Juliet" for "I Love Lucy," but it proved an excellent training ground for directors.
Ralph Nelson was born into a Norwegian-American family in New York City in 1916. He became interested in the theater while attending high school, and won an oratory contest sponsored by the "New York Times" in 1932. His interest in the theater lead him to Broadway, where he worked as an errand boy before making it onto the stage. He made his Broadway debut on January 15, 1934 in "False Dreams, Farewell," and followed it up with parts in "Romeo & Juliet," "Othello," "Macbeth," and "The Taming of the Shrew" through 1940. His last Broadway play before the outbreak of World War II was "There Shall Be No Night," also in 1940, for which he also served as stage manager. In World War II, Nelson joined the Army as an air cadet.
As a director and producer, Nelson had a hand in as many as 1,000 TV presentations in the late 1940s, the 1950s, and the early '60s. He directed the first broadcast of "Playhouse 90" and was a regular contributor to the "General Electric Theater," the "Lux Theater," and the "Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse," among other omnibus showcases in TV's Golden Age. He even directed an episode of Serling's "The Twilight Zone." When he moved from the little to the Big Screen, his films typically tackled topical subjects such as racism. His most successful and best-remembered film was 1963's "Lillies of the Field," for which he received an Oscar nomination as Best Picture as producer. Sidney Poitier became the first African American male and only second black person overall to win a competitive acting Oscar. His other major films that have endured were the 1964 Cary Grant comedy "Father Goose" and "Charly" (1968), for which Cliff Robertson won an Oscar. Eventually, Nelson returned to TV, finishing his directing career with "Christmas Lillies of the Field" (1979). Ralph Nelson died in 1987. His son by Celeste Holm, Dr. Theodor "Ted" Holm Nelson (born 1937) is a pioneer of information technology who invented the term "hypertext" in 1965.
Ralph Nelson mini-bio: 
