
Jac Venza
Biography
Jac Venza was a public television producer who was directly responsible for most of the theatre and music programs that have been seen on PBS since its creation in 1970. From the early 1960s until his retirement in 2005, Venza brought such programs as NET Playhouse, Live from Lincoln Center, American Playhouse, American Masters, and Great Performances to millions of viewers. He won a Personal Peabody Award in 1998.
He began his career on CBS in the 1950s, where he began to notice the scarcity of programming devoted to the fine arts on television. It was his dream to bring more of it to the home screen on a regular basis, but he did not receive a full opportunity to do so until the creation of National Educational Television, where it soon became possible, thanks largely to Venza, to see great dramatic literature regularly performed by some of the world's most renowned actors. A then-unknown Dustin Hoffman made his first major television appearance in a play - Ronald Ribman's The Journey of the Fifth Horse - on NET in 1966. NET Playhouse was perhaps the first television anthology to present commercial-free, full-length productions (rather than one-hour or ninety-minute adaptations) of theatrical classics such as Arthur Miller's adaptation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. When NET became PBS, Venza quickly launched Great Performances, which is still running today.
Upon his retirement from PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting awarded Venza the Ralph Lowell medal. He held the record for the most Emmy nominations for an individual - 57 - until 2010.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Title | Year | Job |
|---|---|---|
| Ten Blocks on the Camino Real | 1966 | Producer |
| Ten Blocks on the Camino Real | 1966 | Executive Producer |
| The Journey of the Fifth Horse | 1966 | Producer |
| The Star Wagon | 1966 | Producer |
| An Enemy of the People | 1966 | Executive Producer |
| Let Me Hear You Whisper | 1969 | Executive Producer |
| Dragon Country | 1970 | Executive Producer |
| A Memory of Two Mondays | 1971 | Executive Producer |
| Paradise Lost | 1971 | Executive Producer |
| The Great Radio Comedians | 1971 | Producer |
| Hogan's Goat | 1971 | Executive Producer |
| Home | 1972 | Producer |
| The Rimers of Eldritch | 1972 | Executive Producer |
| Enemies | 1974 | Executive Producer |
| June Moon | 1974 | Executive Producer |
| In Fashion | 1974 | Executive Producer |
| Feasting with Panthers | 1974 | Executive Producer |
| A Touch of the Poet | 1974 | Executive Producer |
| The Year of the Dragon | 1975 | Executive Producer |
| The School for Scandal | 1975 | Producer |
| Beyond the Horizon | 1975 | Executive Producer |
| The Patriots | 1976 | Executive Producer |
| The Trial of the Moke | 1978 | Executive Producer |
| Tartuffe | 1978 | Executive Producer |
| The Good Doctor | 1978 | Producer |
| Uncommon Women and Others | 1979 | Executive Producer |
| The Sorrows of Gin | 1979 | Executive Producer |
| O Youth and Beauty! | 1979 | Executive Producer |
| The Five Forty-Eight | 1979 | Executive Producer |
| Guests of the Nation | 1981 | Executive Producer |
| The Shady Hill Kidnapping | 1982 | Executive Producer |
| Carl Sandburg: Echoes and Silences | 1982 | Executive Producer |
| Working | 1982 | Executive Producer |
| Fifth of July | 1982 | Executive Producer |
| Alice in Wonderland | 1983 | Executive Producer |
| Judy Garland: The Concert Years | 1985 | Executive Producer |
| James Stewart: A Wonderful Life | 1987 | Executive Producer |
| Tales from the Hollywood Hills: Natica Jackson | 1987 | Executive Producer |
| Bacall on Bogart | 1988 | Executive Producer |
| Broadway's Dreamers: The Legacy of the Group Theatre | 1989 | Executive Producer |
| Kiss, Kiss, Dahlings | 1992 | Executive Producer |
| The World of Jim Henson | 1994 | Executive Producer |
| Two by Dove | 1995 | Executive Producer |
| Jackie: Behind the Myth | 1999 | Executive Producer |
| Andrea Bocelli - Sacred Arias | 1999 | Executive Producer |
| Crazy For You | 1999 | Executive Producer |
| Fosse | 2002 | Executive Producer |
| The Women | 2002 | Executive Producer |
| The Topdog Diaries | 2002 | Executive Producer |