The Distinguished Alumni Awards
Marian Rees, Achievement 1988
Marian Rees, 51BA, personifies a rare
Hollywood success story: not the beauty-discovered-in-malt-shop myth,
but the hard-earned success of an intelligent, competent, and motivated
woman who worked her way up from receptionist to award-winning producer
in an industry not that conscientious about providing executive opportunities
for women.
Marian Rees credits her Iowa upbringing in a family that stressed
social activism for a large part of her barriers-breaking style as
a producer. She was born in Le Mars, Iowa, and graduated as valedictorian
of her high school class in Carroll. While a sociology major at the
University of Iowa, she was president of the Freshman Women's Council
and a drummer in the Scottish Highlanders.
Rees landed a job as receptionist with NBC in Hollywood a year after
graduation. That began a decade of rapid promotions—production
secretary for "The Dennis Day Show," production assistant with "Lux
Video Theatre," and assistant to the producer of "The Frank Sinatra
Series."
Her big break arrived in 1959, when she was named associate producer
for Bud Yorkin on "An Evening with Fred Astaire." That live NBC special
garnered 11 Emmy Awards and resulted in Rees's 15-year association
with Yorkin and his partner Norman Lear at Tandem Productions. As vice-president
and production executive, she contributed to the entire first season
of "All in the Family," the pilot for "Sanford and Son," and numerous
features and specials.
In 1973, she became executive in charge of development for Tomorrow
Entertainment, which produced the Emmy sweeper The Autobiography
of Miss Jane Pittman. The television groundbreaking of that film
would become Marian Rees's trademark. During her stint with Tomorrow
Entertainment, she helped produce Tell Me Where It Hurts, the
first TV movie to examine women's consciousness raising groups. For
EMI Television in 1976, she conceived and produced the docu-dramas Orphan
Train, about 19th century homeless children, and One in a Million:
The Ron Le Flore Story, about the black, ex-convict baseball star.
While vice-president at NRW Company Features Division, Rees was executive
producer of The Marva Collins Story, a movie portraying the
nationally acclaimed educator's work with inner-city students. It was
the first of six Hallmark Hall of Fame Presentations she has produced,
five of them—Love Is Never Silent, The Resting Place, The Room
Upstairs, Foxfire, and the upcoming Home Fires Burning—through
her independent company, Marian Rees Associates, established in 1981.
Another Rees film, Little Girl Lost, aired in April on ABC.
Though her programs generally address some social concern, none has
done so more poignantly than Love Is Never Silent, starring
Mare Winningham as the hearing daughter of deaf parents. A forerunner
to Children of a Lesser God in its casting of deaf actors, Love
is Never Silent won Emmys for Best Comedy/Drama Special and Outstanding
Directing in a Miniseries or Special.
In her most admirable way, Rees is still beating the odds in the
board rooms of Hollywood. Among many professional and civic affiliations,
she has been a presiding officer for both the Academy of Television
Arts and Sciences and the Gwen Bolden Foundation, an organization that
offers a supplemental education program for disadvantaged youths at
risk. And, when all three major networks spurned her film Between
Friends, presumably because it was about women in their 50s, Rees
fought until she got it aired on HBO.
Considering that film's subsequent good reviews, high ratings, and
ACE Cable Award, television's moguls might want to take more cues from
Iowa's Marian Rees.
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