Two key Star Trek people passed away this past week: Composer Alexander Courage, and director Joseph Pevney. Pevney helmed 14 episodes of the classic series, including famed instalments, “The Trouble With Tribbles”, and the (brilliantly directed) “The City on the Edge of Forever”.Pevney started in vaudville as a boy soprano and followed through as an actor in film and on Broadway. (Hey, back in the days when film and tv people actually “did things”.) He forged a career also as a director for the Broadway stage and for the big screen, directing actors such as Jeff Chandler in the 1956 VistaVision picture, Away All Boats, and James Cagney in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957).
By the 1960s, Pevney become known as a dependable and inspired director for television; working on series like Ben Casey, Wagon Train, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. On Star Trek, he was brought in after the earliest episodes had been going habitually over budget and schedule; problems which had become very serious: Something had to be done. In television series terms, the show was expensive (by its very nature), and the constant overages were threatening to bankrupt Desilu. Pevney helped forge production efficiency while still inspiring cinematic integrity on a television budget. The only chink in his formidable directing armour happened at the end of the show's first season when “The City on the Edge of Forever” ended up $60,000 over budget – which was a huge sum in those days. (The director later said that this episode was worth every dollar spent.)
“City” is one of the finest pieces of hour long dramatic series television ever done for the medium... attributable, in a major way, to Joseph Pevney; in my humble opinion.
LA Times... http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-pevney29-2008may29,0,2766431.story
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