He honed and mastered his art and craft in films, television and live theater. He was elected to serve two terms as President of the Directors Guild of America. He famously chose Billy Crystal to host the Academy Awards. Crystal's second turn as Oscar host in 1991 was so memorable it won Gil Cates an Emmy. He also was wise enough to choose Steve Martin, Chris Rock and Jon Stewart as Oscar hosts over the course of his lengthy helm with the broadcast for the Academy Awards. He produced several Ford's Theater presentations for ABC. I managed to attend a few of these specials and at times you just stopped and watched Gil at work. No drama was ever attached to anything he did, even though he was a masterful creator of drama.
I had the pleasure to work with Gil Cates over the course of my career at the ABC Television Network. I never saw him stressed out. He was an exercise in humility and calm. He possessed a wonderful sense of humor and a strong sense of fairness. You just liked him.
I enjoyed a couple of lunches with him over the years and he was one of those people you hated to break away from. He didn't have a pretentious bone in his body. Gil wasn't capable of shafting someone. A trait in the business of show that has harmed many.
Thank you Gil Cates for providing us with some of the best Oscar broadcasts in the long history of the Motion Picture Academy, but more importantly, thank you for teaching me a few things along the way in life. All good things were learned from Gil Cates.
1 comment:
Another beautiful memorial to a colleague, Judith. You were fortunate to have worked with men like Cates and Burke during your career, and to have seen them as people as well as media innovators. Cates definitely had the touch and took the Academy Awards to a whole new level of smart entertainment.
Not that we don't love these posts, but please, let's all hope for continued long lives for all our media friends!
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