Stan Daniels
Stanley Edwin Daniels ( born July 31, 1934 in Toronto, Ontario, † April 6, 2007 in Encino, California, United States) was a renowned sitcom writer, television director and producer. As an author or co- author of the well-known American television series The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi ( with James L. Brooks and David Davis), he won eight Emmy Awards and was nominated for an Emmy six times more.
Life
Stan Daniels was born as the only child of vaudeville performer Lilian and Albert Daniels, 1934 in Toronto. When his parents opened a cinema, the small standard mixed often with the spectators and was already at the early age of three years, list all the names of the known movie stars. Daniels was extremely musically gifted, won competitions as a child playing the piano and was considering time as a pianist career.
However, after graduation, he initially took to studying philosophy at the University of Toronto. In 1956 he completed his studies here with a Bachelor of Arts and received the following year, the MA (Master of Arts). In Toronto, he also met his wife Alene (born fireplace ), a former child star of the Canadian Radio know, and married her in 1957. The couple had four children.
1958 Stan Daniels received a scholarship to the University of Oxford and moved to England with his family. He started a PhD study at Magdalen College, Oxford, but no more consummate this study, because even in this time he began already plays, musicals and revues to write or produce - among other things Better Never was known for the Edinburgh Festival or Beyond The Fringe, through the Alan Bennett.
From the mid- 1960s he moved to television and began series like The Dean Martin Show and The Bill Cosby Show to write. From 1970 he worked with Ed Weinberger and James L. Brooks ( The Simpsons ) at MTM Enterprises as a writer and producer for the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which is considered one of the cornerstones of American comedy history and 1970-1977 of CBS aired. 1975 Daniels created together with the well-known sitcom Phyllis Weinberger ( 1975-77 ) with Cloris Leachman in the lead role.
In 1977, Daniels along with Ed Weinberger, James L. Brooks and David Davis MTV Productions to create a largely independent unit of production at Paramount Pictures. 1978 created this team the famous sitcom Taxi with the main actors Danny DeVito, Judd Hirsch and Marilu Henner. This TV series was broadcast by ABC and NBC until 1983, claiming in particular Danny DeVito star. In Taxi Daniels was also his debut as a director behind the camera, what should be an important career mainstay for it later, especially in the 1990s (eg in Almost Famous ). Also in 1978 Daniels wrote - along with James L. Brooks - the series Cindy, which was broadcast in 1978 by ABC and tells the Cinderella theme in an African-American version.
In later years, Daniels worked mostly as a writer, producer or director of TV movies such as Glory! Glory! (1989 ), For Judge, For Poorer (1992 ), The Substitute Wife ( 1994) and The Kid ( 2001). For his work, Daniels received a total of eight Emmy Awards and six Emmy nominations.
As a talented composer, he created beyond music and lyrics for the Broadway musical So Long 174th Street, the musical version of the play Enter Laughing. His musical version of Bernard Slade's play Same Time, Next Year was first performed in 2001 in Budapest.
In the past five years his work was strongly affected by dementia. On April 6, 2007 Stan Daniels died of heart failure. He left behind wife Alene and four children.