David L Wolper

In 1999, TV Guide chose David L. Wolper as one of the 45 people who made a difference in television history, "a true original whose vision and innovation shaped the medium. As one of televisions top creative forces, his many contributions to broadcast history have imbedded themselves in the American psyche." Wolper and his company, in his over 50 y... ears in show business, have made in excess of 300 films which have won more than 150 awards including Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, Peabody's and recognition through retrospectives at the worlds great film festivals. He has received the entertainment industrys two most prestigious honors: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' induction into the Television Hall of Fame. Born in 1928 in New York City, Wolper attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and the University of Southern California where he studied Cinema and Journalism. At USC he was business manager of the humor magazine, "Wampus." The editor was Art Buchwald later a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist. As a publicist for the school play Wolper's most remembered stunt was dressing a student in a gorilla outfit and crashing the 1948 Academy Awards. The gorilla had a sign on its back, "U.S.C. Varsity show No Love Atoll" It worked, on March 20th 1948 the L. A. Times carried a story about it with a photo. Wolper left school early in 1949 to go into that new medium called television. In 1949 upon leaving USC, Wolper, with his high school buddy Jim Harris and others set up their own television distribution company, Flamingo Films. The few stations were hungry for product so Wolper crisscrossed the country selling old films to the only 50 television stations on the air The films included old movie serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, various terrible old shorts and the first feature film on television, The Adventures of Martin Eden. He personally attended the opening of over 30 T.V. stations the day ...Read More