BY ILONA SAARI
STUART
CROWNER
CROWNING A Stuart Crowner’s dreams of a television career began when, at thirteen, he saw a wooden doll on Kraft Mystery Theater. This was no ordinary wooden doll, but a rendering of a cameraman sitting behind a TV camera which rotated while opening credits rolled.
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career in television was not an aspiration for most kids in Gouverneur, a small farming and mining town in way upstate New York, population 5,000. So far upstate, in fact, you could see the red coats of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ride by on the horizon. Well, almost. While many young boys feasting on mom’s Kraft dinners dreamed of being baseball players, cowboys or firemen, Stuart, a child of the first television generation, set his sights on being a cameraman. That dream led him on a very circuitous route to Ojai. His father, Nyles Crowner, was one of the town’s caring, country doctors, who was once paid a loaf of bread to deliver a baby. Mom, Helen, sang soprano in the church choir and appeared and starred in productions such as “Mame” and “The King & I” on the community theater stage, which introduced young Stuart to live theater. After high school, Stuart’s show business dream led him to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where he worked at the university’s TV station promoting the school and covering local stories. This experience opened up a floodgate of different goals. He no longer set his sights on being a cameraman. No, he’d been bitten by the seductive bugs of writing, directing, and producing for television. At Chapel Hill he also met Mary Kyle Watson who became a good friend. To earn his MFA, Stuart went to UCLA graduate school where he became an intern on the variety shows starring Red Skelton and Andy Williams. But, on the day his degree arrived in the mail, he also received his draft notice. He soon found himself at Fort Dix in New Jersey, where he spent his two-year service producing training videos for recruits. While there, he 12
OM — August 2020
received an invitation to a UNC Chapel Hill reunion from his old friend, Kyle, who was living and working in Washington D.C. When he saw Kyle again, it was love at second sight. He can still describe the beautiful, colorful, African-inspired print jumpsuit she was wearing that night. They married in 1969 and have been together ever since. After the Army, Stuart got a job with the local CBS station in Philadelphia as a stage manager for “Tell It Like It Was,” a Black History show for kids. While in Philadelphia their daughter, Sarah (now a celebrated artist with exhibits all over the world) was born, and Stuart was promoted to executive producer of the station’s local programming. His dream was on its way to becoming a reality. In 1975, Stuart’s big break came when he was hired to write and associate produce “The Mike Douglas Show” in Philadelphia, a daytime talk show syndicated across the country. Three years later the show moved to Los Angeles, bringing Stuart and his family along for the journey. In 1981, he became the Executive Producer for the nightly “Mike Douglas Show,” a one-on-one interview program for CNN. He also created and produced Larry King’s first television series. Kyle worked in advertising and soon the family grew to four when son Peter was born (he grew up to be a musician and a restaurateur at The Slice & Pint, located in El Segundo, California). After leaving “The Mike Douglas Show,” Stuart went on to produce the Emmy-nominated “People’s Choice Awards” for four years, and the acclaimed Emmywinning PBS series “Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn,” which one critic called “The most beautiful series ever to appear on television.” He spent three
