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| 1 | Herb lived above the famous Hollywood Sunset Strip at 1527 Sunset Plaza Drive, West Hollywood, 90069. Herb maintained the residence exactly as he had purchased the large and spacious four bedroom, with a living room, a South-West hillside view of the Los Angeles cityscape. A large exterior patio shared the West hill-side of the house for entertaining. Herb was impressed with the house's history. The residence's former owner had been the permanent host for Princess Grace Kelly and her husband H.R.H. Prince Rainier of Monaco when ever they visited Southern California. The famous royal couple never stayed at a hotel. After retiring from the television film industry, Herb down-sized, relocated to a condo-penthouse in Beverly Hills, in Century City. Celebrating age 90 on July 14, 2007, Herb died of complications from prostrate cancer on January 30, 2008 in Los Angeles. |
| 2 | Two featured characters in "All That Glitters" were Eileen Brennan as Ma Packer and her lazy son, Sonny Packer, played by Tim Thomerson. Sonny's (Thomerson's) role idol and wannabe impersonation of an Elvis Presley character, always strumming his guitar, practicing swinging hips and rock movements was diligently encouraged by his Ma (Eileen Brennan) Packer. Their principal abode was a run down farm shack. In preparation for the first introduction of the outlandish pair, Herb and Eileen requested the littered straw and dirt studio set floor be inhabited with a small pot bellied pig and a dozen chickens. The first day to video-tape Ma and Sonny Packer's introduction in the series, Eileen picked up one of the hens, holding the chicken in her arms like a pet cat, petting and soothing the clucking hen while performing her character's motherly role. The entire week of staged scenes, Eileen carried the same hen in her arms, with the chickens pecking seeds from the straw on the ramshackle shack floor. The following week, the producers decided to cancel the livestock! Arriving early on set for rehearsal, Eileen and Herb confronted the dull witted lady producers. Where were the Chickens? Canceled to save money on a chicken wrangler and his flock of hens! The cast and crew waited for one hour while the wrangler and his flock of hens could arrive. Thereafter, Eileen, her chicken-hen co-star, with the floor flock of hens were featured until Ma moved uptown, with Sonny becoming a full fledged rock star on a local television station talent show, landing a gig at a local Western bar and stardom! Ma Packer, now a sexy glamorous theatrical agent, became a music-rock group phenomena. |
| 3 | Herbert Kenwith, born (14 July 1917) in New Jersey, started his career as an actor and appeared in several Broadway productions; last appearing on Broadway in the play "I Remember Mama" starring Mady Christians, produced by Rogers and Hammerstein II, at the Music Box Theatre (9 Oct 1944-29 Jun 1946, 713 performances) in the role of "Bellboy." Herb, also, was the Assistant Stage Manager with "I Remember Mama" which also marked the Broadway debut of Herb's cast mate Marlon Brando as "Nels." The first theatrical play credit: Produced and Directed by Herbert Kenwith, was for a revival of the play "Night Must Fall," starring Dame May Whitty. As Broadway's youngest producer, Kenwith with Paul Felgay, Oliver Smith and David Cummings produced the Gertrude Berg play "Me and Molly," (26 Feb-10 July 1948), at the Belasco Theatre starring Gertrude Berg as Molly Goldberg and Philip Loeb as Jake Goldberg. The production was voted "one of the season's ten best plays." After Broadway, Kenwith, for six extremely successful summers, produced and directed all 65 productions for Princeton University's McCarter Theatre. The summer play's repertory leads included Lucille Ball, Mae West, Charlton Heston, Shelly Winters, Cesar Romero, Walter Matthau, Maureen Stapleton, Eve Arden, Constance and Joan Bennett, Paul Muni, Miriam Hopkins, Gloria Swanson, Jeanette MacDonald, Zazu Pitts and Nancy Davis. In the infant medium of New York television CBS Television hired Herbert Kenwith as an associate director. Within seven weeks he was assigned to direct the television day time soap opera "Valiant Lady," followed by "Lamp Under My Feet," "Suspicion," "The Investigator," "The Polly Bergen Show," and Jonathan Winters in his weekly television comedy show. For the first three years at NBC Television, Kenwith directed the series "The Doctors," starring Ellen Burstyn. Picking up directing assignments on network television specials; his credits include Hollywood film stars such as Danny Kaye, Billy Eckstein, Sidney Poitier, and even Rose Kennedy. Within three weeks upon his arrival in Hollywood, Kenwith was directing episodes of "Death Valley Days," "Name of the Game," "Marcus Welby," "Star Trek," "Daktan," and "Misty Deeds," along with television pilots for all the networks. Among the performers Herb worked with while at the Princeton University McCarter Theatre was Lucille Ball, who tapped Kenwith as a director for her television series "Here's Lucy." In 1972, NBC Television and 20th Century Fox revived a five-day drama series based upon the night drama "Peyton Place," retitled "Return to Peyton Place." NBC contracted Kenwith to alternate daily directing assignments until the series was canceled in 1975. Herb directed the first episode of the 1972 CBS TV daytime drama "The Young and The Restless," which followed alternating directorial assignments between NBC's "Return to Peyton Place" and CBS' "Young and The Restless." Norman Lear signed Kenwith to a seven year contract as producer and director on Lear's factory of television shows including "Different Strokes," "Facts of Life," "Good Times," "One Day at A Time," and the limited night time comedy-soap opera "All That Glitters." Numerous prime-time sitcoms Herb directed included NBC TV's "Sanford and Son" (1972-1997) featuring Redd Foxx, Demond Wilson and La Wanda Page, and the short-lived NBC series "Joe's World" starring K. Callan. His long association and friendship with Mae West resulted in his directing Mae West's theatrical stage projects. Although the same physical appearance and height as Napoleon Bonaparte, Kenwith, a non smoker and teetotaler, had a personality of charm, a tremendous sense of humor, laughing, a friendly disposition putting any performer at ease during a guest appearance on a television or theatrical production. Kenwith, friendly with his television technical stage crew, could request and receive immediate response because of his affable friendly attitude. His realm of expertise was respected and admired by his entire professional theatrical crew. |
| 4 | The world of the Norman Lear's limited night-time television series "All That Glitters" was exactly like ours except that the women were the dominate gender. Women were the captains of industry and men were household workers, secretaries and waiters trying to attract attention with their sexuality. To add some additional twists to that twist there were characters into dominance/submission, a woman, the first transvestite or trans-gender role portrayed on television, who had been a man (played by Linda Gray) and, of course, women CEOs having affairs with their male secretaries. This was the TV series that Norman Lear had Herb Kenwith take over the directorial assignment after Norman Lear fired the first choice of his female producing team, the film director James Frawley. Jim Frawley's background was in feature film, where one camera films the action, resets for secondary shots, close ups, etc. During the first day stage blocking rehearsal, a four camera blocking plotting day, Frawley dismissed three camera men, announcing he would video tape the show with only one camera. Mid-day morning, Norman Lear was called to the KTTV studio-stage to observe. The lack of experience with the "Glitter's" team of lady producers created a multiple state of confusion. The producing team, unprepared for an unexperienced film director's state of confusion having to deal with blocking many actors in consecutive scene staging's, while blocking four television camera positions and shots. The television medium format for multiple camera shot positions, multiplied by the camera tape editing process, created a stage of mass pandemonium and tension. With Norman Lear on stage, the women producers blamed the production designer Hub Braden for his stage layout of the ten sets to justify Jim Frawley's failure to stage multiple cameras. To justify Frawley's dismissal of three camera men, his failure in dealing with multiple cameras, the producers frantically put the order out to "find Hub" so we can fire him! No one could find Braden because early in the day, Braden had been so exasperated with the inexperienced film director's handing of actors and technical crew, he had departed the stage mayhem, to supervise his free-lance design project being set up, to be taped at across town's NBC Burbank studio: the Hollywood based-columnist Rona Barrett's Academy Award interview special featuring Academy Award Nominee guests. The Ronna Barrett theatrical interview background stage set was designed to collapse on camera at the conclusion of the TV interview show. Braden's art director assistants at KTTV had been instructed to deal with any stage problems. Therefore, no one could find Braden to tell him the "Glitter's Producers" wanted to fire him. Around four-thirty, that afternoon, Lear fired Jim Frawley on stage in front of the entire crew of actors, producers and technicians, with everyone dismissed until the next day. Norman Lear immediately brought Herb Kenwith into the studio-facility to take over the show's directing reigns. Told by the producers that they were firing their production designer Hub Braden, Herb Kenwith replied "you can't fire him! He is the only one here that knows what he is doing! HE STAYS!" Braden, that night at seven p.m., returned to the KTTV stage to check out the day's progress; discovering an empty stage with Herb Kenwith standing in the middle of the stage, holding an open script book studying each stage set arrangement, analyzing scene blocking shots. Braden, ignorant of the day's sequence of mayhem, greeted Herb in amazement, blurting out "thank God you are here!" Herb filled Braden in with all the day's consequences, including how he, Herb, had saved Braden's job! The success of the series was primarily Herb Kenwith's sense of humor and tongue in cheek direction of the outlandish situation comedy scripts. Probably the first ever night time television comedy dealing with female sexual mores, twists, and compulsions. The Norman Lear project was short-lived, canceled after twelve weeks; a five night television comedy series, telecast on Los Angeles' local syndicated Channel 13 network with terribly dismal ratings. |
| 5 | Survived by his niece, Lori Low-Schwartz, and nephews, Arnold Winick, Richard Flexner and Gary Low. |
$11 Million
