Award-winning television documentary writer-producer-director Nicholas Webster, a long time Palisades resident whose career spanned six decades, 27 countries, and every state, died in his sleep in Santa Monica on August 12 after an extended illness. He was 94. Webster documented his remarkably rich life in a unpresumptuous autobiography (‘How to Sleep on a Camel: Adventure of a Documentary Film Director’) in 1997, which he had originally thought of as simply a story for his children. But admitting that he had an extraordinary life that read like a story, he decided to publish it. Born in Spokane, Washington, on July 24, 1912, Webster grew up in Hollywood (his mother was a script supervisor), attended Hollywood High, and had a taste of that make-believe world by ‘practically living at MGM,’ where he worked in the photography lab after graduation. While his life might have become a confusing spiral where illusion and reality intertwined, Webster discovered what he wanted to do after a chance viewing of Robert Flaherty’s famous documentary feature, ‘Man of Aran.’ ‘This documentary masterpiece showed a primitive island off the west coast of Ireland…,’ Webster wrote. ‘These were no pampered actors, nor were their stone cottages built overnight on some studio backlot. If this was what the world was like, I knew I had to leave Hollywood and go out and experience it and I hoped someday to make pictures like that.’ From the moment Webster left home at 20 for a job as a portrait photographer in Washington, D. C., to his subsequent assignments all over the world, his openness to challenges and his creative perspective produced some memorable shots. In the 1950s and ’60s, documentary film making blossomed with the explosion in television. But unlike the business today with sophisticated cameras and sound equipment, the techniques and technology for bringing ‘true life’ to the screen were pioneered right along with the medium. Webster used the zoom lens for the first time in the late ’50s to capture behind-the-scenes action of pro football linebacker Sam Huff for a Walter Cronkite special. He also debuted the remote-controlled radio microphone by strapping a mike on Huff and embedding a radio transmitter in his shoulder pads. His 1961 ABC’s Bell & Howell Close Up documentary ‘Walk in My Shoes,’ was nominated for the ‘Show of the Year’ Emmy for its groundbreaking look at African Americans in America from their own perspective. Other classic documentaries included ‘I Remember”a return to the Auschwitz concentration camps; ‘Meet Comrade Student’ about Russian education, about which President Kennedy said ‘every American should see this film!’ and ‘The Long Childhood of Timmy”a revealing and personal look at childhood mental retardation. To be a good documentarian you need to have the patience to let the scene unfold and to capture the essence of an experience that will resonant with the viewer on an emotional level, Webster said in a Palisadian-Post interview in 1997. He told his stories with little flourish or embroidery, the sign of the marvelous observer simply reporting what happened. Throughout his career, inevitably dictated by the job assignment, Webster also directed commercials and television. In the 1960s, he directed episodes of ‘Bonanza’ and ‘Get Smart,’ which brought him back to Hollywood, where he began. Webster and his second wife of 40 years settled in Sherman Oaks until moving to the Palisades in 1992. Diana, an actress, has had an exceptional career both on stage and screen. She accompanied Nick on many of his assignments and wrote many of the ‘In Search Of’ scripts’a series of quasi-documentaries that enlivened history such as ‘In Search of the Great Wall of China,’ and ‘In Search of Butch Cassidy.’ In addition to his wife Diana, Webster is survived by his daughter Cynthia Webster of Pacific Palisades; his son Lance Webster of Van Nuys; and daughter Juliet Webster of Santa Monica. Funeral arrangements are private. In lieu of flowers or donations, the family requests that in memory of Nick Webster, people take on an unexpected extra act of kindness, generosity and love to someone in their lives, today.
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