Noel Black

Black was born in Chicago on June 30, 1937. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in film from the University of California, Los Angeles. ==Career==

Black was under the influence of the French New Wave. "I longed to be the American Godard and Truffaut", he said. "I had the best intentions, but the reality of the American film business kicked in. After I left UCLA, I was determined to storm the Bastille by making my way into the industry with a short film." Skaterdater Black wrote and directed the 18 minute film, Skaterdater (1965), which had no dialogue and was set in California. The short film was about a group of teenage boy skateboarders as well as the romance between one of them and a girl on a bicycle. The short film garnered the Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film at the 38th Oscar Ceremony (which it lost to Claude Berri's Le Poulet). "I didn’t begrudge UA the thousands they made from the short," Black commented. "It led to 20th Century-Fox giving me the chance to make Pretty Poison, on which I was given fairly free rein." It was Black who decided to cast Perkins in the film: "I saw Tony (Perkins) in Neil Simon's The Star-Spangled Girl on Broadway and thought he’d be ideal. I sent him the script, and he wanted to do it. I then met him for the first time at Joe Allen's after a performance of the play. He had enormous charm and intelligence, the very qualities I wanted to come through in the role he would be playing. I was looking for the young Tony of Friendly Persuasion and Fear Strikes Out, not Psycho, although commentators naturally made the comparison between Norman Bates and the character in Pretty Poison." "Lorenzo Semple Jr.'s screenplay is beautifully worked out, and the director, Noel Black, does a superb job of modulating the film's conflicting elements: the coming-of-age story and the thriller", Charles Taylor said in a New York Times review on the occasion of the film's DVD release, in 2006. He also directed episodes of such other TV series as McCloud, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries and Hawaii Five-O. In 1985, Black was the screenwriter and executive producer of Mischief, another teen sex comedy set in the 1950s. He also directed episodes of the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone. ==Unrealized projects==

The Adventures of Augie March Immediately after Pretty Poison, Black co-wrote, with Fred Segal, a screen adaptation of Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, one of many projects that failed to come to fruition. Psycho IV Towards the end of Anthony Perkins' life, he fought long and hard to get Black to direct Psycho IV (1990), but that too was in vain. ==Personal life and death==

Black was married twice, to Sandra MacPhail and Catherine Cownie. Both marriages ended in divorce. ==Preservation==

The Academy Film Archive has preserved a number of Noel Black's films, including Reflections, The River Boy, and Skaterdater. ==Partial filmography==

• The River Boy (1964) • Skaterdater (1965, Oscar nomination) • ABC Stage 67 (1 episode, 1967) • Trilogy: The American Boy (1968) (TV) • One Life to Live (1968) • Pretty Poison (1968) • Cover Me Babe (1970) • Jennifer on My Mind (1971) • Amy Prentiss (1974) • Quincy M.E. (1 episode, 1976) • Switch (1 episode, 1976) • Kojak (1 episode, 1977) • McCloud (1 episode, 1977) • ''I'm a Fool'' (1977) (TV) • The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (2 episodes, 1977) • ''Mulligan's Stew'' (1 episode, 1977) • Big Hawaii (1 episode, 1977) • The World Beyond (1978) • Mirrors (1978) • Hawaii Five-O (1 episode, 1978) • A Man, a Woman and a Bank (1979) • The Golden Honeymoon (1980) • A Change of Seasons (1980) • The Other Victim (1981) • The Electric Grandmother (1982) • Prime Suspect (1982) • Happy Endings (1983) • Private School (1983) • Quarterback Princess (1983) • Deadly Intentions (1985) • Promises to Keep (1985) • A Time to Triumph (1986) • My Two Loves (1986) (TV) • The Twilight Zone (2 episodes, 1986–1987) • CBS Summer Playhouse (1 episode, 1987) • A Conspiracy of Love (1987) • The Town Bully (1988) • Meet the Munceys (1988) • Dolphin Cove (1989) • Nightmare Classics (1 episode, 1989) • The Baby-Sitters Club (1 episode, 1990) • Over My Dead Body (1 episode, 1991) • The Hollow Boy (1991) • Swans Crossing (1992) ==References==