Council Biography

On the day Harve Bennett was born, his mother, a by-line reporter for the Chicago Times, sent a telegram to her City Editor: "Have a new staff writer for you." Fifteen years later, her son was writing a daily column for the Times. Nepotism?

No.

At the age of 10, young Bennett had become a regular on the weekly NBC radio show Quiz Kids. By 15, he had established the record for appearances on that program (212). He had become a national celebrity, hobnobbed with the greats (Harry Truman, Jack Benny, Elizabeth Taylor), and was in show business for good.

Moving to California to start high school, Mr. Bennett attended UCLA, where his classmates included Carol Burnett, Mike Connors, and James Dean. He graduated with a major in Motion Pictures and later became the founding president of the UCLA

Theater, Film and Television Alumni Association.

After service in the U.S. Army, Mr. Bennett joined CBS-TV in New York and soon became their youngest producer of variety, news and remote specials. He was Johnny Carson's first talk show producer, and produced the CBS coverage of the Miss America Pageant for three years.

Returning to Los Angeles in 1963, he joined ABC-TV as the director of program development. Within four years he had become the West CoastÕs head of programming, part of the young management team (Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Leonard Goldberg) that took ABC to the top. During his tenure, Bennett helped develop such ABC shows as The Fugitive, Peyton Place, Batman, Twelve OÕClock High, Bewitched, and, significantly, Mod Squad. He left ABC to become writer/producer of that show for Thomas-Spelling Productions.

During his three years on Mod Squad, Bennett was twice nominated by the Writer's Guild of America for the best hour script. The show received multiple Emmy nominations and is still remembered as one of the first hour-long dramas to address the social issues of its turbulent time.

In 1971, Harve Bennett began a seven-year association with MCA-Universal, which resulted in a string of groundbreaking programs: The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, The Invisible Man and The Gemini Man. He also did 15 movies of the week and the three-hour NBC drama, Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Shepard Story, with George Peppard. Most significantly, he developed and produced the first mini-series, Rich Man, Poor Man, which won 14 Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe, and made Nick Nolte a star.

In 1977, Mr. Bennett partnered in Bennett/Katleman Productions at Columbia, producing 61 hours of network programming in three years. This included Salvage with Andy Griffith for ABC and the From Here to Eternity mini-series and series for NBC, which starred Natalie Wood, Bill Devane, Barbara Hershey, Don Johnson and another Bennett discovery, Kim Basinger.

In 1980, he began a 10-year relationship with Paramount, which resulted in his writing and producing the feature pictures Star Trek II, III, IV, and V. These highly successful films earned over a billion dollars, revived the Trek franchise and made sequels a way of life in Hollywood.

Simultaneously, Bennett remained active in TV, producing two award-winning mini-series, The Jesse Owens Story and A Woman Called Golda with Ingrid Bergman. Golda won an Emmy Award for Bennett, the first non-network dramatic special to be so honored.

In the Õ90s, Bennett found expression for his love of flying, writing Crash Landing: The Story of Flight 232, ABC's highest-rated movie of the week for that decade. He then joined forces with Warners to create and produce two years of Time Trax, a series for WB first-run syndication.

Then came the invitation from "the dream team" to develop Invasion America, a concept created by Steven Spielberg. This landmark series was the first prime-time animated mini-series, a Dreamworks SKG Production, co-executive-produced by Spielberg and Bennett for the WB network. It aired in June of 1998.

In private life, Mr. Bennett has four children. He is a private pilot with 2000 hours of flight time, and describes himself as a fiercely competitive tennis player.

In addition to his UCLA alumni and teaching activities, Mr. Bennett has maintained a continuing relationship with the military. He served eight years as California's civilian aide to the secretary of the U.S. Army, and is on the Board of Directors of Veteran's Park, a citizenÕs group protecting the Los Angeles National Cemetery. For his five-year participation on the National Committee to Commemorate the 50^th Anniversary of World War II, Mr. Bennett was awarded the Department of Defense's second highest civilian decoration.

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