Writer, director, producer, playwright, and author, George Stevens, Jr. dives into 5 generations of Stevens in showbiz, going all the way back to the Civil War, talks about riding shotgun with an Oscar award, working for the Kennedy Administration, starting the AFI, tackling social justice issues in his work, the future of movies and the cinema viewing experience, shares stories with Edward Murrow, JFK, and President Obama, and reflects on leaving a legacy.
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Legacy means a lot of things to a lot of people. To some, it's lasting integrity. It's building and maintaining a history of greatness. It's making an impact on people and community. For others, it's dependable security and assurance in an uncertain time. To us, it's all of that and more. It's a mindset, a brother and sisterhood of hardworking people dedicated to doing the right
Let's talk legacy.
Welcome to Let's Talk Legacy. I'm Gary Michaels, the host of the show. And today we have George Stevens Jr. He's a writer, director, producer, playwright, author, and champion of American film. He's achieved an extraordinary creative legacy, which we're going to speak about today, spanning more than 50 years, enriching the nation's cultural heritage.
So I'm just so excited when I got to know that we were going to have you on the show, George. I got pretty fired up. So welcome to the show. Well, Gary, it's great. And I heard about your show and I'm looking forward to talking with you. Awesome. Awesome. So since we are talking about legacy, let's just go right into that.
Obviously, with your career and everything you've done, legacy is important to you. And so what does legacy mean to you?
Legacy is just so much a part of my life. You know, my memoir, My Place in the Sun, Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood in Washington, I wrote it and it really became all about legacy because my father was one of the great movie directors who left when I was 11 for three years to go to World War II in Europe. He was a
And as I wrote my memoir, you know, I look back and I realize that our family really is about legacy. My great-grandmother, Georgia Woodthorpe, was an actress in San Francisco around the time of the Civil War. And she went on to become a star. And Edwin Booth was the greatest Hamlet, America's greatest Hamlet, the Booth Theater in New York. Nope. after him.
And Georgia Woodthorpe was the youngest Ophelia to Edwin Booth's Hamlet. And Georgia started five generations of Stevens's in show business. Her daughter, Georgie Cooper, became an actress. and married an actor named Lander Stevens, and my father was their child, and he grew up around the theater.
His mother gave him a box brownie camera when he was nine years old, and led him to become one of the greatest movie directors of all time, and he also photographed World War II. with a team of cameramen. And my mother's mother, Alice Howell, was a silent film star. She was in Charlie Chaplin's first five pictures. Then she went on to make a hundred movies of her own.
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