History
The PGA began as two separate organizations, with the Screen Producers Guild being formed in 1950. Its first president was William Perlberg. In 1957, television producers followed suit, forming the Television Producers Guild, with Ben Brady as its first president. These merged in 1962 to form the PGA under legendary producer Walter Mirisch. Subsequent Presidents of the PGA have included Stanley Rubin, Leonard Stern, Kathleen Kennedy and Marshall Herskovitz.
The Golden Laurel Awards (subsequently renamed the Producers Guild of America Award aka the PGA Award) were first held in 1990, establishing the Guild awards as one of the bellwethers for the Academy Awards. 11 of the 16 winners of the PGA's Darryl F. Zanuck Award have gone on to win the Oscar for best feature.
The PGA's awards show was originally established in 1990 as the Golden Laurel Awards, created by PGA Treasurer Joel Freeman, Diane Robison, Terrie Frankel, Bernard Wiesen and Charles FitzSimons with the support of Guild President Leonard Stern, in order to honor the visionaries who produce and execute motion picture and television product. The ceremony has been hosted each year by celebrity host/presenters, including Ronald Reagan, Ted Turner, Garry Marshall, Robert Guillaume, Nick Clooney, Jack Lemmon, James Earl Jones, Grant Tinker, Michael Douglas, Walter Matthau, Shirley MacLaine, and Marlo Thomas, among others.
In 2001, the PGA merged with the American Association of Producers (AAP), enabling the Guild to represent all members of the producing team. Since that time, the Guild has been composed of three Councils: The Producers Council (representing producers, executive producers and co-producers), the AP Council (representing associate producers, production managers, production supervisors, segment and field producers, production coordinators, visual effects producers and post-production staff) and the New Media Council.
In 2001 producers John Schwally and Nelle Nugent established the PGA East Regional Chapter of the Guild, located in New York and servicing Guild members based on the East Coast. Since 2008 John Hadity has served as President of the region.
The PGA formed its New Media Council in 2002, in order to better represent producers working in emerging media such as DVDs, broadband and mobile entertainment, interactive television and console games.
Read more about this topic: Producers Guild Of America
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“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)