Susan Lacy

Susan Lacy has been an award-winning producer of prime-time programs on public television for nearly two decades. As creator and executive producer of AMERICAN MASTERS, which was awarded the Prime-time Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series in 1999, 2000 and 2001. Ms. Lacy has been responsible for the production and national broadcast of over 100 documentary biographies on artistic giants who have made a significant impact on American culture. Now going into its 17th season on PBS and distributed throughout the world, AMERICAN MASTERS has been recognized by the industry and television critics as "consistently excellent" and "the best biographical series ever to appear on American television." It has been honored with an unprecedented number of awards. In addition to her role as series Executive Producer, Ms. Lacy recently wrote, directed and co-produced the acclaimed Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note, for which she received a prestigious Director's Guild of America nomination and which has taken 1st prize in several major film festivals. She also produced the Peabody award-winning Paul Simon: Born at the Right Time, produced and directed Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval, and directed Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice, all AMERICAN MASTERS productions.

Ms. Lacy is also the recipient of five Outstanding Non-Fiction Special Prime-Time Emmy Awards for Lillian Gish: The Actor's Life For Me; Broadway's Dreamers: The Legacy of The Group Theater; Unknown Chaplin;, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow;, and Edward R. Murrow: This Reporter. In addition to five Peabody Awards for F. Scott Fitzgerald: Winter Dreams;, John Hammond: From Bessie Smith to Bruce Springsteen;, Unknown Chaplin;, Paul Simon: Born at the Right Time; and Alexander Calder; she has also received 27 Ciné Golden Eagles, 22 Emmy nominations, 5 Peabody awards, one Grammy award and three Oscar nominations. Many individual programs have been seen and honored in important festivals around the world.

Other recent AMERICAN MASTERS productions include Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light; Rediscovering Will Rogers; Tennessee Williams: Orpheus of the American Stage; Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul; Ella Fitzgerald: Something to Live For; , Alfred Hitchcock, & David O. Selznick & The End of Hollywood;, Norman Rockwell: Painting America; The Lives of Lillian Hellman; & Dashiell Hammett. Detective. Writer.; Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light; Isaac Stern: Life's Virtuoso; Alfred Stieglitz -- The Eloquent Eye; and Coming to Light: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian; F. Scott Fitzgerald: Winter Dreams; Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest Sounds; Quincy Jones: In the Pocket; Good Rockin' Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records; Ralph Ellison: An American Journey; and Gene Kelly: Anatomy of a Dancer .

Currently, Ms. Lacy is overseeing the production of AMERICAN MASTERS portraits on the Juilliard School, Joseph Papp, Gore Vidal, Robert Capa, Willie Nelson and Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan. She is also developing projects on Henry Luce, Jackson Pollack, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Joni Mitchell, Norman Lear, The New Yorker, Mary McCarthy, Diana Vreeland, August Wilson, and John Ford, among many others.

Her career in public television began as Deputy Director of Performance Programs at Thirteen/WNET from 1978-1984. She served as Senior Program Executive for the award-winning GREAT PERFORMANCES series and worked with the AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE series as an original founding member and Director of Program Development. Ms. Lacy headed the East Coast office of Robert Redford's Sundance Institute from 1984 to 1987. She was a consulting producer at Time-Life Video during the launch of Time-Warner's new initiatives in original long-form documentary production. In addition, Ms. Lacy has run programs for both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Ms. Lacy is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, the Independent Feature Project, and New York Women in Film and Television. She has a B.A. in American Studies from University of Virginia and an M.A. in American Studies from George Washington University. She was both a Graduate Teaching Fellow and a Smithsonian Fellow, and completed a residency at the American Academy in Rome. In May 1994, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Long Island University. In 1996, she was named Distinguished Alumnus of the Year at the University of Virginia.