Home > Ted Kotcheff

After graduating in English Literature from the University of Toronto, Kotcheff began his television career at the age of twenty-four when he joined the staff of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with television still very much in its infancy in the country. Kotcheff was the youngest director on the staff of the CBC, where he worked for two years before in 1958 leaving Canada to live and work in the United Kingdom.

He was possibly inspired by his compatriot Sydney Newman, who had been the Director of Drama at the CBC and had moved across to the UK to take up a similar position at ABC Television, one of the local franchise holders of the ITVThis article is about the British television network. ITV (or iTV) can also mean interactive television. Independent Television (ITV is the name given to the original network of British commercial television broadcasters, set up to provide competition to network who also produced much of the nationally-networked programming for the channel. At the ABC, Newman oversaw as producer the popular Armchair TheatreArmchair Theatre was a British television drama anthology series, which ran on the ITV network from 1956 until 1969 in its original form, and was intermittently resurrected at various points during the 1970s. It was produced initially by ABC Television, a anthology drama programme, and he employed Kotcheff as a director on this series, for which he directed several plays between 1958 and 1960Events January-February January 1 Independence of Cameroon January 9 Aswan High Dam construction begins in Egypt January 11 Chad declares its independence. January 14 Ralph Chubb, the gay poet and printer, dies at Fair Oak Cottage in Hampshire. January 23.

Kotcheff was responsible for helming some of the best-remembered instalments in the Armchair Theatre strand, although for very different reasons. Underground, transmitted on November 28November 28 is the 332nd day (333rd on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 33 days remaining. Events 1095 On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appointed bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulous 1958 saw him having to cope with one of his actors, Gareth Jones , dying while in make-up between two of his scenes. As the play was being transmitted live, Kotcheff had to hastily improvise a way around the loss of one of his main cast, with Newman telling him to "shoot it like a football match", following whatever action happened on set with the improvising surviving cast members. More successfully, Kotcheff also directed the following year's No Trams to Lime Street by WelshFor alternate meanings, see Wales (disambiguation Wales ( Welsh: Cymru pronounced /"k@mrI/ SAMPA, km IPA, 'Kumree' approximate pronunciation) is one of the four nations comprising the United Kingdom (the other three being England, Scotland and Northern Ir playwright Alun Owen , who later went on to write The Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night in 1964.

As well as directing for Armchair Theatre during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Kotcheff also directed several productions for the theatre, and in 1962 directed his first feature film, Tiara Tahiti. He went on to direct other features during the decade, including Life at the Top ( 1965) and Two Gentlemen Sharing ( 1969).

In 1971 he directed the Australian film Outback, which won much acclaim and was the Australian entry at the Cannes Film Festival. The same year he returned to television, directing the Play for Today production Edna, The Inebriate Woman for the BBC, which won him a BAFTA Television Award for Best Director. In 2000, the play was voted one of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century in a poll of industry professionals conducted by the British Film Institute.

In 1972 he returned home to Canada, where he directed several films including the adaptation of his friend and one-time roommate Mordecai Richler's novel The Appenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. He directed many other films throughout the 1970s and 80s, most in the United States, with perhaps the best-known being the Sylvester Stallone feature First Blood in 1982.

In the 1990s he returned to directing for television, working on various American series such as The Red Shoe Diaries and .