Kirk Browning

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Kirk Browning (March 28, 1921 – February 10, 2008) was an American television director and producer who worked on hundreds of programs, including 185 Live from Lincoln Center broadcasts.

He was born in New York City. Browning left Cornell University after only a month and moved to Waco, Texas to work as a newspaper reporter. He was rejected by the U.S. Army in World War II because of a childhood injury, so he served as an ambulance driver in England and France. After the war, he became a chicken farmer in Ridgefield, Connecticut, until a customer offered him a job in NBC’s music library. That job led him to direct live performances by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, and he soon became stage manager and then director of NBC’s opera company.

Browning’s career included many landmark productions. He directed the television premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951), Frank Sinatra’s first TV special (1957), and numerous Hallmark Hall of Fame programs (1951–1958). He also contributed to Live from the Met and PBS’s Great Performances, and directed TV adaptations of plays such as The Taming of the Shrew, Fifth of July, Our Town, Death of a Salesman, and others. He earned a Directors Guild of America nomination for Outstanding Directing – Television Film for Death of a Salesman.

Awards supported his influence: two Primetime Emmy Awards (1987 for Goya with Plácido Domingo and 1988 for Turandot, both on PBS); two Daytime Emmy Awards (1973 for The CBS Festival of Lively Arts for Young People and 1979 for La Gioconda). He also received two Christopher Awards and a Peabody Award.

Browning died of a heart attack in New York City in 2008 at the age of 86.