Pioneering Female TV Director Frances Buss Buch Has Died

Frances Buss Buch, the first woman director at CBS, died at the age of 92 on January 19. She was an on-camera assistant on the very first TV game show— CBS Television Quiz— and also assisted with Richard Hubbell's CBS newscast, which included the announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Among Frances Buss Buch's TV credits as a director were: game show The Missus' Goes-A-Shopping, interview show Vanity Fair (also producer), cooking show To the Queen's Taste with Dione Lucas (also producer), and children's show The Whistling Wizard. She was a producer on the talk show Mike and Buff, featuring then husband-and-wife team Mike Wallace and Buff Cobb. She is also credited as a director who contributed to the first commercial TV show that was broadcast in color— the June 25, 1951 special Premiere. Her Archive of American Television interview was conducted on June 16, 2005.



Interview description:
Frances Buss Buch was interviewed for two hours plus in Hendersonville, NC. She described how a two-week summer job at CBS led to an over decade-long association with the network, and her historic role as CBS’ very first female director. She detailed her work at CBS before and after broadcasting was interrupted during World War II. She talked about her assistance creating maps for the news program on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. She described several of the earliest commercial broadcasts on CBS which featured her on-camera, including The Country Dance, a monthly dance program by the American Country Dance Society; Children’s Story, in which a story was read to a child, “illustrated” by an artist on camera; and the CBS Television Quiz, which featured such games as “Peanuts in the Bottle” in which a contestant attempted to spoon peanuts into an empty milk bottle that they held on their head. She talked about some of her earliest directorial efforts such as Sorry Wrong Number, an adaptation of the famed radio show. Buch talked about several of the key creative talent at CBS at the time including Worthington Miner and Gilbert Seldes. She spoke in great detail about other early CBS series including The Missus Goes A-Shopping, To the Queen’s Taste with Dione Lucas, The Whistling Wizard, and Mike and Buff. She also talked about CBS’ color experimentation and her role as a director with the first color broadcast for the network on June 25, 1951. She also discussed "Telecolor Clinics," a series of television documentaries done for the American Cancer Society. The interview was conducted by Karen Herman on June 16, 2005.