From Don Hallock: Many extraordinarily-gifted figures and luminaries of the day — in the arts, science, politics and education — found their ways into the halls and studios of the original WGBH-TV/FM studios at 84 Massachusetts Avenue.
Dave Davis
A stranger in a strange land
From Fred Barzyk: Bill insisted I try to get into the scholarship program. You studied for your graduate degree at Boston University and worked three days a week at the Educational Television station. Free tuition and you got $600 to live a year in Boston!
Remembering the original WGBH
From Art Singer: Fifty one years ago this past September, on several late afternoons a week, I would take the twenty minute walk from BU across the Charles to the station’s studios on the MIT campus for a night’s work.
Dave Davis, 81, WGBH Producer, Director, Manager
From Fred Barzyk
At the age of 81 Dave passed away on May 23, 2007, in the kitchen of his home in Guyana. He and his wife Joyce had been retired and playing Jazz around the islands since 1993.
From WGBH QuickNooz (by permission) — 8/20/2007
Sad news from the Caribbean: Former WGBH Station Manager David MacFarland Davis passed away 5/23 in his home in Guyana at 81. Dave and his wife Joyce had been retired and playing jazz around the islands since 1993.
A tribute to Dave Davis
From Don Hallock
As I remember, a 30 year old Dave Davis came to us at WGBH-TV from the University of North Carolina campus TV in 1957. That was the same year I, at 19, began in the scene shop as assistant to Peter Prodan.
Dave was a musician and veteran television Producer-Director. He succeeded John “Rocky” Coe as Production Manager, as I recall, and first occupied a tiny cubicle at the far end of the upstairs TV production office area where there was, quite appropriately, a little window looking down into Studio-A.
3….2….1….Take! (1950s)
From an Anonymous Contributor
One of the first things Dave Davis undertook when he came from the University of North Carolina in 1956 as production manager, was to begin revamping our rather sloppy production procedures. Dave was a man who (to put it mildly) valued precision.
Irritating as it seemed at the time to us (relative neophytes), his efforts were all to the good — even, in fact, critical to much of the eventual success of WGBH as a production organization. The standard-setting quality of the Boston Symphony broadcasts, and WGBH’s other music programming, was a direct result of Dave’s efforts.
Dave Davis’ “Creativity” Memo (1958)
Click on the images to see the original memo. Read the text, below.
40 years with ‘GBH
My first visit to WGBH was in the fall of 1955, just after TV had gone on the air at 84 Mass Ave. in Cambridge. I was at work developing a TV master plan for the University of Connecticut at the time, and wanted a tour of one of the few (12) “educational” stations on the air.