John Korty, Emmy-Winning ‘Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman’ Director, Dies at 85

Mike Barnes
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John Korty, who directed Cicely Tyson in the landmark telefilm The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and won an Oscar for the documentary Who Are the DeBolts? and Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?, has died. He was 85.

Korty died March 9 at his home in Point Reyes Station in Marin County, California, the Marin Independent Journal reported.

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Korty also helmed Go Ask Alice, a controversial 1971 ABC telefilm about a high school girl caught up in the world of drugs; Alex & the Gypsy (1976), starring Jack Lemmon and Geneviève Bujold; Oliver’s Story (1978), the sequel to Love Story that brought back Ryan O’Neal; and the animated, George Lucas-produced Twice Upon a Time (1983), with voices supplied by Lorenzo Music and others.

Plus, he created shorts for PBS’ Sesame Street and The Electric Company starting in the mid-1970s.

With Korty calling the shots, Tyson in 1974 became the first African American to win a lead actress Emmy when she was recognized for her astonishing turn as a woman who ages from 23 to 110 — from the 1850s to the civil-rights era — in CBS’ The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Korty won an Emmy as well.

The maverick filmmaker received his Oscar (shared with Dan McCann and Warren L. Lockhart) in 1978 and a follow-up Emmy in 1979 for his documentary/information program Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?, about a couple who adopted 14 children, some of whom were disabled war orphans. He spent three years filming the family.

“All the way through we were told by various network people, ‘Oh, the audience doesn’t want to see these handicapped kids,'” Korty said in a 2011 interview.

He followed that up in 1980 with Stepping Out: The Debolts Grow Up.

Born on June 22, 1936, in Lafayette, Indiana, John Van Kleef Korty attended Kirkwood High School in Kirkwood, Missouri, and Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He came to California in the ’60s, and his short film Breaking the Habit, a satiric anti-smoking piece he made for the American Cancer Society, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1965.

He wrote and directed the features The Crazy-Quilt (1966), the Peter Bonerz-starring Funnyman (1967) and Riverrun (1968) as he established in Mill Valley, California, his own film studio, Korty Films, said to be an inspiration for Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.

He said he turned down opportunities to direct The Last Picture Show (1971) and Jaws (1975). In between, he served as second-unit director of photography on Robert Redford’s The Candidate (1972).

After his success on Miss Jane Pittman, “I could have done all kinds of feature films,” he noted. “I was offered all the films about old ladies, all the films that took place in the South, and all the films about Black people. And I said, you know, I’ve done that. I want to do some other things now, thank you very much.”

His later credits included the telefilms Ms. Scrooge (starring Tyson) in 1997 and Oklahoma City: A Survivor’s Story in ’98.

Survivors include his wife, Jane; children Jonathan, David and Gabriel; brother Doug; and sister Nancy.

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