Winning an Emmy in 1966 was Sydney Pollack's ticket out of television. He never worked in the medium again. Pollack, then 32, was part a generation itching to get into film that learned its trade in TV, instead of through directing B-movies.
Pollack's win came from an episode of NBC's Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, the last of TV's dramatic anthologies that flourished in the 1950s.
While the idea of having a past-his-prime comic introducing serious dramas seems odd, the show drew big names. (Hope earned $20,000 an episode, or $200,000 today.) Among the stars of episodes that ranged from police dramas to Westerns and musicals were Shelley Winters and Robert Wagner.
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