Ralph Senensky's insights on the history of directing TV shows

Ashar and I have been leisurely, over a few years, making our way through the three seasons of the early 1970s supernatural anthology TV show "Night Gallery" — Rod Serling's followup to "The Twilight Zone." Last night we watched the episode "The Miracle at Camafeo / The Ghost of Sorworth Place," with the latter tale starring Richard Kiley and Jill Ireland, who are pictured above in some beautiful Bava-esque lighting. (The screen grab doesn't do it justice; seek out the blu-ray.)

Typically after watching something, I go down internet rabbit holes to learn more. Both of the segments in this episode were directed by Ralph Senensky. He had a long and remarkable career as a television director — and he's spent the years of his retirement blogging about his memories and insights from that time. Oh, and he's 101 now.¹

Senensky is perhaps best known for directing a dozen episodes of "The Waltons"² and six episodes of the original series of "Star Trek." But his resume of directing credits is a grand tour through the history of television from the early 1960s through the mid 1980s. His credits include episodes of "Dr. Kildare," "Route 66," "The Twilight Zone," "The Fugitive," "The Big Valley," "The Wild Wild West," "The F.B.I.," "Mission Impossible," "Mannix," "The Partridge Family," "James at 16," "Eight Is Enough," "Lou Grant," "Dynasty" and much more.

And he's documented almost all of it. As history, its value is immense.

He wrote a Blogspot blog (same platform as Papergreat) called Ralph's Trek that can be found at ralph-senensky.blogspot.com. And there's Senensky.com, aka Ralph's Cinema Trek, which organizes his past posts and has provided a home for his more recent writing. He's also still active on Facebook. Amazing.

Unsurprisingly, it's Senensky's memories of and association with "Star Trek" that garner him the most attention — he even attended a convention this year. But having just read a handful of his blog posts thus far, I find they're all filled with fascinating detail, wisdom and anecdotes about how television productions were brought to life decades ago. I look forward to reading many more of them.

I'm writing this because I hope that more people discover Senensky's blog posts, and because I hope they will be preserved in book form (or at least through printouts). To paraphrase something I read recently on X, the internet is not forever, and we must aggressively support the archiving of online material we're passionate about.³ Some experts, not alarmists, believe that as much as 80% of global digital content could disappear within the next decade or so.⁴

 I'll close with an excerpt from one of Senensky's posts. It's an amusing anecdote about an episode of "The Waltons" titled "The Gift":

"They let me have a big crane for the Franklyn Canyon shoot. I loved crane shots that boomed down, but cranes were also a time saver when filming on rolling terrain like in the canyon. It was easier to move the crane from setup to setup than rolling the crab dolly over the rough ground. There was a lesson concerning the crane that had been drilled into me from the first time I used one on MGM’s backlot when filming the opening sequence of JOHNNY TEMPLE on DR. KILDARE. When I was checking a setup, seated on the crane in the assistant cameraman’s seat alongside the camera operator, I was warned when it came time to dismount not to do so until the assistant cameraman was ready to take my place. Because of the counterweights if I were to jump off too soon, the camera end of the crane would fly up into the air and act as a catapult that would hurl the camera operator off into space. In my twenty-six years I never lost a camera operator that way."

That's just one of the many, many gems within Senensky's reminiscences. May they live on for future readers and scholars.

Footnotes

1. Fun connection: Another "Night Gallery" we watched in the past week featured Norman Lloyd, who I've mentioned often on Papergreat and lived to age 106.

2. Syndicated columnist Tom Purcell recently wrote a piece about his fond memories of watching "The Waltons" with his family in the 1970s. An excerpt:

"Every Thursday, after dinner, my father and I boarded our Plymouth Fury station wagon and headed to the Del Farm grocery store located in a small suburban plaza one mile from our home. ... He’d buy a box of Del Farm’s freshly baked oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies and a bag of Snyder of Berlin potato chips, onion dip (my mother’s favorite) and a wooden case of Regent soda pop. When we finally pulled the loaded-down station wagon into the garage, everyone in the house was alerted and the massive unloading process began. We usually got everything packed away by 8 p.m., just in time to turn on 'The Waltons.' I’d bring a bowl of ice to the family room, open some bottles of Regent soda pop, pour the Snyder of Berlin chips into a couple of bowls and soon my sisters, parents and I would be enjoying the newest episode of one of our family’s must-see shows."

3. By the way, I'm no longer on X. You can guess why. You can find me, as Papergreat, over on Blue Sky now (@papergreat.bsky.social).

4. I have a hard copy of every Papergreat post through mid-July 2023 and will be catching up with the more recent posts soon.