Producer. Herbert Brodkin a television and film producer most noted for his work on the silver screen. Brodkin's most notable credits are on "The Alcoa Hour", "Goodyear Television Playhouse", "Studio One" and "Playhouse 90". Brodkin was also the executive producer of "The Defenders" starring E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed. Brodkin was born on November 9, 1912 in New York City. He was the youngest of six children born to Russian immigrants. He graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 1940. Brodkin started his show business career as a scenic designer for the Broadway drama "O'Daniel" (1947). His other Broadway credits included "The Silver Whistle", (1948), "Texas, Li'l Darlin", (1949), and "Something About a Soldier", (1962). Brodkin came to television in 1950, working as a set designer for CBS. After three years he was handling the production chores for no less than three anthology dramas. Brodkin continued to work in the anthology format during what has been generally termed the "Golden Age of Television." These dramas, such as "Playhouse 90" and "Westinghouse Studio One", were splendid vehicles for Brodkin's broad and varied theatrical experience. One telecast in particular would prove fortuitous for Brodkin and others. "The Defender", (February 28 and March 4, 1957) starring Ralph Bellamy and William Shatner would serve as a model for one of Brodkin's cornerstone filmed series. When the telefilm began to flourish in the 1950s and most filmed production came from Hollywood, Brodkin remained in New York although he, too, changed from the live format to film. Brodkin brought a great deal of technical expertise to telefilm production, for he had made dozens of films for the Army Signal Corps. His first series, "Brenner", focused on a father/son team of cops and was scheduled sporadically by CBS. But Brodkin's next series was the landmark, "The Defenders". The series was based on the "Studio One" show and featured E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed as a father/son team of lawyers. The "Brodkin approach" of treating controversial issues with intelligence and dispassion, developed during the live years, translated well to the filmed medium of television. Brodkin had always held the script in the highest esteem and consistently used writers of excellence--Ernest Kinoy, Robert Crean, and Reginald Rose. Though television was and is a medium that appeals largely to the emotions, Brodkin's productions consistently asked the viewer to think, to consider, and to weigh. Issues considered taboo, issues such as abortion, euthanasia, racial prejudice, and blacklisting, were familiar ground to Brodkin. CBS constantly battled affiliates that refused to clear "The Defenders" and the network endured some financial hardship due to advertiser pull-out from the series. Nevertheless, the hallmark of every Herbert Brodkin production was a thoughtful and even-handed examination of an issue in a dramatic context. "The Defenders" enjoyed a four-year run in which it garnered every major award for television drama. In 1965, Brodkin shifted his attention away from his Plautus Productions and to his newly created Titus Productions (formed with producer Robert Berger), under whose banner some of his most memorable dramatic specials were produced. 1965 was also the year of one of Brodkin's more metaphorical productions. "Coronet Blue" was a short series run by CBS in the summer of 1967. It chronicled amnesiac Michael Alden's search for his identity while being pursued by a shadowy band of assailants. The only clue to Alden's identity was the cryptic phrase, "coronet blue". In 1981, Titus Productions was acquired by the Taft Entertainment Company. Both Brodkin and Berger remained to produce dramatic specials for Taft. Notable among those specials was "Skokie", starring Danny Kaye as a Holocaust survivor who fights to keep a group of neo-Nazis from marching in Skokie, Illinois, and the HBO special "Sakharov", which featured Jason Robards and Glenda Jackson as Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner. Working right up until the end, Brodkin's near 50 year career ended with his death from an aneurysm at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, October 29, 1990 at the age of 77. Brodkin was posthumously inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1999.