Television Lighting Designer Bill Klages died on Sunday, July 7, 2024. He was 97 years old. He was a pioneer in television lighting and had a career that spanned over six decades. His very long list of credits includes award shows such as the Primetime Emmys, Tonys, Grammys, and Golden Globes, as well as specials for such entertainment luminaries as Barbra Streisand, Bob Hope, Liza Minnelli, Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Working from the earliest days of television in the late 1940s, through the big variety shows of the 1950s and 1960s like The Perry Como Show and specials including Color Me Barbra, and onward to major events like Atlanta Olympic Games, The Grammy Awards, The Tony Awards, The Republican National Convention (Houston 1992, Philadelphia 2000, New York 2004, St. Paul 2008), The Los Angeles Olympics Closing Ceremonies, The Statue of Liberty Celebration, The Country Music Awards, The Emmy Awards, The Kennedy Center Honors, the inaugural galas for Presidents John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush and so much more. His work also includes movies, like working on the live scenes of 2004’s Ray, the Academy award-winning biopic on the life of Ray Charles (Jamie Foxx won the Oscar for Best Actor). He also served as broadcast lighting consultant when the 21,000-seat LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City was opened in 2000.
In all, Klages’ credits list carries more than 300 projects amassed over a 60+-year career that began in the days of live black-and-white television dramas and continued into the 21st century, even working on the broadcast lighting facilities of Joel Osteen’s 16,000-seat Lakewood Church sanctuary in Houston and, lighting for the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas. Those credits have garnered seven Primetime Emmy Awards, for shows like Dance in America: Baryshnikov by Tharp (1985) and the Kennedy Center Honors (1984), and 23 nominations.
Klages intended a career in electronics; he earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master of Science degree from Columbia University, and was a licensed professional engineer. Born in Long Beach, NY, to a salesman father and schoolteacher mother, his first job was in research electronics in Nutley, NJ. NBC was looking for people with advanced engineering degrees for a training program in television. Klages was accepted in November 1948, working as a video maintenance engineer on such series as Your Show of Shows and The Kate Smith Hour. He was then promoted to video engineer, working on Your Hit Parade. His career was interrupted by a summons for a two-year stint in the U.S. Navy, after which he returned to NBC.
He got his chance via his friend Larry Elikann, a cameraman on NBC’s live anthology drama series Playwrights ’56 (who himself would become a celebrated director). He had been pressing Klages to put his vast technical knowledge to better use and recommended him to producer Fred Coe. Klages stayed at NBC until 1970, when he became one of a group of freelance lighting designers working in New York, and then Los Angeles at Imero Fiorentino Associates. He would go on to form his own firm, The Klages Group, in 1983. He worked on many television specials as lighting director, including Merman on Broadway (Ethel Merman), Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and Sills and Burnett at the Met (Beverly Sills and Carol Burnett), in addition to specials he did featuring Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand, Dorothy Hamill, and Olivia Newton-John. He sold the company to the other partners in the mid-1990’s, but continued to work on various projects under the banner of The New Klages Group, consulting on television facilities design as well as lighting. Klages, while continuing to design, also lectured and conducted seminars later in his career.
Over the years Klages was nominated 23 times for the Emmy awards and won seven times. In 2012 Klages was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, and was the first Lighting Designer to be inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, and only the third designer overall, joining Costume Designer Bob Mackie and Production Designer Charles Lisanby. On his induction, he talked a bit about the early days with PLSN:
How did you get into lighting?
I went to work for NBC in November of 1948 as an electrical engineer — I had a Masters’ in electrical engineering. My first duty was technical, but then I became a video engineer because they made more money! [Laughs] I always had an interest in getting a good visual image, which was difficult, and I observed from there that the key was the lighting. Then I went into the Navy for two years, then returned to NBC and the opportunity came up to do a 90-minute live show [Playwright’s ’56] that would be competition to the popular Playhouse 90. It was the first big show I ever lit.
And like that you were a lighting designer?
[Laughs] It was a series of events that could have only occurred back then. A cameraman named Larry Elikann said [to the producers], “He has never lighted anything, but this guy will be the best in the business.” Larry went onto a very successful directing career.
So real on-the-job training then…
I was observing other guys. I knew fairly quickly what it took to make a good picture, I just had to prove it. Everybody was stumbling about looking for a solution back then, because the camera was extremely difficult to deal with. That was the main stumbling block.
What were some of your biggest breaks in the early days?
The first came when I was a video man. I did all the large shows — Your Hit Parade, then Robert Montgomery Presents… I was always at the level so I started lighting at the top! My second was working on Washington Square, then Ernie Kovac Show, and then Perry Como… there were many big breaks just because I was there! The shows kept coming to me.
What was it like, trying to find the tools you needed at that time?
That’s an unfortunate thing to bring up. Theatrical equipment manufacturers presented themselves as TV experts. But I was one of the early guys who wouldn’t accept that. I realized that TV was more like movies [than theater]. So that equipment was needed because that’s what we wanted to copy. I’d go to a film and see how gorgeous it looked, and then looked at how terrible TV looked. Now most of it was the camera itself, but the lighting equipment needed to be better too. Really, the biggest break for television was moving lights, and equipment and tricks that came from the live concert world, which we adapted immediately — but that came much later of course.
What have been some of the biggest technical developments for you as of 2012?
The biggest development was the camera in terms of sensitivity, and that continues today. A consumer camera today has better resolution than what we were using in the 1950s by far. As far as lighting equipment … the control systems, the new lights, that’s all been icing on the cake. But it’s been about the camera’s development.
Talk about the evolution of black and white to color…
In the beginning, the sensitivity problem took a lot of light, and we were always struggling to get a proper exposure level. As cameras developed, it got better … but then we had color, and we had to take a step back before that camera got better. Film guys would make fun of us, and they were right! Nowadays they are on our team, as all of the large cameras are precise tools.
We at PLSN send our sincere condolences to Bill Klage’s family, friends, and colleagues.
