Barbara Schultz

Barbara Ann Schultz (February 4, 1927 – September 2, 2019) was an American stage performer, television producer, and director. Born in Manhattan and raised in New Jersey, she was the daughter of a homemaker mother and an attorney father. She earned a degree in English studies from Barnard College in 1948, where she first pursued acting through student productions.

Schultz made her Broadway debut in 1952 in a production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, appearing in a bit part. She subsequently moved away from performing and into production work during the first Golden Age of Television. Her early career included a position as assistant story editor at Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, the production company founded by Burt Lancaster. She then spent five years as a story editor at David Susskind's Talent Associates, contributing to CBS series including The Defenders and The Trials of O'Brien. From there she transitioned into an assistant producer role at Armstrong Circle Theatre before rising to executive story editor and eventually executive producer of CBS Playhouse. Her work at CBS also extended to children's programming, where she produced CBS Children's Hour and a reboot of the educational series You Are There.

In 1974, Schultz joined KCET, a Los Angeles-based PBS member station, as executive producer and artistic director of the anthology drama series Visions, which ran from 1976 to 1980. The series presented a weekly feature-length dramatic film written by screenwriters with no prior television experience. Screenwriter Jean Shepherd, who wrote The Phantom of the Open Hearth for the series, noted that Schultz gave writers complete creative freedom. Critic Michael J. Arlen, writing in The New Yorker, identified Schultz as the program's primary artistic director and creative force. In 1979, her contributions to the industry were recognized with two honors: the Crystal Award from Women in Film and Television and the Evelyn F. Burkey Award from the Writers Guild of America, East, presented at the 31st Writers Guild of America Awards.

Following the conclusion of Visions, Schultz directed episodes of sitcoms including Family Ties and Diff'rent Strokes, and also directed theatrical productions for the Los Angeles chapter of the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Her longtime collaborator Sandra Schulberg noted that the industry proved unreceptive to a woman director of her age, and directing work diminished over time. In 2006, the Paley Center for Media named Schultz among the honorees of its initiative She Made It: Women Creating Television and Radio, adding works from her career to its permanent collections. Two of her productions, J.T. from CBS Playhouse and The Gold Watch from Visions, were screened at the Billy Wilder Theater as part of the 2017 UCLA Festival of Preservation. Additional works from her career are preserved in the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Schultz has been cited as a pioneering figure for women in the American television industry, which during her early career discouraged women from holding executive-level production roles. Her name has been mentioned alongside contemporaries including Jacqueline Babbin, Frances Buss Buch, Ida Lupino, and Lela Swift. She died on September 2, 2019, at her Manhattan home from complications from heart disease.