Steve Binder

• 1. Introduction

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  Steve Binder was born on the 12th of December, 1932, and by the time most people his age were still figuring out their careers, he was already steering some of American television's most consequential moments from behind the camera. In his early twenties, he was producing and directing music programs that the industry had never quite seen before - shows with racially and ethnically diverse casts, featuring a range of musical styles that challenged the cautious habits of broadcast television.

  His name is attached to a set of productions that could hardly be more different from one another: a concert film now preserved by the Library of Congress, a comeback special that rescued one of the biggest careers in pop music history, a prime-time CBS special that became a punchline, and a live outdoor concert interrupted by a thunderstorm. How one director ends up in all those rooms is a story about stubbornness, honesty, and a consistent willingness to say no to powerful people who expected a yes.

  The question worth asking is what connects these wildly different productions - and why the moments that define Binder's career almost never happened the way anyone planned.

• 2. A Touch That Changed Television

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  In 1968, NBC executives invited Petula Clark to host her own special. Clark had already appeared on the network's music program Hullabaloo, and the offer seemed like a natural next step. Binder was working at NBC at the time and took the directing assignment.

  During the taping, Clark was performing a duet called "On the Path of Glory" with guest Harry Belafonte. At one moment during the song, she touched his arm. The advertising manager for the show's sponsor - the Plymouth division of Chrysler - saw the footage and was alarmed. His name was Doyle Lott, and he insisted the moment be cut and replaced with a different take. His reasoning was that the brief physical contact between a white woman and a Black man would offend viewers in the American South, where racial mixing remained a deeply charged issue.

  Binder, Clark, and her husband and producer refused outright. Rather than negotiate, they destroyed all other takes of the song, leaving NBC with no alternative footage to substitute. The network aired the program on the 2nd of April, 1968, with the touch intact. It drew high ratings and critical acclaim. Lott blamed fatigue for his objection; Belafonte rejected that explanation publicly. Chrysler subsequently relieved Lott of his duties.

  The broadcast is documented as the first time a man and a woman of different races exchanged physical contact on American television. That fact alone makes the special historically significant, but what made it possible was a director willing to eliminate any other option.

• 3. Rescuing Elvis

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  NBC executive Bob Finkel was looking for a producer and director for a television special to be called Singer Presents... Elvis. Finkel had heard about the Petula Clark controversy and concluded that Binder's willingness to push back against network pressure was exactly what the project needed.

  Binder initially declined the offer. His partner Bones Howe, who had previously engineered a Presley album, overheard the phone call and urged him to at least agree to meet the singer. Binder went. When Elvis asked him directly where he thought his career stood, Binder told him: "I think it's in the toilet." That candor apparently impressed Presley rather than offending him.

  Colonel Tom Parker, Presley's manager, had a specific vision for the special: Elvis in a tuxedo, crooning "Silent Night" to a room of cameramen. Binder had a different idea. He pushed back against Parker repeatedly, reuniting Presley with guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer DJ Fontana - musicians from his earliest recordings. He had Presley filmed in informal sessions in front of a live studio audience, wearing a black leather outfit designed to recall the raw energy of his work in the 1950s.

  One piece of stagecraft helped resolve any remaining reluctance Presley had. Binder took him out onto the street and showed him that almost no-one recognized him. Whatever doubts Presley carried about his relevance were laid out plainly in that moment. According to author Samuel Roy, Binder also tried to warn Presley about the people in his inner circle, but the singer was not receptive.

  Parker's response to Binder's defiance was to effectively cut him off: according to the source, Parker arranged for Graceland's secretaries to stop putting Binder's calls through. In 2008, for the special's 40th anniversary, Binder published his memoir of that production, titled "'68 At 40: Retrospective."

• 4. The T.A.M.I. Show

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  In 1964, Binder directed a concert film called the T.A.M.I. Show. Decades after the cameras rolled, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2006, citing it as culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant. That designation places it alongside a small fraction of American films deemed worthy of permanent protection.

• 5. The Holiday Special and Diana Ross

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  In 1978, CBS aired a two-hour prime-time special combining the Star Wars universe with the format of a traditional television variety show. Binder directed it. The original cast of Star Wars appeared alongside actors including Art Carney and Bea Arthur. The Star Wars Holiday Special has since accumulated a formidable reputation for failure. David Hofstede, author of What Were They Thinking?: The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, ranked it at number one on that list and called it "the worst two hours of television ever."

  Binder also directed Diana Ross Live in Central Park, a concert that took an unexpected turn when a torrential thunderstorm passed through just minutes into Ross's first set. The outdoor setting and the weather left the production with circumstances no director could have planned for.

  Those two productions sit at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum - one derided as the low point of a beloved franchise, the other a live event overtaken by nature. What they share is that Binder was in the director's chair for both.

• 6. Legacy on Screen

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  Binder's influence has been recognized through fiction as much as through archival preservation. In the 2005 CBS television miniseries Elvis, actor Jack Noseworthy portrayed him. Dacre Montgomery played Binder in the 2022 film biography of Elvis Presley, reaching a new generation of viewers who might not have known his name.

  In 2023, a documentary titled Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback was released on Paramount Plus. Its focus was primarily on Binder's own experience producing the 1968 comeback special - a production that, more than five decades later, continues to generate its own retrospective genre. Binder has also discussed his career in a series of podcast appearances stretching from 2016 through at least 2020, including appearances on The Gilbert Gottfried Amazing Colossal Podcast in November 2016 and The Carson Podcast in November 2020.