Robert L. Bendick

Robert L. (Bob) Bendick, a pioneer in television and film production, died on June 22, 2008 at his home in Guildford, Connecticut. He was 91 years old.

Born in New York City in 1917, Mr. Bendick attended the White School of Photography and began his media career as a still photographer. Between 1940 and 1942 he was a member of the first CBS Television camera crew in pre-air development and then in the first commercially aired programming.

During World War II, he enlisted in the Army Air Force and served as a combat photographer with the 10th Air Force in the China-Burma-India Theater. Attaining the rank of Captain, he received the Bronze Star and Air Medals for bravery in combat.

Following the War, he re-joined CBS News as a cameraman and, then, as a Director and Producer of early television programming including coverage of the 1948 and 1952 political conventions, the first televised major league baseball games, the first broadcasts from the White House and Congress, and numerous news and entertainment specials. In this work, he and his colleagues were inventing the medium that would so profoundly shape American culture.

In 1952 and 1953 Mr. Bendick was Co-Producer/Director of This Is Cinerama and, then, Director of Cinerama Holiday. As in his work at CBS, he was a leader in shaping a new form of entertainment that created extensive press and public interest in the early 1950s. Cinerama ushered in an era of wide-screen movies.

From Cinerama, he went to the NBC Network where he was Producer of The Today Show for three years during a time when the show adopted some of the features that characterize its production today such as broadcasts from Rockefeller Plaza and from off-site venues that required technological innovation in the pre-satellite era. He went on from Today to produce episodes of Wide, Wide World, one of which (The American West) was nominated for the Emmy for Best Television Show in 1955.

In subsequent years he produced a wide range of television documentaries for NBC, ABC and the early PBS Network including many segments of the popular American Sportsman show on ABC. He shared an Emmy Award in 1971 for the PBS show, The Great American Dream Machine.

In 1975 he formed a production company with his wife, Jeanne Bendick, a writer and illustrator of more than one-hundred children’s science books. Over many years, they produced children’s television programming, science films and science books for classroom and commercial use.

And, in the early days of cable television, he consulted on the creation of cable networks with Michael Dann, another media pioneer, including QUBE, the first interactive TV channel.

He was a Governor of The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and served on various awards committees for the Academy. Throughout his career, Bob Bendick was an outspoken advocate of the power of television to inform the public in the public interest. He was, as well, a media innovator who often conceived of how new approaches to electronic media provide entertainment and serve society well before they were ready for prime time.

He his survived by his beloved wife of 67 years, two children, Karen Watson Holton of Lexington, MA and Robert Bendick, Jr. of Winter Park Florida, five grandchildren, and one great grandchild.

A memorial service will be held later this summer in Guilford, Connecticut where the Bendicks have lived for the last 26 years. Memorial contributions in lieu of flowers can be sent to the Connecticut Hospice. Arrangements are being made by Guilford Funeral Home.