Olga Druce(1911-2004)
- Producer
Producer, director and actor, a graduate of Smith College. She later
attended the University of Munich and the University of Berlin, where
she also studied at the Max Reinhardt school and began working in
children's theater, producing and writing operettas and plays for them.
When she returned to the United States, she continued working with
youngsters in New York settlement houses and ran the Harlem
Inter-racial Youth Center for two years. While volunteering in schools
and hospitals, she studied at the Washington School for Psychiatry and
the New School for Social Research, with particular emphasis on the
study of children's problems. She wrote a series of health talks for
prominent physicians, worked for WJZ's Baby Institute for two years (a
program dealing with children's medical and psychiatric problems), was
a consultant on "This Changing World", and wrote "Superman" and "House
of Mystery" for a period. On Broadway she appeared in several plays
including "Judgment Day", 'Time of Your Life," "Eternal Road" and "Moon
Over Mulberry Street." During World War II she was co-director of the
American Theater Wing Committee for Youth in Wartime, and made many
speeches for the USO, bond drives, Red Cross, OWI, and other agencies.
When she took over the Captain Video and His Video Rangers series in
April, 1951, she upgraded the production quality of the programs
many-fold by investing in quality sets and costuming, and hiring a
number of the finest science-fiction writers of the era.
