George Santoro

George Santoro
Role:	Vice President, MCA/Universal Television
BSG Universe:	Original Series
Date of Birth:	September 14, 1913
Date of Death:	August 27, 1983
Age at Death:	69
Nationality:	USA
[{{{site}}} Official Site]
IMDb profile

George Joseph Santoro (14 September 1913― 27 August 1983) was the Vice President at Universal Television circa 1970s CE. Richard A. Colla credits Santoro with bringing him into the fold with the production of the Original Series' "Saga of a Star World".

Personal Life

Born in Paterson, New Jersey to Elise Catherine Rood and George Santoro, George Joseph Santoro later attended Fordham University in New York from 1930 to 1933. During his time there, he participated in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps rifle team, and was noted for his highest score of an April 22, 1932 match.

During World War II, from 1942 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps with the First Motion Picture Unit.

In 1965, he married Marie Joan Santoro neé Gabelic.

He died in 1983 and was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, U.S.A. His wife, Marie Joan, would pass some 10 years later, and be interred in the same facility.

Hollywood Career

His career began in 1934 at 20th Century-Fox studios in Hollywood, where he started as a prop man. He worked there until 1939.

From 1939 to 1942, Santoro was with Republic Pictures Corp. studios in North Hollywood. He spent some 20 years at Republic Pictures in total.

Santoro during his stint in the U.S. Army Air Corps circa 1942-45 CE.

After his military service, he returned to Republic studios from 1946 to 1956. During his time at Republic, the studio was known for turning out around 50 feature films a year on budgets far less than $1 million, which was standard operating procedure. They produced B-stuff and double-bill fillers like Deadline Alley, Magic Fire, Lay that Rifle Down, and Mystery of the Black Jungle in July 1955. When television emerged, Republic also began making content for that medium. Santoro and his colleagues at Republic were involved in pumping out fast half-hours such as Stories of the Century, Commando Cody, and The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu, which they produced in two days on a budget of $12,500 USD per episode, a significant contrast to the $80,000 USD-per-half-hour budgets and six-day shooting schedules of 1972.

From 1956 to 1958, he served as a production manager for Republic studios and its TV production arm, Studio City Television Productions Inc.

In 1958, Revue Productions, then the syndication production arm of MCA Inc., took over Republic's television production operations, and George Santoro joined them. As unit production manager for Revue Productions-MCA-TV in North Hollywood from 1958 to 1965, Santoro worked on series like State Trooper and Mike Hammer, often shifting between projects, spending two days a week on each. The production techniques used were similar to those for low-budget feature films or serials, leveraging the expertise of crews from Republic and Universal who had been responsible for as many as 80 features a year. Santoro remembered working out of the Paramount Gower lot in Hollywood during this time.

He then had a brief stint as an executive producer for ABC-TV from 1965 to 1966.

From 1966 onward, George Santoro was a production executive for Universal Television, primarily associated with the World Premiere project. He was named Vice President of Universal TV in 1969, and tasked with the making of World Premiere TV movies for NBC. These productions operated under strict boundary lines, with budgets around the $1 million USD mark and shooting schedules of 24 days at most. His philosophy, born from his experience at Republic, emphasized accepting a job for what it was and working within rules to produce the best possible show.

Santoro joined the movies-for-TV project in 1966, two years after it had initially been tried as Project 120. World Premiere was a natural outgrowth of this experience, with Dragnet 1967 being the first produced in February 1966, and Fame is the Name of the Game the first to air on November 26, 1966. Significantly, both served as pilots for subsequent series. Over five years, a total of 82 World Premiere features were produced or were in production for NBC-TV, with 15 spinning off into series.

Santoro was also briefly involved as an associate producer for Paul Newman's $4 million theatrical picture Winning.

The impact of the World Premiere project surprised even Santoro. Audience acceptance of World Premiere led to other studios and networks, such as Warner Bros. Television, joining the act and making features for World Premiere (a title Universal did not own). Santoro's co-workers, Richard Irving and Frank Price, also supervised 90-minute movie productions for ABC-TV on the same Universal lot. This would culminate into his work overseeing Glen A. Larson's movie-of-the-week, Battlestar Galactica, which became the series' pilot/theatrical production "Saga of a Star World."