Dency Nelson, who lives in Hermosa Beach, was introduced by Roger Schamp, who has known him for 10 years as being knowledgeable about environmental issues.  In February this year, Roger found out from a front-page Los Angeles Times article that Dency Nelson, who hadn’t discussed his job with Roger, was retiring from a career of several decades as a Stage Manager for television shows.
 
 
Dency grew up in northern California, where he was an avid television watcher and had dreams of becoming an actor.  After graduating from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in theater, he looked for an entry-level job in entertainment, starting with picking up and delivering studio prints.  Eventually he became a production assistant.
 
His first major TV job was with the Merv Griffin Show in New York, where he met many prominent people in the entertainment business.  He did extra work for other shows, including the 1970s soap opera parody “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and “Saturday Night Live”, and was accepted at New York University for an MFA program.  Before beginning that, he got on camera with the original AM David Letterman Show, and became MTV’s first Stage Manager in New York in 1981, qualifying him to join the Directors Guild.
 
He enjoyed this kind of work, and decided to move back to California to work on variety and specialty shows.  During the last 30 years he has been a Stage Manager for many award and event shows including the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Kennedy Center Honors, the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 1986 Atlanta Summer Olympics and 2002 Winter Olympics, and Pres Obama’s “We Are One” inaugural event.
 
His job was once described as, “When a grenade goes off, throw himself on it” to avoid any disruptive mishap during a televised performance.  He is like an air traffic controller who makes sure everyone and everything is at the right place at the right time with the right equipment and performing the correct actions.  Award announcers must have the correct envelope in hand at the right time.
 
TV actors are completely dependent on the Stage Manager, who shows them where to stand and at what moment to enter the stage, and who communicates through radio headsets with the Directors to assure perfect smooth-running timing for everything on the show.  He once handed a forgotten harmonica to Stevie Wonder on the stage, after asking the cameraman to focus on the performer’s face so Dency could sneak up off-camera to place the harmonica into his hand.
 
He dresses in black to blend into the background, so the public would not recognize him.  Modern stages have moving scenery and flying rigs, and a hole in the floor for special actions, which the actors need to avoid falling into while on stage (“Watch the hole!”).  The Academy Awards are preceded by an all-day rehearsal, in which each performer is scheduled in a 15 minute segment to review his/her actions and avoid the disastrous consequences of a missed cue.  He helps make nervous performers comfortable, but is businesslike and well-organized.  This year was his 25th and last Academy Awards, after which he retired from one of show business’ least known but most stressful jobs.  He had albums of photos from his career available on display at our meeting.