The second essential addition to producers Bruce Cohen's and Don Mischer's Oscar team is now in place – or rather, she's been in place for some time, but the Academy made it official on Thursday with the announcement that Danette Herman will serve as the show's Coordinating Producer.
Like Supervising Producer Michael Seligman, whose appointment was confirmed earlier in the month, Herman is a veteran of more than 30 Oscar shows, and a key member of the Oscar team every year for decades. Her first job on an Oscar show came back in April 1968, on the Academy Awards that was postponed for two days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Herman's specialty is booking and dealing with talent on the show, a task at which she is known to be fiercely protective. Among her coups: assembling 70 past Oscar winners for an onstage reunion at the 70th Oscar show, and almost that many five years later despite the start of the war in Iraq, which deterred many stars from coming.
She was also one of a tiny group of people who arranged for Woody Allen's unexpected appearance on the Oscar show in 2002, a booking that took almost the entire Oscar staff by surprise.
The 83rd Academy Awards will take place on February 27 at the Kodak Theater at Hollywood & Highland.
(Photo courtesy of AMPAS)
