Born in Clarks Hill, Indiana, to Charles Emerson and Blanche Eracene Daugherty (né Feerer),[1] Daugherty graduated from Whittier College in 1934 and was awarded a scholarship to the Pasadena Playhouse School of the Theater, where he later served as one of its associate directors.[2]
In 1942, Daugherty was signed by Warner Brothers as a dialogue director,[3] in which capacity he served for roughly a decade before moving to TV as a full-fledged director. During that period, he also had a number of small acting roles, most of them uncredited. Speaking in 1979, he recalled, "I was in front of a camera just long enough to know I'd do best behind it. It's much easier to tell people what to do." Daugherty's own difficulties onscreen informed his approach to directing:
I like to think I was a coach. Something like Knute Rockne. I want to make it possible for actors to play over their heads, to desire to be better than ever before. I want to give them faith in themselves, to believe in themselves. [...] I never figured there was any point in being like DeMille or some of the others. I watched him tear a young actress apart one day. He had already destroyed her, but he kept going on and on. I realized then there's no way you can act when someone's yelling at you. I was determined that wasn't going to be my approach.[4]
As to just what that approach was and how it differed from DeMille, some comments made in November 1956 by Piper Laurie, then a soon-to-be 25-year-old, studio-promoted starlet—struggling to break free from that image and fresh on the heels of co-starring in a film under Daugherty's direction—may be helpful.
I'm not the most experienced actress in the world. I would like to be, and I found more attention given to my acting on "The Road That Led Afar" than in most of the pictures I've played. [...] In this role the directors have given me a sense of freedom in acting for the first time in my life.[5][a]
Negulesco was a great artist, but he couldn't care less about acting. He let me handle all the actors and let me rehearse all the scenes. He told me, "You can do all the work so long as you give me the credit."[4]
Actor Dale Robertson, who would work with both Daugherty and Negulesco on Take Care of My Little Girl (1951), is less charitable in his assessment of the film's nominal director:
Jean Negulesco was an overrated director. He had a dialogue coach who went on to become a really good director... Herschel Daugherty. [...] And Herschel was actually the one who was doing the directing, you know, and Negulesco was taking all the credit. [...] [Y]ou'd see him go over and whisper in Negulesco's ear. And then pretty soon, in a very loud voice, Negulesco would say, "I don't like this line. We're going to make it this way." And he says, "Now that makes more sense. Yes, we'll do it that way." But I never heard him come up with an original thought. It was always Herschel.[8]
^Kovner, Leo (1958). "Television Reviews: One Is a Wanderer". The Hollywood Reporter. p. 9. "A moving tale of lonely despair in a big city, admittedly it's not everybody's meat. Yet the atmosphere of gentle melancholy was compelling, and the sensitive, intelligent performance of Fred MacMurray and the direction of Herschel Daugherty command attention and respect." Retrieved March 14, 2022.
^Delatiner, Barbara (August 3, 1959). "On Television". Newsday. p. 36. Retrieved March 14, 2022.
^Miller, Don (October 1959). "Films On TV". Films in Review. p. 501. Retrieved March 14, 2022.
^Zwerdling, Allen (December 6, 1963). "Editor's Outlook: 'East Side, West Side'". Back Stage. p. 14. "It did not gloss over the facts, it did not picture the frightened whites as evil-doers of race-haters. It did demonstrate that even the so-called liberals have prejudices which require soul searching. Most important, the program did not end with a superficial happy ending that most TV hack writers believe audiences require." Retrieved March 24, 2022.
^Brook, Vincent (Fall 1998). "Checks and Imbalances: Political Economy and the Rise and Fall of East Side/West Side; 'People Drama Personified': 'No Hiding Place'". Journal of Film and Video [Englewood]. Vol. 50, Iss. 3. pp. 28-31. "Beyond the subversive premise [i.e. its "assault on the free-market economy in general"], the episode elaborates and expands upon its societal critique through the interweaving of three other narrative strands: one centering on gender relations, another on consumerism, and the last on the struggle between moral principle and material self-interest." Retrieved March 25, 2022.
