Paul Alter

On March 11, 1922 in Chicago was born Paul Alter, an American TV personality and director of several award-winning TV series. Alter is a graduated from New York University and the Yale School of Drama. Back in the early years while he was living in Chicago, Alter was studding piano with Teddy Wilson, from the Benny Goodman Quartet. The time spent with this talented musician helped him learn a lot about the music, and in the later years be his guide when composing film music. In 1969 Alter put his music talent to use for the first time and composed the music theme for “To Tell the Truth”. In 1950 he started working in television, and served as a key figure at Mark Goodson Productions. His first job as a game show director was with “Beat the Clock”. From there he went on to work on some 60 game shows and other productions. He is best known as the original director of Family Feud from the show's origin in the mid-1970s until the early 1990s. For his contribution to this show Paul Alter was awarded with a Daytime Emmy in 1982. His second Daytime Emmy was for “The Price Is Right” in 1996. Over the course of his career that spanned five decades, Alter had a total of 14 Emmy nominations.