Past News

By Robert Nott - The New Mexican 

 

Theodore J. Flicker, perhaps best known for directing and writing the 1967 cult film The President’s Analyst, died in his sleep at his Santa Fe home Saturday morning. He was 84.

“He went to sleep and didn’t wake up,” said his wife, Barbara. “He was lying on his back, I swear to God, smiling.”

 

Longtime friend and artistic collaborator Joan Darling, who first met Flicker when the two worked in improvisational theater in New York, said, “I loved him. I hope he is in the great improvisational theater in the sky waiting for me.”

 

Flicker was born in Freehold, N.J., in June 1930. In a 1995 interview, he said his introduction to theater came after he played Jiminy Cricket in a children’s production of Pinocchio. When the audience applauded, he said, “It was the fastest addiction in human history. I loved that clapping of the hands. And it carried me through to making a career.”

 

In the early 1950s, Flicker served in the U.S. Army and attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where one of his classmates was Joan Collins, an actress he would later direct in the 1970 movie Up in the Cellar, shot in New Mexico.

 

He worked with various improvisational groups and acted in theater shows before joining the Compass Theater — the antecedent of The Second City troupe — in Chicago and later in St. Louis. In New York, he founded The Premise Theater to mount satirical and spoof-ridden improvisational skits, where he worked with other comic notables including Buck Henry, George Segal and Darling.

 

Flicker’s efforts to open and run a New York theater without paying off corrupt officials led him to direct his first film, the autobiographical satire The Troublemaker, co-written with Henry, in 1964. Darling, who acted in the film, recalled that it was not a success. “This was in the early days of independent cinema, and there were no film festivals or outlets for it; it had a very limited release,” she said. “It had an exuberance about it that I thought was quite wonderful.”

 

Of his early days at The Premise, Flicker recalled theater critic Walter Kerr writing, “The hissing from the coffee machine was far more interesting than anything he had seen on stage.” But the company remained a success, and Flicker later said it was a high point of his career.

 

After directing some episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show, Flicker got a chance to direct a major motion picture with The President’s Analyst. James Coburn played the title role, a man who finds himself being chased by the FBI, the CIA, the Russian secret service and pretty much everyone else as they come to realize he knows all the secrets of the most powerful man in the world. “It is one of the funniest movies of the year, ranking with The Graduate andBedazzled in the sharp edge of its satire,” wrote critic Roger Ebert of the film.

 

Good reviews didn’t save the anti-authoritative satire at the box office, and Flicker later said it incurred the wrath of J. Edgar Hoover, then head of the FBI, as well as other government officials. He said he was blacklisted in Hollywood, though he continued to direct television episodes and made-for-TV features before creating, with Danny Arnold, the long-running sitcom The Barney Miller Show.

 

According to Darling, Flicker expressed bitterness over the way Hollywood treated him. “Ted worked the best when he owned the store, so dealing with stupid authority was a real problem for him,” she said. Barbara Flicker said, “I don’t think Ted really liked making movies. There were too many people on the committee. He had a vision and wanted to see it through from beginning to end, and it kept getting warped by 200 other people.”

 

Flicker occasionally acted in films, playing a victim of the Blob in 1972’s Beware The Blob! and Buffalo Bill Cody in the 1981 western Legend of the Lone Ranger, shot in New Mexico. According to Barbara Flicker, that’s when the two fell in love with Santa Fe. They moved here in 1986.

 

In later years, Flicker wrote a novel, The Good American — one of the first to be published and marketed on the Internet — and turned to sculpting.

 

Flicker married Barbara in 1966. He is survived by two brothers and many nieces and nephews. According to Barbara Flicker, she will plan a memorial service later this autumn.

 

“I will miss him. I am glad I had him for 48 years,” she said.

 

When they first met, Barbara told him, “I don’t want to be bored.”

 

“Boy, did he live up to that,” she said.