Coe also chose scripts, fought with sponsors over the hiring of blacklisted actors, scoured the theater scene for talent. Coe's 1955 airing of the Mary Martin Peter Pan was the highest-rated show in the young medium's history. Coe also found new stars. He gave Grace Kelly the lead in her first TV drama, two years before High Noon. Above all, Coe doted on writers.
Writers like to hear that.
He encouraged writers to speak in their own voice. By then, live anthologies were giving way to filmed westerns. So was Coe's influence on the televiewer's weekly diet. But by his 50th birthday Coe had become a cultural afterthought. He died in 1979, at 54.