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Pioneering TV Director Lela Swift Dies At 96

Deadline | by TVNewsCheck

Lela Swift, who rose from the secretarial pool at CBS to become a pioneering force for female TV directors, died Tuesday at her Santa Monica home of natural causes. Swift went from go-fer to an AD job on the network’s Studio One in 1948, to directing nearly 600 episodes of Dark Shadows and winning three Daytime Emmys over 14 years of helming the soap opera Ryan’s Hope.