Fred Coe 1914-1979

Fred Coe's method was to make stars of writers. With no money for big names at NBC's Philco Television Playhouse, which he took over in 1948, he asked for extended character sketches that put one or two people in absorbing, real-life situations, and he showcased Paddy Chayefsky, Tad Mosel and Horton Foote. Performers followed the scripts: Steve McQueen, Joanne Woodward, Grace Kelly, Walter Matthau. Born in Alligator in 1914, he later moved to CBS for Playhouse 90, produced the 1962 Emmy Awards broadcast and directed the Peabody-winning All the Way Home.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Delta Blues Museum — 11 mi
  The state's oldest music museum, in a restored 1918 freight depot in Clarksdale, with Muddy Waters's rebuilt cabin and instruments from Delta players.
• Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary) — 14 mi
  The state penitentiary on Sunflower County cotton land, built in 1900 as a prison plantation, where Freedom Riders were held in 1961; a working prison with no visits and a Blues Trail marker at its gate.
• Mound Bayou — 14 mi
  The Bolivar County town founded in 1887 by men who had been enslaved at Davis Bend, built to be Black-owned, home of Taborian Hospital and a museum on Roosevelt Street.
• Emmett Till Interpretive Center and the Tallahatchie County Courthouse — 21 mi
  The 1955 courthouse in Sumner where Emmett Till's killers were acquitted, restored to that year, and the interpretive center across the street that opened after the county's 2007 apology.

More markers nearby

• Alligator Blues — steps away
• Little Junior Parker — 3.9 mi
• Henry Townsend — 9.9 mi
• Hopson Plantation Established 1852 — 11 mi