David Pressman’s pioneer career in live television in the early 1950s was suddenly derailed when he was targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy during his blacklisting of alleged communist sympathizers.
Pressman was able to break this cycle the studios had seemingly mapped out for him, and very early in his career directed the ground-breaking dramatic cult hit Boulevard Nights, the first Latino gang movie of the era which was recently selected for preservation by the Library of Congress.
He followed that with Those Lips, Those Eyes, a love letter to the theater about the life of the actor in summer stock, with a lead star-making performance by Frank Langella.
With these successes behind him, Pressman chose to follow up not with another feature, which he had been offered, but with a 1985 short film entitled And The Children Shall Lead, which, for its time, was a racially progressive story starring Danny Glover, Beah Richards and LeVar Burton.
He was next courted to direct a resurgent Richard Pryor in post Vietnam War drama, Some Kind of Hero, co-starring the then top box office grossing actress Margot Kidder.
Pressman also directed the final two hours of the Emmy-nominated TV mini-series Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders, starring Edie Falco and Heather Graham.
Pressman’s stage work includes directing the Los Angeles premiere of To Gillian on her 37th Birthday, which he then directed as a feature film starring Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Peter Gallagher and a Los Angeles equity waiver production of Frankie and Johnny in the Claire De Lune, which he also later adapted into the independent film Frankie and Johnny are Married.
He also directed the 2008 Broadway revival of Come Back, Little Sheba, for which he cast S. Epatha Merkerson in the role of the lead character Lola, which had previously been played by only white actresses, and depicted an interracial relationship on stage.