Nessa Hyams with producer Robert Evans at an event at the Gulf + Western Building in New York in 1976. Pierre Schermann/WWD/Penske Media/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Nessa Hyams, the Marion Dougherty protégé who served as a casting director on films including What's Up, Doc?, The Exorcist and Blazing Saddles before directing more than 100 episodes of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, has died. She was 84. Hyams died Jan. 9 at her home in Manhattan, her family announced. Hyams was head of casting at Warner Bros. from 1970-74 and then, as one of the highest-ranking female executives in Hollywood, vice president of creative affairs at Columbia Pictures from 1974-75. Related Stories Movies David Siegel, Producer on the Three 'Hangover' Movies, Dies at 70 TV Bruce Bilson, Director on 'Get Smart,' 'Hogan's Heroes,' 'Barney Miller' and So Much More, Dies at 97 Survivors include her younger brother Peter Hyams, director of films including 2010 (the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey), Capricorn One, Narrow Margin and Timecop. On What's Up, Doc? (1972), Hyams brought actors Austin Pendleton and Madeline Kahn to the attention of director Peter Bogdanovich. And on her suggestion, Stacy Keach was signed to play Father Karras in The Exorcist (1973), though William Friedkin wound up using Jason Miller in the role after seeing the playwright's picture in the newspaper. Hyams was a member of the inaugural class of big names in Hollywood accepted into the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women that was founded by Jan Haag in 1974. (Also in the first group was Gail Parent, co-creator of Mary Hartman.) She made her directing debut on an episode of the Norman Lear-developed soap opera spoof that aired in May 1976 and went on to helm 105 installments of the Louise Lasser starrer (the show aired five times a week). Only Jim Drake, who called the shots on 157 episodes during the syndicated comedy's two seasons, directed more. Hyams later helmed the big-screen comedy Leader of the Band (1987), starring Steve Landesberg, and episodes of Cagney & Lacey and Chillers. Hyams was born in New York City on Nov. 21, 1941. Her father, Barry, was a Broadway producer (Ulysses in Nighttown) and publicist (Kismet, Bus Stop), and her mother, Ruth, was a homemaker. Her grandfather was impresario Sol Hurok, who managed the careers of such show business legends as Marian Anderson, Van Cliburn and Isaac Stern. (As a casting agent, she would regularly have lunch with Hurok at the Russian Tea Room.) After graduating from Syracuse University in 1963 with a bachelor of arts degree in drama and theater arts, Hyams was hired at Marion Dougherty Associates, then based in a restored Manhattan brownstone known as "the brothel" because all the employees were women and their clients were men. Hyams helped cast many of the New York-based TV shows airing at the time. "Most of the casting people [back then] were in L.A. and were middle-aged, ex-servicemen, functionaries," she recalled in Peter Biskind's 1998 book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. "Their idea of casting was to call the agents, who brought all the kids in - they were very similar in look and style, sort of a nondescript, blond-hair, blue-eyed kind of thing. "Marion went to the theater, so she always knew who the new up-and-coming people were. There were a lot of young actors running around New York not yet discovered." When she got to Hollywood, she noticed that working at Warner Bros. was different, she told Biskind. "You went to Universal and they all looked like cutouts," she noted. "Once you got to Warners, you were in the middle of Woodstock. Five o'clock in the afternoon, instead of the clinking of ice in a glass would be the aroma of marijuana wafting down the first floor." At the studio, Hyams also cast Summer of '42 (1971), Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972), Blume in Love (1973), Cleopatra Jones (1973), Magnum Force (1973), The Terminal Man (1974), Blazing Saddles (1974), McQ (1974), Mame (1974), Freebie and the Bean (1974) and Night Moves (1975), among other movies. Columbia studio chief David Begelman hired her from Warners. When her brother was looking for actors for the Sean Connery-starring Outland (1981), he had a "Charles Durning type" in mind for the part of the doctor. "My sister read the script and said to me, 'Cast Frances Sternhagen to play the doctor.' And I did, and she brought something to it that I hadn't thought of; she made the character different," he said in 2016. Hyams returned to casting with the films The Saint of Fort Washington (1993), which she also produced, and With Honors (1994). She wed David V. Picker, a producer who also headed United Artists, Paramount and Columbia, in 1975, but that mar