HAPPY BIRTHDAY HILDY PARKS (March 12, 1926 - October 8, 2004)  who was an actress, writer, producer in partnership with Alexander H. Cohen who was also her husband. She wrote the first 20 Tony Awards telecasts (1967-1986) as well as 20 other TV specials, including the Emmy Awards.
     Her son, Christopher Cohen, said after her death that his mother "was the intellect, and Dad was the bravado." in their Tony work.
She won two Emmy Awards: one in 1980 for producing the 34th Annual Tony Awards and one for producing "The Night of 100 Stars" in 1982.  According to an article about her in The New York Times, she was described as both shrewd and down to earth, focusing on getting the awards shows to continue on television by signing on names familiar to TV viewers.
     Besides her contributions to causes like housing for the homeless, Greenpeace, the Actors' Fund and animal rights, she was involved with Community Board 5 in Midtown Manhattan and was prominent in continuing efforts to acquire landmark status for all the Broadway theaters.   Her involvement with theater lasted for many years. She made her Broadway debut when she appeared in Bathsheba in 1947 with James Mason. A year later she played the Girl in Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke and was the only woman in the London cast of Mr. Roberts.
      In the 1983-84 season she worked as a producer or co-producer on the plays Edmund Kean, La Tragedie de Carmen and Play Memory.  She and her husband co-produced Dario Fo's play Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
     According to Roger Kenvin in Notable Women in American Theatre: A Biographical Dictionary (1989) "Any assessment of Hildy Park's career would have to take into account breadth--theatre, television and film--and its diversity--acting, writing, and producing.  Another the ease with which Parks works with great numbers of  highly individualistic, creative persons to produce successful shows. Her own  lively intelligence and flexibility, plus her thorough knowledge of theatre's many aspects, have been her greatest strengths.