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Jack Bender

Though he would eventually become an extremely prosperous prime-time producer and director, Jack Bender began his career in the early 1970s as an actor. Small contributions to eternally celebrated television staples such as "All in the Family" and "Mary Tyler Moore" garnered him enough attention to break into directing by the end of the decade. He cut his teeth at the helm of 11 episodes of the domestically chaotic family sitcom "Eight is Enough" and immediately came into stints on such sweepingly earnest TV sagas as "Fame" and "Falcon Crest." By '79, his resume was impressive enough to land a job directing and writing eight episodes of the sophisticated legal drama "The Paper Chase," working with the legendary John Houseman. Bender stayed busy in the '80s directing 10 telepics until his first shot at a high-profile feature film came with the 1991 killer-doll shocker