Herb Solow was born on December 14 1930 in New York City. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1953. It was not long after he graduated that he got a job at the William Morris Agency working in the mailroom. He was promoted to a talent agent in 1954. He later worked as program director of NBC Films (the syndication arm of the network NBC), where he supervised the production of various syndicated TV shows, including the Western Boots and Saddles. Afterwards he worked at CBS as Director of Daytime Programs, West Coast. He was at CBS for a year before returning to NBC as Director of Daytime Programs there. At NBC he worked with Grant Tinker (later co-founder of MTM Enterprises and CEO of NBC from 1981 to 1986) and oversaw production of the game show Let's Make a Deal.
Herb Solow was the executive in charge of production on the shows A Man Called Shenadoah and The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. It was in 1964 that he was hired by Lucille Ball to help revitalize Desilu Productions following her divorce from Desi Arnaz. He helped develop Star Trek and sold the show to NBC. He also helped develop Mission: Impossible and Mannix and sold both shows to CBS. In 1967 Lucille Ball sold Desliu to Gulf+Western, who had also recently bought the motion picture studio Paramount Pictures. Mr. Solow then took a job at MGM Television as vice president in charge of television production.
At MGM he oversaw production of Then Came Bronson, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, and Medical Centre. He went onto become Vice President of Worldwide Television and Motion Picture Production at MGM and was the head of both MGM's Culver City studios in California and its Borehamwood studios in England. He oversaw production of the documentary film Elvis: That's the Way It Is (1970).
After he left MGM, Herb Solow produced the TV movies Climb an Angry Mountain, Heatwave!, Killdozer, and McLaren's Riders. He co-created Man from Atlantis with Mayo Simon and served as the show's executive producer. As an independent producer, he produced the movies Brimstone & Treacle (1982), Veliki transport (1983), Get Crazy (1983), and Saving Grace (1986).
He co-wrote the book Star Trek: The Real Story (1996) with Robert Justman (who had been associate producer and producer on Star Trek) and The Star Trek Sketchbook (1997) with his wife Yvonne Fern Solow.
Herb Solow definitely had an impact on television history. At Desilu he oversaw some of the most successful and well remembered shows of all time. Indeed, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible would become franchises, while reruns of Mannix are still in syndication. The shows he oversaw at MGM also saw success. The Courtship of Eddie's Father and Medical Centre had respectable network runs and would be seen in syndication for years. While Then Came Bronson only ran for one season, it remains well-remembered to this day. Similarly, while his own production, Man from Atlantis also ran for only one season (not counting the four TV movies that had preceded it), it would go onto become a cult show. Herb Solow had a knack for knowing what would be successful and developing it in such a way to insure such success.
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