Credits roll on a golden career in television
TV executive Gary Levine retires after guiding Showtime for a quarter-century
For Gary Levine ’74, MBA ’76, discovering a hit television series is a little like panning for gold.
“You’ve got to keep shaking it and dumping the rocks,” says Levine, who spent 40 years in the TV industry before retiring at the end of July. “Then, every once in a while, you’re sitting there and see something gleaming in the pan. It’s thrilling. … You never know if something is going to be a hit. But you know how it hits you. We had a lot of success with things that started as a gleaming little pebble and grew into seminal series.”
Shows developed and nurtured by Levine during his 25-year tenure at Showtime — Dexter, Ray Donovan, Yellowjackets, Homeland, Nurse Jackie, The Chi, Shameless and Weeds (just to name a few) — not only enabled the cable network to go toe-to-toe with HBO and others, but also helped reshape television in the early 21st century.
“I’ve had an unbelievable run,” Levine says. “I have nothing but gratitude and joy for a television career that I never planned on and thoroughly enjoyed.”
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It’s a career that could have gone in a different direction if Levine had accepted a used Chevy Malibu (complete with an 8-track player and whitewall tires!) from his parents to attend a CUNY school after graduating high school in 1970. Instead, SUNY became his vehicle on an expressway to success.
“It was a tough choice for me, Chevy or SUNY,” Levine admits. “I flipped a coin in my mind and went with . I had no great conviction about staying home or going away. Thankfully, I did [go away] because I completely defined myself anew at . It was a wise decision that I did not make wisely!”
Levine arrived at knowing that he enjoyed singing in his high school chorus. He auditioned for the Harpur Chorale and was accepted into the longtime ensemble. Levine also began voice lessons with a prominent singer who had just come to campus to teach one day a week: David Clatworthy, a leading baritone with the New York City Opera Company.
“We worked together in a 12x12 room, trying to communicate the intangibles of singing,” Levine recalls. “We worked together for six years — and it culminated with me singing the title role in The Marriage of Figaro with Tri-Cities Opera.”
Levine, a theatre major, was president of Harpur Chorale and active in the Drama Club as graduation approached in spring 1974. Levine decided to stay at when he learned that the School of Management (SOM) was launching a master’s program in arts management.
“The program opened up the world of running nonprofit arts organizations for me,” he says.
Levine got his first post- job after the struggling Roundabout Theatre Company in Manhattan contacted SOM for help.
“They said: Do you have anyone young enough and dumb enough to work here? Because we’re in trouble,” Levine recalls with a laugh.
He helped turned the company’s fortunes around before spending three years leading the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and five years guiding the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
“I thought I’d do that for the rest of my life,” he says of theater management. “But after 10 years in the non-profit theater world, I felt I needed a bigger world. That’s when I moved to television.”
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Levine’s big break took place in 1985, when Columbia Pictures Television President Barbara Corday brought him to the company to work in programming, development and production.
“She set me up for success,” he says. “My first day of work was a corporate retreat in Palm Springs. I had three days of mingling and socializing. They were wonderful people — not the craven Hollywood types you sometimes see on screen or onstage.”
During the next 15 years with Columbia Pictures Television, Warner Brothers TV, Witt-Thomas Productions and ABC, Levine helped develop classic network shows such as The West Wing, NYPD Blue and Twin Peaks. He was intrigued in 2001 when the opportunity arose to develop original series for Showtime, which had long been in the cable-TV shadow of HBO.
“Bringing my creative ambitions to Showtime was appealing,” he says. “HBO had monster hits — The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Sex in the City. Showtime didn’t really have anything comparable at the time. The freedom and the challenge were irresistible.”
The decision to join Showtime was helped by the presence of then-President of Programming Jerry Offsay ’74, who was Levine’s teammate on ’s freshman basketball team.
“I had to quit [basketball] because it interfered with my theater rehearsals — which Jerry still resents to this day!” Levine says. “When he said: ‘Come put us on the map in series,’ it was an exciting opportunity. It proved to be so exciting that I never left.”
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As executive vice president of original programming, Levine’s Showtime hits came quickly: Weeds (about a suburban pot-selling widow) in 2005; Dexter (a likable serial killer!) in 2006; Californication (an alcoholic novelist moves to L.A.) in 2007; and Nurse Jackie (the show about a drug-addicted ER nurse received 24 Emmy nominations over seven seasons) in 2009. They were followed by hits such as Ray Donovan, The L Word, Billions, Homeland, Shameless, The Affair, The Chi, Yellowjackets and Twin Peaks: The Return.
By the mid-2010s, Showtime’s lineup was arguably deeper and more varied than HBO. Levine says the success of Dexter and Weeds (they earned a combined 44 Emmy nominations) made the industry and the public take a new look at the network.
“Those were the two shows that made the statement: We can do high-quality, provocative, entertaining work,” he says. “Showtime started to become a destination for writers who wanted to do those kinds of shows — and for viewers who wanted to see them.”
Levine, who later became president of entertainment at Showtime, did not see “development” as simply accepting a story pitch.
“The beauty of what I got to do was to sit in a room with writers, embrace their idea and then help them shape it into a pilot story and then a pilot script,” he says. “If the pilot script was as good as we hoped and we got the green light for the project, I’d [help] choose a director, a cast, designers, and go shoot it. If the pilot was good, you were off to the races with a series.
“That’s what I treasure more than anything: I was able to win the respect of writers that I respected enormously and help talented people do their best work.”
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In the past couple of years, the rise of streaming has changed the corporate landscape of television. Showtime is no exception. In 2023, it merged into Paramount Plus, and the Showtime streaming app shut down. Then Showtime was removed from the “Paramount Plus Showtime” name. Levine, who shifted into an advisory role, recognized that the time was right to step aside.
“Showtime went from being a premium cable network and streaming service to an option within Paramount Plus,” he says. “There may have been good business decisions for it, but when you’re the guy who spent 20-plus years building Showtime, it hurts.”
But Levine did not leave without taking care of his hits that still reside on Showtime — he oversaw season renewals for Yellowjackets and The Chi, while launching a Dexter prequel (Dexter: Original Sin) and Dexter: Resurrection, a sequel with original show star Michael C. Hall.
Having just begun his retirement, the California-based Levine wants to become more “bicoastal,” as his two daughters live in Brooklyn. That flexibility could also give him an opportunity to visit and work with , says Levine, a member of the Harpur College Advocacy Council who spoke at the 2016 Harpur commencement ceremony.
Levine says he is proud that his shows will live on and that writers saw him as a partner.
“The beauty of being at Showtime — without advertisers and someone checking the ratings every 10 minutes — was that we had the freedom to create a portfolio of shows,” he says. “Every one of them didn’t have to deliver the same things. You could have a niche favorite alongside a show drawing big numbers alongside something getting all kinds of awards. Success could be defined in so many ways. It was an incredible blessing.”