Armando Huerta - Crew Member of the Month

Armando Huerta 

Armando M. Huerta was born Mario Armando Huerta on 27th May 1951 in Fresno County California. He was an assistant director who started working professionally in the late 70s.

In 1979 he got his first credit as a second assistant director on a film called "Walk Proud".

In the early 80s he worked as an assistant on a number of America TV shows and TV movies, including: "Remington Steel", "Emergency", "The Gambler" and "Coward of the County".

In 1981 he started working on the first season of "Fame" as Second Assistant Director.  His duties included creating the daily call sheets from the production schedule, in cooperation with the production coordinator. The "second" also serves as the "backstage manager", liaising with actors, putting cast through make-up and wardrobe, which relieves the "first" of these duties.  

For the second season he was promoted to First Assistant Director. The "first" is directly responsible to the director and "runs" the floor or set. They responsibilities are to keep the production on schedule throughout the day, communicate to the entire crew, and to maintain the safety and security of the staff and shot itself. An assistant director must be very good at estimating how long a scene will take. 

In total Armando worked on 33 episodes of "Fame".

One day Armando tripped on the Fame set and then he came to work with an eye patch over one eye, saying he had eye problems. He was also having issues with his perception which is what had caused him to trip over.

Production Assistant Donna Lee had seen similar problems with her Sister who had cancer that had spread to her brain and had had issues with her perception. Donna had to talk to Armando to tell him and ask him to get a doctor's diagnosis. 
   
Armando finished work on the episodes"Spontaneous Combustion" and didn't return. He Died on Thursday 6th September 1984 aged 33, in Los Angeles.  

The season 4 episode "Blizzard" was dedicated to Armando.