MCNULTY NIELSEN

McNulty Nielsen Productions draws its roots from Keith McNulty's father, Bernard (aka "Barney") - who is credited with inventing cue cards and is affectionately known as "The Cue Card King."

 

Barney began his career as a page at CBS and by 1949 was working on The Ed Wynn Show - CBS's first variety show.  When Ed Wynn became ill, the veteran entertainer feared that his medication would interfere with his memory on the live show, so Barney was asked to put the entire script on large sheets of cardboard. He stayed up until 4 a.m. to complete the task and then flipped the cards for Wynn during the show, launching his own career and a new industry.  Shortly after this, satirist Stan Freberg told him: "I can see it now... Barney McNulty, president of the Cue Card Corporation of America!"

 

Barney named his freelance cue card business Ad-Libs and was off and running.  

 

Barney flipped the cards to cue Bob Hope on his television shows and throughout his travels with Bob Hope's USO tours, as well as for Lucille Ball for the pilot of I Love Lucy, Groucho Marx, Orson Welles, Cybill Shepherd & Bruce Willis on the series Moonlighting, Hubert Humphrey, Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, Danny Kaye, Angela Lansbury, Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Dinah Shore, Fred Astaire, and the Smothers Brothers - just to name a few. One of Barney's greatest challenges came when he was holding the cards for actors during filming of a John Ford western.  John Wayne summoned Barney during a break and insisted he join a poker game with the challenge: "Now we'll see how good you really are with cards."

 

Barney's sister, Penny Singleton, is perhaps best known in her role as "Blondie" in the famous Blondie and Dagwood series of the late 30's and early 40's.  Penny is known to later generations as the endearing voice of Jane Jetson on the hit cartoon The Jetsons.  Penny's remarkable talents as an entertainer earned her two stars on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

 

Keith McNulty, Barney's son, worked for his father from the age of twelve quite literally "growing up" on film sets.  By the time he was eighteen Keith was handling most of Barney's new accounts.  And, for the next fifteen years, it was not unusual for Keith to be working on as many as four different productions in a single day - for such shows as The Bope Hope USO Tour (from 1978 to 1992), Carol & Company (Carol Burnett), Murder She Wrote, Moonlighting, One Day at a Time, Alice, Fat Albert, Different Strokes, Too Close for Comfort, The Red Fox Show, and Golden Girls.

 

Together, Barney and Keith ran cue cards for many of the television & personal appearances for Orson Wells, Lucile Ball, George Burns, Burgess Merideth, and Burt Reynolds.

 

In 1989 Keith launched his own teleprompting business called, McNulty's Computer Prompting, and over the next fifteen years worked on thousands of projects ranging from A-List feature films, to TV series, music videos, concert tours, and live events.  In 1995 lighting and sound services were added to Keith's company.  His client list evolved into a who's who of Hollywood, with projects including Forest Gump, Apollo 13, Naked Gun, Grumpier Old Men, Wag the Dog, and the concert tours of Aerosmith and Van Halen. Keith also worked for Presidents Gerald Ford, George Bush I, and Ronald Reagan.

 

In 2003, Keith partnered with Erik Nielsen to launch McNulty Nielsen, a full-service production services facility inclusive of lighting & grip, camera, audio, truck packages, teleprompting, cue card services, crew, and green screen sound stage.

 

In addition to spearheading McNulty Nielsen,  Keith is a commercial Director of Photography.