LOS ANGELES — Claudio Guzman, who produced one of the nation’s first bilingual and bicultural Spanish-English educational television programs for children, “Villa Alegre,” which premiered in 1973 on PBS, died Saturday of pneumonia, said his wife, Micki Guzman. He was 80.
He had directed more than 30 episodes of the TV sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie” when he helped create “Villa Alegre,” a half-hour show in the tradition of “Sesame Street.”
“We want children to understand that despite language, geography and cultural differences, they are all similar,” Guzman, a native of Rancagua, Chile, told The Los Angeles Times in 1972.
The son of an architect, Claudio Elias Guzman was born Aug. 2, 1927, and came to the U.S. in 1951 intending to study architecture in the East, but he ended up in Los Angeles.In a career that spanned four decades, Guzman directed almost 30 different TV shows. He also produced several programs.
