Devery Freeman, a screenwriter who helped create the Writers’ Guild of America and wrote for such TV series as The Thin Man, has died. He was 92.
Freeman, who had been ill since having open-heart surgery in March, died on Friday evening in Los Angeles, according to a statement on the guild’s website.
”His love of language never went unfulfilled in his writing, and he never exempted himself from the concerns and problems of writers,” said fellow writer Leonard Stern.
Freeman participated in the Screenwriters’ Guild’s first negotiation with the studios in which the union won the right to determine writing credits. He was also instrumental in the group’s 1954 reorganisation that created the Writers’ Guild of America.
”He was very generous to friends, but very fun loving,” his son Seth Freeman said on Wednesday. ”He lived till 92, and 91-and-a-half years of that he was on the go.”
The native of New York City’s borough of Brooklyn wrote for television during the medium’s golden age, creating scripts for such shows as Playhouse 90, Climax and Desilu Playhouse.
He received the Writers’ Guild Award for outstanding television drama in 1957 for his teleplay The Great American Hoax, starring Ed Wynn and based on a story by Paddy Chayefsky.
Freeman later became an executive at CBS, with oversight of The Dick van Dyke Show, I Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies and other shows, the Writers’ Guild of America reported.
Among his many film credits were Main Street Lawyer, The Thrill of Brazil and Ain’t Misbehavin’. Freeman created an offbeat character for Lucille Ball in In Miss Grant Takes Richmond, enabling her to show her comedic timing and break out of more limited ingénue roles.
He also wrote the screenplays for the Red Skelton movies The Yellow Cab Man and Watch the Birdie, as well as two entries in the popular Francis the Talking Mule series, Francis in the WACS and Francis Joins the Navy.
In the early 1970s, he wrote the novel Father Sky, about a military school, which was made into the movie Taps, featuring Timothy Hutton, George C Scott, Sean Penn and Tom Cruise.
Freeman began writing professionally while attending Brooklyn College. He wrote short stories for The New Yorker and the Saturday Evening Post before heading to California to be a staff writer at MGM.
He remained active in the guild after retiring, and in 1982 was honoured with the Guild Service Award.
He is survived by two sons and a granddaughter. — Sapa-AP