Biography

Is one of the ten percent of writers who recouped their careers after the infamous Blacklist

Winner, the National Conference of Christian and Jews Brotherhood Award for a script for the series "Death Valley Days.".

Associate Professor, Loyola Marymount University.

Member, Board of Directors, Writers Guild of America; member, the Dramatists Guild; member, the Authors League of America.

3 children - Vicki Crawford, Jo Ann and Kenny.

Two hundred writers were blacklisted from 1953 to 1957. Of them, only 10 percent were able to recover their careers and I was always grateful to be among them. People have often said, "How could the blacklist happen?," but it's amazing what can happen: what form intolerance can take as well as intimidation. I like to think that any situation you're involved with during the course of your life equips you to become a better person and, in my case, a better writer.

Writers are constantly wounded, but television is very much a collaborative medium. To get the happy circumstance where everything gels and everybody's talent enhances everybody else's is tough to achieve, but worth it when you do. When people go off on tangents, you find that you don't have much of anything. I know very few writers who are happy with all of their work as produced, unless they're in a position of power and not too many of us are.

Everything I've written -- and I know this sounds both profound and corny at the same time -- has come from the belief that the essence of a writer is to bring some illumination to the human condition. You try to make a statement about a universal truth and it's the situation that counts.