Biography

Nelson Gidding

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Born in New York and educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard, Nelson Gidding said that he had been interested in writing ever since he was a child and had a poem published in the Boy Scouts magazine ("That was as recently as the mid-'20s!" he laughed). A POW during World War II, Gidding began writing his first (and only) book "End Over End" while in prison camp; after the war's end, he segued into TV work ("Suspense, " "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, " many others) and ultimately into movies. His list of film credits includes such well-respected titles as "Odds Against Tomorrow, " "The Haunting, " "The Andromeda Strain" and (with co-writer Don Mankiewicz) the Oscar-nominated screenplay for "I Want to Live!", the story of the last years of real-life prostitute Barbara Graham (Susan Hayward) and her gas chamber execution on murder charges. "I Want to Live!" was Gidding's first film for director Robert Wise, with whom he has worked on several subsequent occasions. In his later years he taught a class in screenwriting at the University of Southern California.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tom Weaver <tomweavr@aol.com>

Mr. Gidding remarried in 1998. He is the father of Joshua Gidding, a writer and college professor in New York. He is a longtime friend of director Robert Wise.
Mr. Gidding is also the author of the novel "End over End".
He was considered by Gene Roddenberry and Robert H. Justman to hire as a staff writer for Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), Gidding wasn't interested in a staff position, but was willing to contribute to either the pilot or a future episode, despite pitching a story idea, nothing ultimately materialized.

[about The Haunting (1963)] I thought [the house] was a wonderful house, just perfect . . . and the way [Robert Wise] shot it was great. He made the house a character . . . It was actually a hotel, before it was a hotel I don't know what it was. But it had its own private ghost!

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