Crawford, Oliver 1917-2008 [A pseudonym] (Oliver K. Crawford, Oliver Kaufman Crawford, Oliver Kaufman)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born August 12, 1917, in Chicago, IL; died of pneumonia, September 24, 2008, in Los Angeles, CA. Television writer, screenwriter, educator, and novelist. Crawford worked among the legions of television writers whose names were rarely recognized by the public, but whose work was indispensable to viewing audiences for decades. Crawford, who adopted his pen name in hopes of appealing to mainstream Americans more than a writer named Kaufman would, wrote episodes for the entire gamut of recreational television genres of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: westerns, police and medical dramas, mysteries, and situation comedies, to mention only a few. Episodic television was not his original objective, however. Crawford intended to write for the big screen, but the Communist witch hunts spawned by U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s derailed his career. Crawford was blacklisted, like many other Hollywood professionals, for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. He spent several years at menial labor and odd jobs, one of the loftiest positions being that of department store window dresser, and he accepted occasional acting roles throughout his life. Unlike many (perhaps most) of his blacklisted colleagues, Crawford was able to return to a prolific and successful career. He wrote hundreds of scripts for dozens of television series, from Death Valley Days, for which he won a Brotherhood Award from the National Conference of Catholics and Jews (now the National Conference for Community and Justice), to Climax! and Lineup, which earned the writer Emmy Award nominations, to The Outer Limits, which added a Writers Guild of America award nomination to his portfolio. Crawford also wrote a few memorable episodes of the cult favorite Star Trek. Toward the end of his writing career, Crawford taught classes in the film department of Loyola Marymount University. He bracketed his television achievements with two novels. The early novel was Blood on the Branches (1957), which he later adapted as the screenplay Girl in the Woods (1958). The other was The Execution (1978), a fictional story about five concentration camp survivors who plot a terminal revenge upon the camp doctor who had used them for his experiments when they were young girls. Crawford later adapted the script for a television movie, which he produced for the National Broadcasting Company in 1985.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2008, p. B6.

Times (London, England), October 8, 2008, p. 61.