Prolific television writer and producer William Link, co-creator of classic TV series, including Columbus and Murder she wrote among others, died on Sunday, December 27, of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles, his wife, Margery Nelson, told Deadline. He was 87 years old.
Link was born in Elkins Park, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, on December 15, 1933.
In a career spanning more than 60 years, Link was best known for his collaboration with the late Richard Levinson. The two – who met at the age of 14 and started collaborating almost immediately on stories, radio scripts and dramas – saw the potential of television to capture the current scene and contribute to national discussion on issues such as race relations, student unrest and Violence armed.
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Co-created by Link and Levinson, Columbus, starring Peter Falk as the homicide detective Columbo from LAPD aired on NBC from 1971 to 1978. The character and program popularized the format of the inverted detective story, which begins by showing the crime and its author.
Steven Spielberg, who directed the first episode of Columbus in 1971, “Murder by the Book”, shared a personal memory of Link.
“Bill’s truly good nature has always inspired me to do a good job for a man who, along with Dick Levinson, was a big part of what became my own personal film school on the Universal lot. Bill was one of my favorite and most patient teachers and, most of all, I learned a lot from him about the true anatomy of a plot, ”said Spielberg in a statement. “I had a great opportunity when Bill and Dick trusted a young and inexperienced director to do the first episode of Columbus. This work helped to convince the studio to let me do Duel, and with everything that followed I owe a lot, a lot. My thoughts are with Margery and her entire family. ”
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With Levinson and Peter S. Fischer, Link created Murder, she wrote, who made her network debut in 1984. The series, starring Angela Lansbury, followed mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher, who lives in Cabot Cove, Maine, but solves crimes wherever she goes. Although network executives did not like a sexless show, with little violence and a female protagonist of a certain age, the series was extremely popular and lasted 12 years.
Other television series created by Link and Levinson include Jericho (1965), Mannix (1967), Tenafly (1973, one of the first TV shows featuring an African-American actor), Ellery Queen (1975), and Black magic (1986).
Link, with Levinson, also co-created several innovative television films, including My sweet Charlie (1970) about the growing friendship between a white runaway pregnant in her late teens and an African-American lawyer unfairly accused of murder; That certain summer (1972) one of the first sympathetic portraits of homosexuality and The Execution of Private Slovik (1974), a powerful account of the only soldier executed by desertion during World War II. Both last films featured a young Martin Sheen.
In addition to their television work, Link and Levinson wrote the scripts for the feature films The Hindenburg (1975), Roller coaster (1977), and Steve McQueen’s last film The hunter (1980).
In the years following Levinson’s premature death in 1987, Link continued to develop TV series and publish stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s mystery magazine.
The duo wrote the book Stay tuned: an inside look at prime time television production (1981), an account of how the two Davids fought network executives at the time. “Each time, we try to do something that hasn’t been seen before,” Link told the New York Times in 1987, “something that plays an emotional or social chord.”
Lovers of the mystery genre, their first professional sale as writers was Whistle while you work, that appeared in the November 1954 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, published during his first year at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Link and Levinson shared several awards, including two Emmys, two Golden Globes, The Peabody, The Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for their set of achievements in television writing, The Image Award from NAACP, The Media Award from the Alliance of Gay Artists in Industry Entertainment, the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame, four Edgar Allan Poe Awards and the Ellery Queen Award for their lifelong achievements in Mystery Writing by the Mystery Writers of America. In addition, Link and Levinson were inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1994. In 2018, Link received the highest award that MWA offers: Grandmaster status for the longevity and quality of his contributions to the genre .
Link left his wife for more than 40 years, Margery Nelson, his nieces and nephews Amy Salko Robertson and John Robertson, Karen Salko Nieberg and Owen Nieberg, and their grandchildren, Anabelle Robertson, Bennett, Fin and Levi Nieberg, and their sisters-in-law, Elizabeth Nelson and Laurie Nelson and brother-in-law, Jonathan P. Nelson.
Due to Covid’s current restrictions, the funeral will be for close family members only. A memorial service will be announced at a later date. Instead of flowers, donations can be made to http://www.chemotherapyfoundation.org/.