Robert W. Campbell, screenwriter, 73

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

Sunday October 1 3:46 PM ET

Novelist/Screenwriter Robert Campbell Dies at 73 

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Robert W. Campbell, a screenwriter and novelist
who was nominated for an Academy Award and won a prize for mystery
writing, has died at age 73.

Campbell, who wrote 27 novels, 14 screenplays, four stage plays and
scripts for 10 television series, died Sept. 21 at Hospice House of
Monterey, California, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

Like many of the people he wrote about, Campbell, a Newark, New Jersey,
native, came to Los Angeles in 1952 to pursue a screenwriting career.

He broke into the business with his screenplay ``Five Guns West,'' which
was produced and released in 1955. He went on to write ``The Man With a
Thousand Faces,'' a 1957 release that was nominated for an Academy Award.

His other film credits included ``Machine Gun Kelly'' and ''The Masque of
the Red Death.'' He also wrote scripts for television series including
``Maverick'' and ``Marcus Welby, M.D.''

Disillusioned with Los Angeles and writing screenplays, he moved to Carmel
on the central California coast in 1975, where he started writing
novels. His first book, ``The Spy Who Sat and Waited,'' was published in
1975 and was nominated for a National Book Award.

Campbell wrote under the names R. Wright Campbell, F.G. Clinton before
using Robert Campbell.

He turned to mystery novels in the 1980s, winning the Edgar Allen Poe
award of the Mystery Writers of America for his first effort, The Junkyard
Dog,'' in 1986.

He also wrote four novels about Los Angeles that helped popularize the
phrase ``La-La Land'' to the American lexicon. The first ``La-La Land''
novel, ``In La-La Land We Trust,'' came out in 1986, followed by ``Alice
in La-La Land'' in 1987, ``Sweet La-La Land'' in 1990 and ``The Wizard of
La-La Land'' in 1995.

``La-La Land's a land of losers,'' wrote Campbell. ``We're all just a
bunch of dreamers with a nickel in our shoe.'' 


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This mailing list is brought to you by Slick.ORG at http://www.slick.org
to remove yourself from the list, send e-mail to majordomo@slick.org
and include the words "unsubscribe deathwatch" in the message (not in the
subject).  For web-based help, go to:

http://www.slick.org/cgi-bin/majordomo

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *