Ann Marcus

Ann Marcus was a television writer, producer and playwright.

Marcus was a prolific writer, working on such shows as Lassie, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Gentle Ben, Peyton Place, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award in 1976. She also co-created Fernwood 2-Nite, a spin-off of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Marcus was also a long-time writer of daytime drama, nominated twice in 1978 and 1979 for a Daytime Emmy Award for her work on Days of Our Lives. 

Before beginning her career in television, Marcus worked for the New York Daily News and Life magazine, where she worked with famed photographer Alfred Eisenstadt.

Marcus died December 3, 2014, in Sherman Oaks, California. She was 93.

Upon her pasing, the Writers Guild of America, West, released the following obituary:

Former Writers Guild of America, West Board of Directors member and award-winning television writer Ann Marcus (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Days of Our Lives, Knots Landing, Peyton Place) died on Wednesday, December 3, at her home in Sherman Oaks, California, at age 93.

Over the course of her prolific career, Marcus broke through the entertainment industry’s glass ceiling within the male-dominated television industry over and over again. A Writers Guild member since 1961, Marcus received the WGAW’s Morgan Cox Award in 2000 in recognition of her longtime, exemplary service to the Guild. Beyond serving on the WGAW Board of Directors for several terms (1977-1981; 1984-86; 1990-91; 1997-2003), Marcus also served as the Guild’s Secretary-Treasurer from 1991-93.

In 2006, she was recognized by the Paley Center for Media as one of the remarkable women who helped shape the history of media. Marcus also served on the steering committee of the Caucus for Writers, Producers, and Directors, and was a governor of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Born Dorothy Ann Goldstone in 1921, Marcus was raised in Little Falls, New York, the youngest of three children. After graduating from Western College in Ohio in 1943, she got a job at the New York Daily News — one of the first young women to become a copy "boy." In a matter of weeks she was promoted to reporter, soon parlaying her first byline story into a job at Life magazine, where she worked with famed photographers such as Alfred Eisenstaedt. She married screenwriter Ellis Marcus in 1944 and raised a family in New York and Los Angeles.

Her first play, A Woman's Place, a groundbreaking depiction of the conflicts presented to women between career and motherhood, premiered in Los Angeles in 1960 and led to a long and successful writing career in television. In the ’60s, Marcus wrote for numerous TV series, including Lassie, Dennis the Menace, Gentle Ben, Please Don’t Eat The Daisies and The Hathaways. She was also a staff writer on Peyton Place and The Debbie Reynolds Show. In 1969, she became head-writer of the daytime drama Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, for which she shared a 1974 WGA nomination (Daytime Serials), followed by Search for Tomorrow, for which she shared a 1975 Writers Guild Award for Daytime Serials.

Tapped by Norman Lear, Marcus co-created and served as head writer on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (created by Gail Parent, Ann Marcus, Jerry Adelman, Daniel Gregory Browne; developed by Norman Lear), an innovative, radical spoof of soap operas and American consumer culture which put women’s stories at the forefront. For her work on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Marcus shared a Primetime Emmy Award (Special Classification for Outstanding Program and Individual Achievement) for co-writing the series’ pilot episode with Jerry Adelman and Daniel Gregory Browne.

In a career that spanned the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, she wrote on several daytime soaps, including One Life to Live, Love of Life and Days of Our Lives, serving as head writer during for the show’s 1978-79 seasons, for which he received two Daytime Emmy nominations (Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series) in 1978 and 1979.

In 1992, Ann was brought in as supervising producer and executive story editor of Knots Landing — and later co-wrote the TV show’s 1997 reunion miniseries, Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac (written by Ann Marcus & Lisa Seidman and Julie Sayres). In addition, she wrote several TV movies, including Women at West Point in 1979 (teleplay by Ann Marcus & Ellis Marcus, story by Juleen Compton). Among the many TV shows she worked on, her personal favorite was the syndicated satirical soap, The Life and Times of Eddie Roberts, which she co-created and executive produced in 1980 with her husband, Ellis Marcus.

Continuing to write well into her eighties, in 1999 she published her memoir, Whistling Girl, which she named after a childhood warning that “whistling girls and crowing hens often come to very bad ends.” Her long life and successes proved that old adage wrong — in fact, in 2008, at the age of 87, she oversaw the making of her screenplay, For Heaven's Sake!, into an indie feature film, which she executive produced.

Marcus also served on several WGAW committees over the decades, including: TV Membership & Finance (1972); Awards Study, TV (1973-80); Freedom of Expression & Censorship (1976); Blacklisted Writers (1982-97), Officers Nominating (1985, 1993), Age Discrimination (1990-91), Disciplinary (1991), Membership/Finance (1991-93), Board Nominating (1998); and Animation Strike Fund (1998-99).

Beyond her long and successful writing career, according to her family, “Ann always put her family first, making each of her loved ones feel they were the center of her universe. She was a warm, loving, supportive sister, wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who taught her descendants strength, compassion, generosity and love.”

Marcus is survived by her three children: Steve, John and Ellyn; six grandchildren and their spouses: Kevin, Katie, Ben, Etienne and his wife Lizet, Jacobo and his wife Lilian, Paola and her husband Yosef; and seven great-grandchildren: Xavier, Ayden, Noah, Hawthorne, Metzli, Citlali and Poli’si.