March 04, 2011

Max Wilk, Prolific Author, Playwright and Television Writer, Passes at 90

His work ranged from Broadway plays and classic TV shows to novels and nonfiction books.

Max Wilk, an author, playwright and writer for feature films and television, died February 19, 2011, in Westport, Connecticut. He was 90.

Over the course of a career spanning four decades, Wilk wrote 19 books, four feature films, three produced plays and numerous television shows and magazine articles.

A native of Connecticut, he studied drama at Yale and graduated in 1941.

As a member of the Army Air Force Motion Picture Unit during World War II, he served under Ronald Reagan, who was captain of the group. He worked on Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army show and wrote and appeared in Army training films.

After the war, he began writing plays — including Small Wonder, a collaboration with with George Axelrod — and was a founding member of the 52nd Street Players group. He also wrote for television, beginning with live shows and, later, sitcoms and comedy specials.

He co-wrote the 1960 special The Fabulous Fifties, which won a Primetime Emmy for variety show and a Peabody Award. He wrote the 1977 animated film Raggedy Ann and Andy and the 1977 television special They Said It with Music, among many other television and film projects.

During the 1960s he began publishing humorous novels. One of them, Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the Water, was made into a 1968 film starring Jerry Lewis. Wilk wrote the screenplay.

Also during the ’60s, Wilk lived in London, where he became involved with the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine project and was commissioned to write the novel based on the film. He also wrote comedy specials for stars such as Melina Mercouri and Jonathan Winters.

His best-known nonfiction work was 1973’s They’re Playing Our Song, a collection of interviews with, and stories about, the great Tin Pan Alley and Broadway songwriters of the 20th century; the book is still in print today. Other books include The Golden Age of Television, The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood, Schmucks with Underwoods and OK! The Story of Oklahoma.

In his later years, Wilk became a local music impresario, producing scores of jazz and live shows for the Westport Arts Center. In addition, for more than 20 years, he served as dramaturge at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, working with playwrights including August Wilson and David Lindsay-Abaire.

He is survived by his three children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

On November 15, 2000, Max Wilk had the distinction of being interviewed by the Television Academy Foundation’s Archive of American Television.

During the two-and-a-half hour interview, conducted in Westport, Connecticut, by Michael Rosen, Wilk briefly described his beginnings as a writer in radio, touring with Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army during World War II, and his entrance into writing for early television.

He also talked about writing for such anthology and variety shows as: The Ford Television Theatre (1948-50), The Victor Borge Show (1951), and The Imogene Coca Show (1954-55).

Finally, he described working on the critically acclaimed and long-running series Mama (for which he wrote from 1952-53), as well as the Primetime Emmy Award-winning special The Fabulous Fifties (1960), a look at the decade. As a television historian and author of the seminal book The Golden Age of Television: Notes From the Survivors, Wilk also described the “live” era of television (and the actors, writers, and producers of the day) and the cloud of the 1950s blacklist and how it affected people he knew (including Zero Mostel).

The entire interview is available online at http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/max-wilk

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