Robert Garland

Robert Garland was an American screenwriter.

Garland got his first job in television as a talent coordinator for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1969, when the program was based in New York. He soon became a writer on the show and helped prepare Carson’s nightly monologues.

Throughout the early 1970s, Garland wrote scripts for television shows including That Girl, The Bill Cosby Show, Love, American Style, The Bob Newhart Show, and Sanford and Son. He was also a writer on Steve Martin’s comedy special Steve Martin: Comedy Is Not Pretty.

Garland wrote the screenplay for 1979’s The Electric Horseman (with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford). He also wrote (and was given a producer credit on) what would become one of the top hit films of 1987, No Way Out (with Kevin Costner and Sean Young).

His final film credit was for The Big Blue (with Jean Reno) in 1988.

Throughout his career, Garland was hired to write a large number of scripts that went unproduced, such as a sequel to the 1956 film Giant (with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor). Garland also made uncredited contributions to Tootsie (with Dustin Hoffman), Twilight Zone: The Movie (with Dan Aykroyd), Deal of the Century (with Chevy Chase), and Pretty Woman (with Julia Roberts). Garland retired from screenwriting in the mid-1990s.

Garland died November 21, 2020, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was 83.