Template:Realworld Oliver Kaufman Crawford (ca. 1917–24 September 2008) was a television writer and author who wrote three episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series. He first wrote the story and co-wrote the teleplay for the first season episode "The Galileo Seven" along with S. Bar-David. He later wrote the teleplay for "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" and co-wrote the story for "The Cloud Minders" with David Gerrold. Both of these episodes were part of the show's third season.
Crawford was among the many Hollywood writers who fell victim to the infamous blacklist of the 1950s, and one of the few to recover in their careers when it was over. At the time he was contacted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953, Crawford was just starting his writing career. He had written for several television programs, including Terry and the Pirates, Climax!, and Kraft Television Theatre. He also co-wrote the story for the 1953 western film The Man from Alamo and co-wrote a segment of the anthological 1954 film The Steel Cage. His segment, entitled "The Hostages," starred Lawrence Tierney.
After being blacklisted, Crawford moved to New York and took a variety of jobs. He returned to the writing business in 1957 when his actor friend Sam Levene got him a job as a writer on the CBS anthology series Playhouse 90. He later wrote for such television series as Rawhide (three episodes, including one featuring Harry Townes and Garry Walberg), Bonanza (two episodes, including one featuring Ken Lynch), Ben Casey (five episodes, including one featuring Tom Troupe and another with Barbara Luna), The Fugitive (three episodes, including one with Gene Lyons), Gilligan's Island (an episode directed by Lawrence Dobkin), The Wild Wild West (two episodes, including one with Antoinette Bower, and I Spy (an episode with Roger C. Carmel).
In addition to Star Trek, Crawford has written for such genre television series as The Outer Limits (one episode directed by Gerd Oswald and featuring Jason Wingreen), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (which starred Arch Whiting), and Land of the Giants (which starred Don Marshall). Some of the other television shows he worked on during the 1960s were The Rifleman (which starred John Hoyt) and Here Come the Brides (which starred Mark Lenard and David Soul). During the 1970s, he contributed scripts to such television series as Mannix (including an episode which featured Anthony Zerbe), Petrocelli (which starred Susan Howard), Ironside (an episode which featured Davis Roberts), The Bionic Woman, and Kojak.
In 1978, Crawford wrote a novel called The Execution. He adapted this novel into a made-for-TV movie in 1985. Robert Hooks, Allan Miller, and Alan Oppenheimer were among the cast members in the movie.
Crawford was a longtime member of the Writers Guild of America's board of directors. He lobbied to remove the anti-communist loyalty oath from the guild's membership application. The Writers Guild awarded Crawford with two Morgan Cox Awards, one in 1983 and another in 1997. He received the latter as part of the Writers Guild of America West's Property Planning Committee; he shared the award with six other writers, including D.C. Fontana.
Crawford died on 24 September 2008. He was 91 years old.
External Links
- Template:IMDb-link
- Obituary at The Mercury News