Paul Monash

Film producer and screenwriter

Paul Monash, film producer and screenwriter: born New York 14 June 1917; twice married (two daughters); died Los Angeles 14 January 2003.

Paul Monash produced such films as the classic western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the powerful horror film Carrie, a bold transcription of Kurt Vonnegut's experimental novel Slaughterhouse Five, and his own adaptation of the coldly cynical crime story The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

He had a second career in television, writing and producing acclaimed television plays, series, pilot films and television movies. He both produced and wrote the pilot episode for Peyton Place, the first evening soap opera on US television, and he wrote the TV movie All Quiet on the Western Front, which won a Golden Globe as the best film made for television in 1980. Other television credits as a writer include the mini-series "V" (1984) and Salem's Lot (1979) and two television biographies that won him Emmy nominations, Stalin (1972) and George Wallace (1997). In 2000 the Writers Guild awarded him the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for lifetime achievement.

Born in the Harlem district of New York in 1917 (his mother was a former silent-screen actress, Rhoda Melrose) and raised in the Bronx, he said that his goal at the age of 21 was "to write the Great American Novel", but instead he discovered the US by "riding the rails", and lived as an expatriate in Paris.

He first earned plaudits for his writing when, during the early days of live television, he contributed scripts to the anthology series Studio One, Playhouse 90 and Kraft Theater. One of the stories written by Monash for Kraft Theater, The Singin' Idol, was later made into a film, Sing, Boy, Sing (1958), which saw the screen début for the pop star Tommy Sands. On some of these early television shows Monash worked with the fledgling director George Roy Hill, who was to direct two of the films Monash later produced in Hollywood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and Slaughterhouse Five (1972).

In 1959 Monash produced, and wrote the pilot show for, the hit gangster series The Untouchables, which provoked controversy due to its high proportion of violence but proved a hit with viewers. (As The Scarface Mob, the pilot was released to cinemas in Europe.) The success of the series prompted 20th Century-Fox to hire Monash to prepare a television show based on Grace Metalious's sensational 1956 best-selling novel, Peyton Place, which the studio had already turned into a distinguished movie. He wrote the pilot episode and served as producer on what was to be one of television's greatest successes.

The ground-breaking first evening serial on US television (though acknowledged to have been inspired by the success of Coronation Street in the UK), it aired twice a week initially (later three times a week). For five years (514 episodes) viewers were kept enthralled by its tale of a New England town that seethed with extramarital affairs, dark secrets and assorted skulduggery. The show made stars of two young unknowns, Mia Farrow and Ryan O'Neal.

Though reviews were mixed, viewers quickly made it a major hit, and Monash signed a three-year contract with Fox with the option to produce one picture a year. His first film was not auspicious, the tedious and pretentious psychological thriller Deadfall (1968), made in Britain with a cast headed by Michael Caine and Eric Portman. Later productions included Billy Wilder's The Front Page (1974), John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976) and its recent sequel The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999). One of his notable movies was the bleakly realistic crime story The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), starring Robert Mitchum, which Monash both produced and adapted from George V. Higgins's novel.

When he received the Laurel award in 2000, Monash commented, "I have not written the Great American Novel. It is still in its first draft." His final credit was the television movie Golden Spiders: a Nero Wolfe mystery (2000), a critically approved adaptation of the Rex Stout detective story.

Tom Vallance