Roy Huggins
Encyclopedia
Roy Huggins was an American novel
ist and an influential writer/creator and producer of character-driven television series, including Maverick
, The Fugitive
, and The Rockford Files
.
, 1935-41. After graduation, he worked as a special representative of the U.S. Civil Service
, 1941–43, and later as an industrial engineer, 1943-46.
When Columbia Pictures
purchased the rights to Huggins' novel The Double Take in 1948, Huggins signed a contract with the studio to adapt the script into the movie I Love Trouble
. From here he entered the movie industry, working as a contract writer at Columbia and RKO Pictures
. In 1952, he wrote and directed the film Hangman's Knot
, a Randolph Scott
western. Afterwards, he worked as a staff writer at Columbia until 1955.
Huggins moved to television in April 1955, when Warner Brothers hired him as a producer. He is best known as the creator of long-running shows such as Maverick
, 77 Sunset Strip
and The Fugitive
, all on ABC
.
Huggins left Warner Brothers and in October 1960 became the vice-president in charge of television production at 20th Century-Fox. In the 1961-1962 season, he created Bus Stop
, an ABC drama
based loosely on William Inge
's play of the same name, with Marilyn Maxwell
in the role of Grace Sherwood, owner of the bus station
and diner
in fictitious Sunrise, Colorado
.
In 1963, Huggins took a job as a vice president in the television division at Universal
, where he spent the next 18 years. At Universal, he co-created The Rockford Files
and produced The Virginian
, Alias Smith and Jones
and Baretta, among other series.
Later, after being lured out of retirement by protege Stephen J. Cannell
, he served for three years as the executive producer of Hunter. Cannell said of Huggins' time on Hunter: "Roy was in the driver's seat where he belonged. Nobody does it better or with more style...Roy Huggins is my Godfather, my Hero and my Friend. They don't come any better."
Huggins often wrote under the pseudonym John Thomas James
, a composite of the names of his three sons from his second marriage.
A member of the Communist Party USA
until the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939, Huggins appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee
in 1952, where he named 19 former comrades who had already been named before the Committee.
Huggins was married to artist Bonnie Porter and later to actress Adele Mara
.
deliberately had the pilot to
77 Sunset Strip
screened briefly at movie theatres in the Caribbean
in order to legally establish that the television series derived from a film, rather than, as was actually the case, several books and novellas Huggins had written in the 1940s. Since this was not the only occasion on which Warner had found a way to circumvent Huggins' creative rights, he left the studio soon thereafter.
Following this experience, he increasingly demanded ownership of all television concepts he authored. By the mid-1960s, he had distilled this demand into a standard part of all contracts into which he entered.
A notable early example of a show created under 'the Huggins Contract' was The Fugitive
. Not only was the production carried out by Quinn Martin
, but he only gave limited television rights to United Artists Television
. He reserved other rights, such as those he would later exercise to allow for a 1993 film
.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist and an influential writer/creator and producer of character-driven television series, including Maverick
Maverick (TV series)
Maverick is a western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and stars James Garner as Bret Maverick, a cagey, articulate cardsharp. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother...
, The Fugitive
The Fugitive (TV series)
The Fugitive is an American drama series produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1967. David Janssen stars as Richard Kimble, a doctor from the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana, who is falsely convicted of his wife's murder and given the death...
, and The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files is an American television drama series which aired on the NBC network between September 13, 1974 and January 10, 1980. It has remained in regular syndication to the present day. The show stars James Garner as Los Angeles-based private investigator Jim Rockford and features Noah...
.
Education and pre-Hollywood employment
Huggins was educated at the University of CaliforniaUniversity of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
, 1935-41. After graduation, he worked as a special representative of the U.S. Civil Service
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
, 1941–43, and later as an industrial engineer, 1943-46.
Novels and TV series
Huggins' novels include The Double Take (1946), Too Late For Tears (1947) and Lovely Lady, Pity Me (1949).When Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
purchased the rights to Huggins' novel The Double Take in 1948, Huggins signed a contract with the studio to adapt the script into the movie I Love Trouble
I Love Trouble (1948 film)
I Love Trouble is a film noir written by Roy Huggins from his first novel The Double Take, directed by S. Sylvan Simon, and starring Franchot Tone as Stuart Bailey. The character of Stuart Baily was later portrayed by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr...
. From here he entered the movie industry, working as a contract writer at Columbia and RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chains and Joseph P...
. In 1952, he wrote and directed the film Hangman's Knot
Hangman's Knot
Hangman's Knot is a 1952 western movie written and directed by Roy Huggins and starring Randolph Scott and Donna Reed.-Plot:Matt Stewart leads an ambush and robbery of a military gold train. It is 1865 in Nevada and Major Stewart's band is a unit of Rebels...
, a Randolph Scott
Randolph Scott
Randolph Scott was an American film actor whose career spanned from 1928 to 1962. As a leading man for all but the first three years of his cinematic career, Scott appeared in a variety of genres, including social dramas, crime dramas, comedies, musicals , adventure tales, war films, and even a few...
western. Afterwards, he worked as a staff writer at Columbia until 1955.
Huggins moved to television in April 1955, when Warner Brothers hired him as a producer. He is best known as the creator of long-running shows such as Maverick
Maverick (TV series)
Maverick is a western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and stars James Garner as Bret Maverick, a cagey, articulate cardsharp. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother...
, 77 Sunset Strip
77 Sunset Strip
77 Sunset Strip is an hour-length American television private detective series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes....
and The Fugitive
The Fugitive (TV series)
The Fugitive is an American drama series produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1967. David Janssen stars as Richard Kimble, a doctor from the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana, who is falsely convicted of his wife's murder and given the death...
, all on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
.
Huggins left Warner Brothers and in October 1960 became the vice-president in charge of television production at 20th Century-Fox. In the 1961-1962 season, he created Bus Stop
Bus Stop (TV series)
Bus Stop is a 26-episode drama which aired on ABC from October 1, 1961, until March 25, 1962, starring Marilyn Maxwell as Grace Sherwood, the owner of a bus station and diner in the fictitious town of Sunrise in the Colorado Rockies...
, an ABC drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
based loosely on William Inge
William Inge
William Motter Inge was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s, he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, and one of these, Picnic, earned him a Pulitzer Prize...
's play of the same name, with Marilyn Maxwell
Marilyn Maxwell
Marilyn Maxwell , born Marvel Marilyn Maxwell, was an American actress and entertainer.Noted for her blonde hair and sexually alluring persona, she appeared in several films and radio programs, and entertained the troops during World War II and the Korean War on USO tours with Bob Hope.-Career:She...
in the role of Grace Sherwood, owner of the bus station
Bus station
A bus station is a structure where city or intercity buses stop to pick up and drop off passengers. It is larger than a bus stop, which is usually simply a place on the roadside, where buses can stop...
and diner
Diner
A diner, also spelled dinor in western Pennsylvania is a prefabricated restaurant building characteristic of North America, especially in the Midwest, in New York City, in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey, and in other areas of the Northeastern United States, although examples can be found throughout...
in fictitious Sunrise, Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
.
In 1963, Huggins took a job as a vice president in the television division at Universal
Universal Television
Universal Television is the television production arm of the NBCUniversal Television Group, and by extension, the NBC television network...
, where he spent the next 18 years. At Universal, he co-created The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files is an American television drama series which aired on the NBC network between September 13, 1974 and January 10, 1980. It has remained in regular syndication to the present day. The show stars James Garner as Los Angeles-based private investigator Jim Rockford and features Noah...
and produced The Virginian
The Virginian (TV series)
The Virginian is an American Western television series starring James Drury and Doug McClure, which aired on NBC from 1962 to 1971 for a total of 249 episodes. Filmed in color, The Virginian became television's first 90-minute western series...
, Alias Smith and Jones
Alias Smith and Jones
Alias Smith and Jones is an American Western series that originally aired on ABC from 1971 to 1973. It stars Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy as Jedediah "Kid" Curry, a pair of Western cousin outlaws trying to reform...
and Baretta, among other series.
Later, after being lured out of retirement by protege Stephen J. Cannell
Stephen J. Cannell
Stephen Joseph Cannell was an American television producer, writer, novelist and occasional actor, and the founder of Stephen J. Cannell Productions.-Early life:...
, he served for three years as the executive producer of Hunter. Cannell said of Huggins' time on Hunter: "Roy was in the driver's seat where he belonged. Nobody does it better or with more style...Roy Huggins is my Godfather, my Hero and my Friend. They don't come any better."
Huggins often wrote under the pseudonym John Thomas James
John Thomas James
John Thomas James was a Church of England bishop. He was bishop of Calcutta from 1827 to 1828. He was an avid traveler and co-authored books on Northern Europe and the Middle East....
, a composite of the names of his three sons from his second marriage.
A member of the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
until the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939, Huggins appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
in 1952, where he named 19 former comrades who had already been named before the Committee.
Huggins was married to artist Bonnie Porter and later to actress Adele Mara
Adele Mara
Adele Mara , born Adelaide Delgado, was an American actress, singer and dancer who appeared in films during the 1940s and 1950s. During the 1940s, the blond actress was also a popular pinup girl....
.
'The Huggins Contract'
At Warner Brothers television, Huggins was repeatedly denied credit and compensation as the creator of several television programs. Perhaps most famously, Jack WarnerJack Warner
Jack Leonard "J. L." Warner , born Jacob Warner in London, Ontario, was a Canadian American film executive who was the president and driving force behind the Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California...
deliberately had the pilot to
Girl on the Run
For the Victoria Silvstedt album, see Girl on the Run .Girl on the Run is a 1958 private detective film starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Erin O'Brien and Edd Byrnes. The film is in truth, although not legal fact, based on characters and situations created by writer Roy Huggins in a series of 1940s...
77 Sunset Strip
77 Sunset Strip
77 Sunset Strip is an hour-length American television private detective series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes....
screened briefly at movie theatres in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
in order to legally establish that the television series derived from a film, rather than, as was actually the case, several books and novellas Huggins had written in the 1940s. Since this was not the only occasion on which Warner had found a way to circumvent Huggins' creative rights, he left the studio soon thereafter.
Following this experience, he increasingly demanded ownership of all television concepts he authored. By the mid-1960s, he had distilled this demand into a standard part of all contracts into which he entered.
A notable early example of a show created under 'the Huggins Contract' was The Fugitive
The Fugitive (TV series)
The Fugitive is an American drama series produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1967. David Janssen stars as Richard Kimble, a doctor from the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana, who is falsely convicted of his wife's murder and given the death...
. Not only was the production carried out by Quinn Martin
Quinn Martin
Quinn Martin was one of the most successful American television producers. He had at least one television series running in prime time for 21 straight years , an industry record.-Early life:...
, but he only gave limited television rights to United Artists Television
United Artists Television
-Background:UA purchased Associated Artists Productions in 1958, giving UA access to the pre-1950 Warner Bros. library and the Popeye cartoons made by Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios between 1933 and 1957....
. He reserved other rights, such as those he would later exercise to allow for a 1993 film
The Fugitive (1993 film)
The Fugitive is a 1993 American thriller film based on the television series of the same name. The film was directed by Andrew Davis and stars Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. The film was one of the few movies associated with a television series to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best...
.