Richard Levinson
Richard Levinson · Arts & Literature
Co-creator of Columbo, Murder, She Wrote and Mannix; wrote That Certain Summer (1972) and The Execution of Private Slovik (1974)
7 August 1934, Philadelphia, United States — 12 March 1987, Los Angeles, United States
United States
Richard Levinson is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — Co-creator of Columbo, Murder, She Wrote and Mannix; wrote That Certain Summer (1972) and The Execution of Private Slovik (1974)
Origins and early life
Richard Leighton Levinson was born in Philadelphia on 7 August 1934 and met William Link on the first day of junior high school in 1946; the two were selling mystery stories to the Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock magazines while still teenagers, and their partnership lasted forty-three years, until Levinson's death.
Work and career
Together they created Columbo — the raincoated lieutenant first appeared in their 1968 television film Prescription: Murder — as well as Murder, She Wrote and Mannix, and put sixteen series on the air. They also wrote television films on subjects the networks avoided: That Certain Summer (1972) was the first sympathetic portrait of a gay couple on American television, and The Execution of Private Slovik (1974) launched Martin Sheen.
Recognition
They won two Emmy Awards, a Peabody, four Edgar Awards, two Golden Globes and the Writers Guild's Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award, and were inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. Writing in the Jewish Journal in 2011 about William Link's discovery of his own Jewish descent, Tom Teicholz records that everyone in Link's life — his best friend and writing partner, his wife, most of his colleagues — was Jewish; that partner was Levinson. He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on 12 March 1987, at fifty-two.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: Jewish Journal — Tom Teicholz, 22 February 2011
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Co-creator of Columbo, Murder, She Wrote and Mannix; wrote That Certain Summer (1972) and The Execution of Private Slovik (1974)
Source: Jewish Journal — Tom Teicholz, 22 February 2011
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