Gerry Day obit

Writer Gerry Day has died

She was not on the list.

Gerald Lallande Day was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Ruthy and Lenox Day. She was given her name not because her parents had wanted a boy but due to their Southern family name traditions.

Her father was the organist for the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. She watched Howard Hughes film the miniature dogfights for the 1930 film Hell's Angels in a lot behind her childhood home. Lana Turner was her escort and gave her a campus tour when Day first enrolled at Hollywood High School. Orson Welles once hypnotized her in his magic act at the Hollywood Canteen.

Day later attended and graduated from UCLA in 1944. She became a newspaper reporter for the Hollywood Citizen News, filing obituaries and writing reviews of plays. She took a radio drama-writing class, which led to her writing spec scripts for some local television programs at the time. Producer Frank Wisbar would later teach her how to write teleplays for his Fireside Theater, and she would later work for Screen Gems producer Irving Starr and Ford Theatre.

In the 1950s, Day would take a break and tour around Europe, while her mother at home would write her saying that she would love watching the new television shows featuring horses — Rawhide, Have Gun Will Travel and Wagon Train. In 1959, Day, who loved horses, met with Wagon Train producer Howard Christie, who let her write her own scripts, as well as doctor others, for the series. Day would also be an unofficial bookie for the series' crew, betting on horse races for them, and eventually becoming part owner of a racehorse.

She would become well-versed in the Western genre, writing for such series as Here Come the Brides, The High Chaparral, Tate, Temple Houston, The Virginian, The Big Valley, Tarzan, The Outcasts, The New Land, and Little House on the Prairie. She also wrote for such other series as Medical Center, My Friend Tony, Judd, for the Defense, Peyton Place, Marcus Welby, M.D., Dr. Kildare, Court Martial, Hawaii Five-O and Dennis the Menace. She sometimes used the pseudonym Jon Gerald.

Day co-wrote scripts with Bethel Leslie, an actress and head writer for the long-running soap opera The Secret Storm. They would write scripts for series such as Bracken's World, Matt Helm, The New Adventures of Perry Mason, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl and Barnaby Jones.

In 1967, Day was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for the Court Martial episode "Judge Them Gently". In 1980, Day was co-nominated for both a Saturn Award and a Hugo Award for the screenplay of the film The Black Hole.

Although she specialized in Westerns, Day wrote in all genres, and notched credits on some respectable dramas: Medical Center; My Friend Tony; Judd For the Defense.  Peyton Place was not a particularly agreeable experience, nor was Marcus Welby (puckishly, she took a male pseudonym, “Jon Gerald,” for her episode); but Dr. Kildare and Court Martial were treasured memories.  It was for Court Martial, a forgotten military drama, that she wrote her favorite script, a euthanasia story called “Judge Them Gently.”

She had a small part as Nitongu in the Patrick Dempsey version of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.