Peter S. Fischer, ‘Murder, She Wrote’ Co-Creator and ‘Columbo’ Writer, Dies at 88
The crime-writing specialist and three-time Emmy nominee spent seven seasons on the Angela Lansbury starrer after working on 'Ellery Queen' and 'The Eddie Capra Mysteries.'
He was not on the list.
Peter S. Fischer, the late-blooming TV writer and producer who co-created Murder, She Wrote after serving on such other crime-solving series as Columbo, Baretta and Ellery Queen, has died. He was 88.
Fischer died Monday at a care facility in Pacific Grove, California, his grandson Jake McElrath announced.
He became a prolific novelist after he exited Hollywood, writing murder mysteries, of course.
Fischer, who had worked with Columbo co-creators Richard Levinson and William Link on the iconic Peter Falk series as well as on the Jim Hutton-starring Ellery Queen, accompanied the pair to a meeting with CBS executives in 1984, he recalled in a 2011 interview.
“CBS wanted to do a murder mystery and they called Dick, who was our ringleader. He said, ‘OK, I’ll bring the boys,'” Fischer said. “We went over there and pitched a premise called Blacke’s Magic, about a retired magician who solves mysteries. It became very apparent they didn’t want Blacke’s Magic.
“They were looking for a murder mystery with a female lead. They didn’t specify whether she should be old or young. We came up with the idea for Murder, She Wrote, which basically was Agatha Christie and Miss Marple sort of molded into one character — Jessica Fletcher.”
After being turned down by former All in the Family star Jean Stapleton, they approached three-time Oscar nominee Angela Lansbury about portraying Jessica, a retired English teacher, mystery writer and amateur detective.
Lansbury had never done a TV series but had another offer to topline a Norman Lear-produced show opposite Charles Durning, Fischer said. “She read [the scripts for] both of them over a weekend and decided to do ours,” he said.
Fischer penned the pilot episode, “The Murder of Sherlock Holmes,” which aired on Sept. 30, 1984, and wrote or co-wrote nearly three dozen episodes — and served as executive producer — during his seven-season tenure with the Universal Television drama.
Along the way, he received an Edgar Award and three Emmy nominations for outstanding drama series from 1985-87. (Murder, She Wrote infamously never won that top trophy or any major Emmy, for that matter.)
“I left after seven years because I didn’t know how, as a writer, to keep finding really fresh ideas,” he said in 2012. “I knew we could rehash old plots with different locales and different names and the ratings would hold up, but I would have been bored and we would have been shortchanging the audience.”
Murder, She Wrote, however, went five more seasons without him.
Born in 1935, Peter Steven Fischer studied drama at Johns Hopkins University and did summer stock but discovered “he was not an actor and decided to become a writer,” he said in 2011.
Fischer was 34, living on Long Island and editing and publishing a magazine called Sports Car News when he sent a movie he had written to his younger brother, Geoff, a casting director at Universal Studios.
“He said, ‘You know, this is pretty good, but the format — the form for a script — is completely wrong,'” he told the Monterey Herald in 2013. “So he sent me three Hollywood scripts to use as a guide and suggested I write something else.”
His second attempt would become ABC’s The Last Child, a 1971 Aaron Spelling-produced sci-fi telefilm that starred Michael Cole (The Mod Squad) and Janet Margolin and brought Fischer to Los Angeles in 1971 to pursue screenwriting as a profession.
He sold scripts for such series as Marcus Welby, M.D., Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law and Griff before one he wrote for Columbo became the third-season 1974 episode “Publish or Perish,” featuring guest stars Jack Cassidy and Mariette Hartley.
“Dick Levinson and Bill Link got on my bandwagon, and that was the beginning of a great relationship,” he said. He wrote and produced for the duo on another NBC show they developed, 1974-75’s Ellery Queen — like Jessica Fletcher, Hutton’s character was a crime-solving author, too — then joined Columbo as a story editor and writer.
In the ’70s, Fischer also wrote episodes of ABC’s Baretta, CBS’ Kojak and NBC’s McMillan & Wife and wrote and produced two high-profile miniseries for Universal/NBC: the nine-hour Once an Eagle, starring Sam Elliott, and the five-hour Black Beauty, starring Eileen Brennan and Martin Milner.
Fischer also created, produced and wrote the 1978-79 NBC series The Eddie Capra Mysteries, starring Vincent Baggetta.
Later, NBC wound up buying Blacke’s Magic, starring Hal Linden (as that magician) and Harry Morgan, though the midseason show lasted just 13 episodes in 1986.
Fischer also created the 1987-88 Murder, She Wrote spinoff The Law and Harry McGraw, starring Jerry Orbach and Barbara Babcock.
Several years after he quit Hollywood, Fischer became a full-time author, writing 2013’s Me and Murder, She Wrote and a series of 22 novels under a “Hollywood Murder Mysteries” banner that revolved around a studio press agent named Joe Bernardi. “Joe, like Jessica, has no business being involved in an actual murder,” he said.
The self-published whodunits begin in 1947, and readers encounter the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Jack Warner, Montgomery Clift, Billy Wilder, Robert Wagner and Falk on the pages.
“The famous people in my books — Bogart, or Cagney, or James Dean, or Jane Wyman, or Karl Malden — are peripheral characters,” said Fischer. “They don’t become killers, or suspects, or victims, but they are all integrated into the story, which, I think, makes it a lot of fun.”
He retired from Hollywood in 2002 and moved full-time to Pacific Grove four years later. Survivors include his children, Megan and Christopher, and grandchildren Peter, Nicholas, Samantha, Jake, Molly and Eden. His wife of nearly 60 years, Lucille, died in May 2017.
Filmography
Films
Year Film Credit Notes
1971 The Last Child Written By
1975 A Cry for Help Written By
1977 Charlie Cobb:
Nice Night for a Hanging Story
By, Screenplay By, Produced By Co-Wrote
Story with "Richard Levinson" and "William Link"
1979 Donovan's
Kid Story By
1981 Hellinger's
Law Story By, Screenplay By Co-Wrote screenplay with "Ted
Leighton" and "Jack Laird"
1991 Tagget Screenplay By Co-Wrote screenplay with "Janis Diamond" and "Richard
T. Heffron"
Stranger at My Door Written
By
1992 Coopersmith Written By
1995 Cops n Roberts Written By, Executive Producer
1996 Dead Man's
Island Screenplay By Based on the novel of the same name by
"Carolyn Hart"
Television
Year TV Series Credit Notes
1972-73 Marcus
Welby, M.D. Writer 3 Episodes
Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law Writer 2
Episodes
1973-74 Griff Writer 3 Episodes
1974-75 McMillan
& Wife Writer 3 Episodes
1974-95 Columbo Writer, Executive Producer, Executive
Story Consultant Multiple
Episodes
1975 Baretta Writer 1 Episode
Kojak Writer 1 Episode
1975-76 Ellery
Queen Writer, Producer 22 Episodes
1976 Delvecchio Writer 1
Episode
Once an Eagle Writer,
Producer 4 Episodes
1977-78 What
Really Happened to the Class of '65? Writer 2 Episodes
1978 Black Beauty Writer, Executive Producer
Richie Brockelman, Private Eye Writer, Producer 5
Episodes
1978-79 The
Eddie Capra Mysteries Writer,
Creator, Producer, Executive Producer 12
Episodes
1979 The Magical
World of Disney Writer 2 Episodes
1981-82 Darkroom Writer, Executive Producer
1984-96 Murder,
She Wrote Writer, Creator,
Executive Producer Multiple
Episodes
1986 Blacke's
Magic Writer, Executive
Producer 14 Episodes
1987-88 The
Law & Harry McGraw Writer,
Creator, Executive Producer
Novels
The Hollywood Murder Mysteries
Jezebel in Blue Satin (2010)
We Don't Need no Stinking Badges (2011)
Love Has Nothing to Do with It (2011)
Everybody Wants an Oscar (2012)
The Unkindness of Strangers (2012)
Nice Guys Finish Dead (2013)
Pray For Us Sinners (2013)
Has Anybody Here Seen Wyckham? (2013)
Eyewitness to Murder (2014)
A Deadly Shoot in Texas (2016)
Everybody Let's Rock (2016)
A Touch of Homicide (2016)
Some Like Em Dead (2016)
Dead Men Pay No Debts (2016)
Apple Annie and the Dude (2017)
Till Death Us Do Part (2017)
Cue the Crows (2017)
Murder Aboard the Highland Rose (2018)
Ashes to Ashes (2018)
The Case of the Shaggy Stalker (2018)
Warner's Last Stand (2018)
The Man in the Raincoat (2019)
Other novels
The Blood of Tyrants (2009)
The Terror of Tyrants (2010)
Expendable: A Tale of Love and War (2015)
No comments:
Post a Comment