Stephen J. Cannell, 1941-2010
STEPHEN J. CANNELL, 1941-2010 Stephen J(oseph) Cannell was born February 5, 1941 to Joseph Cannell, a Pasadena, California entrepreneur. Cannell struggled through his early school years, flunking three different grades of elementary, junior or senior high school, and regularly failing his English classes. Years later, when having one of his own children tested for dyslexia, he discovered that he had suffered from it his entire life. Never the less, he had a passionate love for writing, despite his difficulties with the written word, and set a goal for himself to become a best-selling author. After attending the University of Oregon on a football scholarship and meeting creative writing teachers that bolstered his confidence, Cannell married his high school sweetheart and went to work for his family’s business – driving a furniture truck all day. In the evenings, he set a rigorous writing schedule for himself – writing 5 hours a day, 7 days a week, on spec. He decided that his target market would be the burgeoning television scene, and after 6 years without a sale, he finally sold a script – to the series Ironside. After a few more sales, he caught the eye of the legendary writer/producer Jack Webb, who first hired him to be story editor and ultimately head writer for Adam-12. Cannell was contracted to Universal Television, writing and producing shows for that studio during the early-to-mid 1970s. While there, he produced Chase and wrote for and produced Toma, about real-life New York City detective David Toma. While producing Toma, Cannell and his mentor Roy Huggins (creator of Maverick, and many other tv series) wrote an episode that ended up getting rewritten to serve as a pilot for a series about an unorthodox Southern California P.I.
[Show full text]