Allan Everett Sloane (June 14, 1914 – April 29, 2001) was an American writer for radio and television. His career was significantly affected by the

Hollywood blacklist The Hollywood blacklist was an entertainment industry blacklist, broader than just Hollywood, put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War. The blacklist involved the practice of denying empl ...

Early life

He was born to Benjamin and Rachel Wisansky Silverman in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and grew up in New Jersey. After completing college in 1936, he became a newspaper journalist, writing for the ''Cape Cod Colonial'', '' Parade'', and the '' Philadelphia Bulletin''. Prior to serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Sloane began writing scripts for radio, including service-action shows like ''The Man Behind the Gun'' (for which he dramatized the Allied landing on Sicily the day after the invasion, winning a 1943 Peabody Award), ''Top Secret'', and ''Indictment''. Sloane also wrote scripts for United Nations Radio and the United Jewish Appeal after the war, focusing on displaced persons in Europe.

Blacklisted

In November 1952, he was blacklisted by

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

, which stopped all his radio script-work. Sloane appeared as a voluntary "friendly witness" for the House Un-American Activities Committee on January 13, 1954. For several decades thereafter, he used the pseudonym ''Ellison Carroll'' to avoid blacklist-related publicity. His early radio work with actor

Irving Pichel Irving Pichel (June 24, 1891 – July 13, 1954) was an American actor and film director, who won acclaim both as an actor and director in his Hollywood career. Career Pichel was born to a Jewish family in Pittsburgh. He attended Pittsburgh Cent ...

led to a job as researcher for the 1953 film

Martin Luther Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation and the namesake of Lutherani ...

, for which he shared a nomination for the 1954 Writers' Guild ''Best American Drama'' with Lothar Wolff.

Television Writer

He began writing episodes for television series in 1954-55, among them Crossroads, and Navy Log. He is credited with creating the 1966 series '' Hawk'', which featured Burt Reynolds as the title character, as well as guest appearances by Gene Hackman,

Robert Duvall Robert Selden Duvall (; born January 5, 1931) is an American actor and filmmaker. His career spans more than seven decades and he is considered one of the greatest American actors of all time. He is the recipient of an Academy Award, four Gold ...

, and Diane Baker. During the 1960s, he was well-enough considered to be asked to write the TV adaptation of Johnny Belinda, as well as scripts for TV theatre. Much of Sloane's later writing was longer-form shows (1+ hours) dealing with the situations of special individuals, including autism (''And James Was A Very Small Snail''), Downs' syndrome (''This Is My Son'', and ''Emily, Emily''), displaced persons (''Eleven Memory Street''), gifted children (''Sit Down and Shut Up, or Get Out''), and sickle-cell anemia (''To All My Friends On Shore'').

Recognition

Under his pseudonym ''Ellison Carroll'', he was nominated for an Emmy for his 1963 Breaking Point screenplay ''And James Was A Very Small Snail''; and again in 1969 for the Hallmark Hall of Fame (episode 81) ''Teacher, Teacher''. In 1972, he won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Drama (Original Teleplay) with ''

To All My Friends on Shore ''To All My Friends On Shore'' is a 1972 television film drama starring Bill Cosby, and co-starring Gloria Foster. Cosby not only starred in the film, but produced it and worked on the film's music. Plot Blue (Cosby) works as a skycap for an airpor ...

''. His papers are held in the Hargrett Library at the

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

. Recordings of a number of his radio shows, and some lectures are maintained in the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Collection, also at the University of Georgia.

Personal life

Post-war, Sloane lived on Long Island, and commuted to New York (although he shared a small apartment in Manhattan with fellow-writer

Alvin Boretz Alvin Boretz (June 15, 1919 – July 22, 2010) was an American prolific writer for stage, screen, radio, and television. With an estimated one thousand dramatic scripts to his credit, Boretz contributed to the Golden Age of Television. Biography ...

). He soon moved his family to

New Canaan, Connecticut New Canaan () is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 20,622 according to the 2020 census. About an hour from Manhattan by train, the town is considered part of Connecticut's Gold Coast. The town is bound ...

, where he lived for much of his professional life. He and his wife Elouise had three sons (one of whom was autistic).Allan Sloane, 86, A Writer for TV, Radio and Films - The New York Times
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sloane, Allen 1914 births 2001 deaths Primetime Emmy Award winners American radio writers American television writers United States Army personnel of World War II 20th-century American screenwriters