Leigh Chapman

Leigh Chapman (March 29, 1939 – November 4, 2014) was an American actress and screenwriter. She began her career in acting during the 1960s, notably in a recurring role as Sarah Johnson, a secretary in the NBC television series, ''The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'', 1965.

Chapman transitioned to a career in screen and scriptwriting from the 1960s to the 1990s. She focused on writing for action-adventure films, an unusual genre for women scriptwriters in Hollywood during the 1970s. ''The Hollywood Reporter'' called Chapman "a pioneering female screenwriter in the action-adventure genre." Her screenwriting credits included '' Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry'' in 1974 and ''The Octagon'' in 1980.

Biography

Early life

Chapman was born Rosa Lee Chapman in 1939 in Kannapolis, North Carolina. She graduated from Winthrop College (now called Winthrop University), located in Rock Hill, South Carolina. She married right out of college, and her husband wanted to be an actor, so they relocated to Los Angeles during the early 1960s. She initially hired for her first job as a secretary for an attorney at the William Morris Agency, a major Hollywood talent agency. Her marriage ended after a year but she stayed at the agency. She was dating a writer, Ed Lakso, which got her interested in writing. Agents at the William Morris Agency suggested her secretarial position led to her early acting roles.THE GIRL FROM U. N. C. L. E: Leigh Chapman Also Can Write--and Sell--Her Scripts...
Korman, Seymour. Chicago Tribune 19 June 1965: d3.

Hollywood beginnings

Chapman got interested in acting and began to take classes and do auditions. In April 1963 she joined the cast of a stage production of ''Come Blow Your Horn''. She began to get television work as well, appearing in episodes of '' The Eleventh Hour'', ''McHale's Navy'', '' Burke's Law'', and '' Ripcord'' as well as the feature '' Law of the Lawless'' (1963). She had another stage success when she joined the cast of a production of ''Under the Yum Yum Tree'' in early 1964. She appeared in ''Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre'', ''Combat!'', ''Dr. Kildare'', and ''The Wild Wild West''.

Chapman wanted to write and did a "spec" episode of ''Burke's Law'' which they liked and bought, launching her writing career. She would write several episodes of the show. Chapman wrote the feature ''A Swingin' Summer'' (1965). Following this she was signed to write three features for writer-producer Norman Maurer’s unit at Columbia, ''20,000 Bikinis Under the Sea'', ''That Loving Feeling'' and ''It’s a Tuf Life'', but the beach party fad ended before any were produced. She alternated between acting and writing, having a semi regular role on ''The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'', playing the secretary of Napoleon Solo.

She also appeared in ''Iron Horse'', ''Occasional Wife'', ''The Professionals'' (in 1966), and ''The Monkees''. She wrote episodes of ''My Favorite Martian'', '' Mission: Impossible'', and ''The Wild Wild West''. She said "I loved doing ''Wild Wild West'', because it was outrageous. The guy I always had the story conferences with, Henry Sharp, he was so much fun, and lively." She remembered on ''Mission Impossible'' "at the end, the, quote, clever thing was that the villains were at point A and trying to get to point B, and you wanted them to go to point C, and so you just switched the road signs and they ended up at point C."

In 1967 she wrote ''Kings X'' for producer Albert S. Ruddy. She helped write a pilot, ''Where the Girls Are'' (1968), and appeared in another one, ''Land's End'', with Desi Arnaz, an experience she hated so much it made her decide to quit acting.She'd Rather Switch Than Starve Henniger, Paul. Los Angeles Times 2 June 1967: d28.

She wrote episodes of '' It Takes a Thief'', and ''Mod Squad''. She did an unproduced feature, ''Occam’s Razor'' (1969), for a company she formed with Harley Hatcher, Har-Leigh. The film was not made. She was also mentored by Howard Hawks. "Plot, or structure, really, is my weakness," she said later. "But dialogue is my strong suit."

Chapman then decided to drop out and live in Hawaii for a year.

Action films

When she returned from Hawaii she decided not to work in TV and to focus on features. Chapman wrote an early treatment for ''Truck Turner'' (1974). She wrote the unproduced ''Blackfather'' (1974) for producer Norman T. Herman. She was hired to rewrite a script, ''Pursuit'' which became ''Dirty Mary Crazy Larry'' (1974), a huge success. She also wrote '' How Come Nobody's on Our Side?'' (1974), less widely seen. She sold a spec script to Dino De Laurentiis, ''Detroit Boogie'' (1974) and did a prison film, ''The Tin Walls'' (1975) for Robert Ellis Miller. Neither was made.

Chapman later said she drifted to action films because there were "just my temperament. I couldn’t write a romantic comedy or a chick flick or a love story if my life epended on it I mean, I could write a love story, but it would have to be like a Casablanca type of love story, and some people would have to die. I mean, I daresay, if I analyze this – and I have – growing up the way I did, that my alter ego is male. Because I decided very early on that guys got to have all the fun. I mean, women, what did they do? They fall in love, they get married, they have kids. There are exceptional women in this world, yes there are. But when I was growing up, they were just totally boring... I like larger-than-life characters who do dangerous, heroic things. And that, to me, means men."

Chapman wrote some scripts in the late 1970s — ''The Laconia Incident'' (1977), ''Felonious Laughter'' (1978), ''Rhintestone Heights'' and ''Motordrome Project'' (1980) — that were not filmed. She wrote scripts for ''Steel'' (1979), and ''Boardwalk'' (1979). She wrote the story and script for ''The Octagon'' (1980) with Chuck Norris. She wrote the script for '' King of the Mountain'' (1981) and did an uncredited rewrite on '' ...All the Marbles'' (1981). In 1982, she pitched an idea for a female remake of ''The Fountainhead'', but it was not made.

Chapman wrote ''Impulse'' (1990), directed by Sondra Locke and produced by Ruddy. She wrote '' Storm and Sorrow''(1990) based on her own novel. In the early 1990s, she wrote a script for Jean-Claude Van Damme that was not made. Chapman wrote the pilot for ''Walker, Texas Ranger'' (1993) starring Norris but had an unhappy experience and left the show after only writing a few episodes. She did an early draft of what became ''An Eye for an Eye'' (1996.Vigilante novel to befilmed: inal EditionThe Province; Vancouver, B.C. ancouver, B.C5 Aug 1993: B5.

Chapman appeared in the 2001 USA Network television film '' After the Storm''.

Later life and death

Chapman picked up underwater photography during her later life. An exhibition of her aquatic photographs was held at Calumet Photography in Hollywood in 2011. Chapman died at her home in West Hollywood on November 4, 2014, at the age of 75. She had been diagnosed with cancer eight months before. She never remarried, but among the men she dated were Robert Vaughn and Harlan Ellison.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Chapman, Leigh
1939 births
2014 deaths
American television actresses
Screenwriters from California
American television writers
Winthrop University alumni
People from West Hollywood, California
People from Kannapolis, North Carolina
20th-century American actresses
Screenwriters from North Carolina
American women television writers
American women screenwriters
21st-century American women