Paul Erickson (22 November 1920 – 27 October 1991) was a British screenwriter, most active in the 1950s and 1960s.

Career

Erickson contributed generally single episodes to a wide variety of

British television Regular television broadcasts in the United Kingdom started in 1936 as a public service which was free of advertising, which followed the first demonstration of a transmitted moving image in 1926. Currently, the United Kingdom has a collection ...

shows, most typically of the

crime drama Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine ...

genre, although he did occasionally generate

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

scripts. In the 1950s, he would have generally been considered a

B movie A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...

telemovie A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for ...

writer, offering theatrical audiences such work as ''

Track the Man Down ''Track the Man Down'' is a 1955 British drama film directed by R. G. Springsteen, and starring Kent Taylor, Petula Clark, and George Rose.Martin p. 207 The melodramatic crime caper centers on a robbery at a greyhound racetrack that results ...

'', ''

Secret Venture ''Secret Venture'' is a 1955 British B-movie thriller film directed by R. G. Springsteen and starring Kent Taylor, Jane Hylton and Kathleen Byron. Plot Renowned scientist Professor Henrik (Hugo Schuster) returns to England from a working trip o ...

'', and ''

Three Steps to the Gallows ''Three Steps to the Gallows'', released in the United States as ''White Fire'', is a 1953 British crime film directed by John Gilling and starring Scott Brady, Mary Castle and Gabrielle Brune. The film, essentially a British second feature, is ...

''. By the 1960s, however, his work was almost exclusively for episodic and anthologic television. He sold three scripts for the third season of ''

The Saint The Saint may refer to: Fiction * Simon Templar, also known as "The Saint", the protagonist of a book series by Leslie Charteris and subsequent adaptations: ** ''The Saint'' (film series) (1938–43), starring Louis Hayward, George Sanders an ...

'', adapted

William Tenn William Tenn was the pseudonym of Philip Klass (May 9, 1920 – February 7, 2010), a British-born American science fiction author, notable for many stories with satirical elements. Biography Born to a Jewish family in London, Phillip Klass mo ...

's short story, "

Time in Advance ''Time in Advance'' (no ISBN) is a collection of four noveletes by American science fiction writer William Tenn (a pseudonym of Philip Klass). The stories all originally appeared in a number of different publications between 1952 and 1957. ''Time ...

", for ''

Out of the Unknown ''Out of the Unknown'' is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Most episodes of the first three series were a dramatisation of a science f ...

'', wrote '' The Ark'' for ''

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the u ...

'', and contributed to '' The Inside Man'' and ''

Paul Temple Paul Temple is a fictional character created by English writer Francis Durbridge. Temple is a professional author of crime fiction and an amateur private detective. With his wife Louise, affectionately known as 'Steve' in reference to her jo ...

''. In the 1980s he

novelised A novelization (or novelisation) is a derivative novel that adapts the story of a work created for another medium, such as a film, TV series, stage play, comic book or video game. Film novelizations were particularly popular before the advent ...

his ''Doctor Who'' story ''The Ark'' for

Target Books Target Books was a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became well ...

Personal life

In 1951, he married Gemma Vitale/Sighe. Is it possibly she was Lesley Scott, who received screen credit for co-writing ''The Ark''? Later on in 1986, Erickson married Monica Baker.Deadpool Detective Work - Page 7 - DeathList Forum
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Selected filmography

* ''

The Green Carnation ''The Green Carnation'' is a novel by Robert Hichens that was first published anonymously in 1894. A satire on contemporary champions of the Aesthetic Movement, it was withdrawn briefly after the scandal of the Oscar Wilde trial in the follo ...

'' (1954) * ''

Kill Her Gently ''Kill Her Gently'' is a 1957 British thriller film directed by Charles Saunders and starring Griffith Jones, Maureen Connell and Marc Lawrence. Plot A motorist picks up two convicts who have just escaped from prison. He recognises the men fro ...

'' (1957) * ''

Night of the Prowler ''Night of the Prowler'' is a 1962 British crime thriller film directed by Francis Searle and starring Patrick Holt, Colette Wilde and John Horsley.Chibnall and McFarlane, p.154 It was shot at Shepperton Studios. The film's sets were designed b ...

'' (1962)

References

External links

* * 1920 births 1991 deaths 20th-century British novelists British science fiction writers British television writers Welsh science fiction writers 20th-century British screenwriters {{sf-writer-stub