John Furia Jr. Dashboard Dashboard

John Furia Jr. wrote for several popular television series, such as Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, Dr. Kildare, Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, Hawaii Five-O, The Waltons, Kung Fu, and Arthur Hailey’s Hotel. He was the showrunner for series such as Kung Fu, John O’Hara’s Gibbsville, and The Dirty Dozen and wrote feature films for MGM, Columbia, and Universal. As producer and executive producer, he was responsible for many made-for-TV films, series, and mini-series such as The Blue Knight, The Intruder Within, Sidney Sheldon’s Rage of Angels, and The Sun Also Rises. In addition to his service to the WGAw, Furia was the founding vice president of the Humanitas Prize and a member of the executive committee, vice president of the Writers Guild Foundation, and served on the board of governors of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the board of directors of the National Captioning Institute. The founding chairman of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television writing division, Furia was a professor of writing for screen and television at the University of Southern California. Furia was born on August 16, 1929 in New York City and died on May 7, 2009 in Los Angeles.