ROY HUGGINS

'Roy Huggins' (July 18, 1914 – April 3, 2002) was a novelist and an influential writer and producer of humorous, character-driven US television series. Shows he was involved in typically featured misfits and rascals rather than conventional heroes.
Huggins' novels include ''The Double Take'' (1946), ''Too Late For Tears'' (1947) and ''Lovely Lady, Pity Me'' (1949).
He is best known as the creator of long-running shows such as ''Maverick'', ''77 Sunset Strip'', ''The Fugitive'' and ''The Rockford Files''.
He also produced ''Alias Smith and Jones'' and ''Baretta'' and, after being lured out of retirement by protege Stephen J. Cannell, served for three years as the executive producer of ''Hunter''. Cannell said of Huggins' time on Hunter: "Roy was in the driver's seat where he belonged. Nobody does it better or with more style...Roy Huggins is my Godfather, my Hero and my Friend. They don't come any better."^[1]
Huggins often wrote under the pseudonym John Thomas James, a composite of the names of his three sons from his second marriage.
A member of the Communist Party USA until the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939, Huggins appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, where he named 19 former comrades who had already been named before the Committee.
Huggins was married to actress Adele Mara.

Contents

The "Huggins Contract"

External links

References

The "Huggins Contract"

At Warner Brothers television, Huggins was repeatedly denied credit and compensation as the creator of several television programs. Perhaps most famously, Jack Warner deliberately had the pilot to ''77 Sunset Strip'' screened briefly at movie theatres in the Caribbean in order to legally establish that the television series derived from a film, rather than, as was actually the case, several books and novellas Huggins had written in the 1940s. Since this was not the only occasion on which Warner had found a way to circumvent Huggins' creative rights, he left the studio soon thereafter.
Following this experience, he increasingly demanded ownership of all television concepts he authored. By the mid-1960s, he had distilled this demand into a standard part of all contracts into which he entered.
A notable early example of a show created under "the Huggins Contract" was ''The Fugitive''. Not only was the production carried out by Quinn Martin Productions, but he only gave limited television rights to Universal Studios. He reserved other rights, such as those he would later exercise to allow for a 1993 film.

External links

★ Thrilling Detective

★ The Caucus for Television Producers, Writers & Directors

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References

1. Steven J. Cannell obituary of Roy Huggins.