William Link
| William Link | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 15, 1933 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, producer |
William Theodore Link (born December 15, 1933) is an American film and television writer and producer who often worked in collaboration with Richard Levinson.
Link was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Elsie (née Roerecke) and William Theodore Link, a textile broker. His mother had German Huguenot heritage, while his father did not know his heritage. Link discovered late in life that his father's parents were Jewish. Link's niece Amy examined a suitcase William Theodore Link had left to his son, which they had kept in their attic; she opened it in 2011, and it turned out to contain genealogical research and evidence done by William Theodore Link during World War II. Amy had discovered that Link's paternal grandparents were Jews. Link earned a degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business prior to serving in the United States Army from 1956 to 1958.
William Link and Richard Levinson met on their first day of junior high school. Each had enjoyed doing magic tricks, and other students repeatedly mentioned to each of them that they should meet. They began writing together soon after. They sold their first short story, "Whistle While You Work", to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which published it in the November, 1954, issue. They co-created and sometimes produced such TV series as Columbo, Mannix, Ellery Queen, and Murder, She Wrote.
They also collaborated on several made-for-TV movies, including The Gun, My Sweet Charlie, That Certain Summer, The Judge and Jake Wyler, The Execution of Private Slovik, Charlie Cobb: A Nice Night for a Hanging, and Blacke's Magic; the last, which starred Hal Linden and Harry Morgan, was also developed into a short-lived TV series. The partners collaborated, as well, on two feature films: The Hindenburg (1975) and Rollercoaster (1977). Other collaborations for the small screen included the teleplay of an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour entitled "Day of Reckoning" (original air date November 22, 1962), which was based on a novel by John Garden. Levinson and Link occasionally used the pseudonym "Ted Leighton", most notably on the telefilm Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You (1971), where their work was substantially rewritten by other hands, and on Columbo when they came up with stories to be scripted by their collaborators.
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