Earl W. Wallace

Background

Earl W. Wallace was born on October 23, 1942, in Centralia, Illinois, the United States, to Edgar M. and Alice Wallace.

Education

Earl W. Wallace received a bachelor’s degree in literature.

Career

Earl W. Wallace began his career in the 1970s writing episodes of the hit CBS Western series Gunsmoke, one of which inspired him, his wife Pamela, and William Kelley to develop the screenplay for 1985 highly praised crime drama Witness. The screenplay, which Wallace co-wrote with William Kelley, was based on a story by those two writers and Pamela Wallace; the film, directed by Australian Peter Weir, starred Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis. Its striking premise combined two Pennsylvania subcultures that are usually worlds apart: the corrupt criminals and cops of Philadelphia and the Amish farmers, who renounce technology, of the state’s rural center.

The two cultures are first thrown together in a Philadelphia train station where Amish widow McGillis and her son, played by Lukas Haas, are in transit on a family visit. Going to the men’s room, young Haas witnesses a violent murder. At the police station, he identifies a Philadelphia cop’s photograph as that of the killer. Good-guy detective Ford, tackling the case, is wounded by a bullet and flees to Amish country both to recover and to protect his young witness. The corrupt cops follow, setting up a climactic shootout that brings to an end the tentative love interest that has blossomed between the Amish widow and the honest city cop.

Despite the successful effort for the big screen, Wallace’s bread and butter over the years has been the movie made for television, and in one memorable case, the miniseries. His television scripts have crossed genres, from full-length remakes of old network series (Baretta and Gunsmoke) to true crime (A Murderous Affair: The Carolyn Warmus Story) to historical romance (The Broken Chain). The Broken Chain, one of a series of TNT specials that updated the medium’s view of Native Americans, tells the story of the Iroquois League of northwestern New York State in the eighteenth century. It focuses on one historical figure, Joseph Brant, a Mohawk who went to England to be educated, and on British and French attempts to grab Iroquois land.

Another well-received television drama by Wallace was the Hallmark Hall of Fame special Rose Hill, based on a bestselling novel by Julie Garwood. Beginning in nineteenth-century New York City, where four orphan boys find an abandoned baby girl, the teleplay moves out west, where the youngsters grow up as successful cattle farmers in the face of much opposition. Noting the rather sentimental underpinnings of the story’s premise.

Most ambitious of Wallace’s television work has been his adaptation, with Herman Wouk and Dan Curtis, of Wouk’s blockbuster novel of World War II, War, and Remembrance. The ABC production was a major television event of the 1988-1989 season, and it was warmly praised by New York magazine.

Achievements

• For his work on Witness, Wallace won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay, and the Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay and the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay. He is the recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Television Script for How the West Was Won.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Borrowed Hearts

    (A struggling single mother who dreams of earning enough m...)

    1999
  • The Last Ride of the Dalton Gang

    (A light-hearted view of the Dalton Gang's legendary raid ...)

    1979
  • Witness

    (When a young Amish woman and her son get caught up in the...)

    1985
  • Gunsmoke:To the Last Man

    (Retired Marshal Matt Dillon tracks Arizona rustlers and l...)

    1992
  • The Broken Chain

    (The story of two Iroquois brothers caught in the midst of...)

    1993
  • A Murderous Affair

    (A married man meets a beautiful woman and they begin an a...)

  • Gunsmoke - The Last Apache

    (James Arness rides again as Matt Dillon, the U.S. Marshal...)

    1990

• TV series

  • War and Remembrance

    (The trials of the Henry and the Jastrow families amidst t...)

    1988

Connections

Earl W. Wallace was married to Pamela Wallace, but they eventually divorced. They had four children, Kimberly, Arra, Sara, and Christopher.

Spouse:

Pamela Wallace

Daughter:

Kimberly Wallsce

Daughter:

Arra Wallace

Daughter:

Sara Wallace

Son:

Christopher Wallace

colleague:

William Kelley

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 164
  1998