Irve Tunick

Irve Tunick was born on July 27, 1912, in New York City.{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=1987-09-10 |title=Irve Tunick Dies at 75; Led TV Writers' Group |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/10/obituaries/irve-tunick-dies-at-75-led-tv-writers-group.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150524211049/https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/10/obituaries/irve-tunick-dies-at-75-led-tv-writers-group.html |archive-date=2015-05-24 |access-date=2025-05-17 |website=The New York Times}} He attended Georgetown University in Washington D.C., and later New York University in New York City

File:Irve Tunick as a child.jpg

Tunick first started his career writing for radio in the continuity department for the radio station WINS.{{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}} While there he worked on a popular children's radio series Cowboy Tom's Roundup.{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=108}} In August 1938 at only twenty-six years old, Tunick was hired to work in the Office of Education for the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C.{{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}} He was hired to help on a series that was originally called Government at Work (but would later be retitled Democracy in Action), and he went on to work on other programs for the government including The World is Yours (1936–1940), Gallant American Women (1940), and Freedom's People (1942).{{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}}

In 1938, United States Commissioner of Education John Ward Studebaker hired Tunick to work on the new radio program funded by the government that was intended to explain the befits of the Federal government of the United States to the people.{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=108}} In Fall 1938, Tunick worked on draft scripts that discussed the Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget), the Federal Reserve, and the Social Security system.{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=108}} Commissioner Studebaker was reported as thinking highly of Tunick's work with an internal report stating "[Studebaker] is particularly pleased with Tunick's work and he will concentrate on the Gov't series. The first 20 of 150 or more. That's our idea anyway."{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=108}}

The show went through a variety of changes during the course of production. Originally named "Government at Work", the showrunners thought of retitling it "Making Democracy Work" given the threat to democracy during the late 1930s with one person explaining that government "is a cold word" that "conveys the notion of control whereas 'democracy' in addition to being a warm word conveys the idea of participation".{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=108}} Later, the show was internally called "Of the People" with a new objective of the show being to show off the benefits of democracy in comparison to "dictatorship".{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=108}} The direction of the show was changed again when it was intended to be incorporated into exhibits related to the 1939 New York World's Fair with the new direction of the show being a way to show off the government's ability to help its citizens, but due to logistical difficulties the show could not be incorporated into the exhibits.{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=109}} CBS rejected the proposed name "Of the People" for the show and as a result, the creators of the show debated over thirty other proposed names including: "Democracy Must Be Heard, "Let the People Speak", "The People—Yes!" "Democracy—For Life!", "Blessings of Liberty", "United We Stated", and "More Perfect Union."{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=109}} At the end it was retitled "Democracy in Action" and it was reported that President Franklin D. Roosevelt even favored the name: "[I] checked directly with the President concerning the title and was pleased to learn that he was already familiar with our cooperative plan and in favor of the title 'Democracy in Action.'"{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=110}} Tunick ended up leaving the project after his contract ended in March 1939 and was replaced by Merrill Denison, a well known radio dramatist who had worked in the United States and Canada.{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=109}} The show garnered critical success during its run.{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=110}}

After leaving Democracy in Action, Tunick went on to work on "The World Is Yours" where he gained a reputation as a good scriptwriter for radio.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=72}} This radio program was sponsored by the Office of Education and the Smithsonian Institution and broadcast on CBS as a weekly thirty-minute radio show that aired Sunday afternoons from June 7, 1936, to May 10, 1942, as part of the Educational Radio Project, funded by the Works Progress Administration.{{cite web | title=Preserving "The World Is Yours" | website=Smithsonian Institution Archives | date=2020-01-23 | url=https://siarchives.si.edu/blog/preserving-%E2%80%9C-world-yours%E2%80%9D | access-date=2020-01-27}}{{cite journal |last1=Boutwell |first1=William Dow |last2=Seelye |first2=Dorothea |title=The Radio World Is Yours |journal=The Phi Delta Kappan |date=March 1939 |volume=21 |issue=7 |pages=345–347 |jstor=20258905 }}

In the early 1940s, Ambrose Caliver, a Black official in the Office of Education, reached out to Tunick who was then "one of the most respected and successful scriptwriters in educational radio" to assist with creating Freedom's People, a broadcast by NBC from 1941 to 1942 that explored this history and culture of African Americans to further shore up support for Civil Rights.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=15}} Although Tunick was not Black and the show was focused on being a radio show that was produced and performed by Blacks, he was still recruited because of his expertise in writing "inventive and lively scripts" and his "skills as a professional educational scriptwriter".{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=72}}

Tunick wasn't clear on how to approach the subject of creating a radio broadcast that would showcase the history of Black Americans, their quest for Civil Rights, and supporting some themes of the show including Christianity and democracy.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=72}} Tunick at times "struggled to work and help craft a story that included aspects with both ideas of slavery and Christian democracy".{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=95}}

Early on there was a concern that Frank Wilson, who would be the narrator for the show, sounded too much like a white man and this would undercut the argument that the program was being produced and performed by Blacks to showcase achievements in the Black community.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=73-74}} One advisor to the show explained the concern that the audience could not see who was producing the show so getting the sound right was very important: "Since we do not have television we depend upon our ears and not our eyes."{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=73-74}} Tunick helped coach Frank Wilson on how to sound more like a member of the Black community and not "too much like a white man" in his radio broadcasts to appease the concerns of the producers.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=74}} Tunick also helped integrate music into all of the programing, which helped make it more effective.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=76}}

After Tunick drafted the scripts, they would be reviewed by members of an Advisory Committee in Washington D.C. that included Ambrose Caliver along with others from the Southern Education Foundation, a local school principal, and Joseph R. Houchins, an expert in statistics at the United States Census Bureau.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=73-74}} This advisory committee helped review the scripts to ensure that they accurately discussed the African American community as was claimed.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=73-74}} At the time, it was a rare to have Blacks be involved in such an involved way in the production of the show, and this separated it from other programs at the time.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=73-74}}

Caliver believed that it was important to have a popular first show in order to sustain the series so he decided to focus the first show to how Black culture had contributed to music rather than focus the first show on the contributions to science and discovery.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=74-75}} Tunick wrote the first script for the show and it "exceeded the expectations of many committee members."{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=74-75}} Some were "pleasantly surprised at the social punch of the script" and impressed with the fact that the show had "'much more social value' than anything he had ever heard on the air".{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=74-75}} The first show was broadcast in November 1941, and the show would run until 1942.{{sfn|Savage|1999|p=74-75}}

File:Irve Tunick as an adult.jpg

In 1942, Tunick left the government and organized a production company with Robert L. Cotton.{{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}} After World War II, Tunick returned to New York City. After leaving the government, Tunick wrote on such radio programs as: Towards a Better World (1943–1944), The American School of the Air (1944–1945), CBS Is There (1947–1948), The Eternal Light (1947–1950), You are There (1947–1950) and Cavalcade of America (1949–1953).{{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}}

By 1949, Tunick estimated that he had written about 700 to 800 scripts for radio with about one per week for the past 15 years.{{cite magazine|title=Radio's Assembly Line |magazine=Practical English |volume=6 |issue=10|date=April 13, 1949 |publisher=Scholastic Inc. |pages=11 |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_scholastic-voice_1949-04-13_6_10/page/n10/mode/1up?q=%E2%80%9CIrve+Tunick%E2%80%9D |access-date=2025-05-24}} Tunick then began writing scripts for the television industry and later scripts for movies.

Transitioning to television in the 1950s, Tunick wrote for several series, including Armstrong Circle Theatre (1955–1963), Studio One (1951–1952), Combat! (1966),The Bold Ones, Bonanza, Ironside, and The F.B.I.

While working on scripts for Armstrong Circle Theatre, Tunick once had a situation where they would only cast a gentile to play a Jewish role so the show would not appear too Jewish.{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=42}} Tunick had written a script involving the Dead Sea Scrolls along with a Jewish family in Israel.{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=42}} Tunick brought in the Jewish actor, Joseph Yadin, to play the father in the family drama.{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=42}} Fearing that the show would be seen as a "Jewish show", the backers of the show cast an actress who was used to playing an Irish mother in a soap opera as the mother in the drama.{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=42}} Tunick said that when he heard the actress say the lines with a "Gaelic intonation", "I don't have much hair on my head but the little I had stood up and waved."{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=42}}

In 1960, Tunick created and wrote The Witness, a series that dramatized the lives of notorious figures through simulated hearings before a fictional committee. When The Witness first aired, TIME magazine described it as “one of the more exciting shows to appear in a long time” and said it captured the disorganized spectacle of these types of hearings.Time [https://web.archive.org/web/20071017224825/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,871712,00.html#ixzz0kZ9uMz5R Online archive of TIME], "Show Business: The New Shows" TIME Magazine (October 10, 1960) The reviewer went on to state that Telly Savalas, "a comparatively unknown actor" at the time, did a great job in the first episode depicting the real life gangster "Lucky" Luciano and demonstrated his "gutter cynicism, arrogance, brutality" and yet was at moments "pathetic." To add to the authenticity of the show, the production featured real lawyers as actors including Richard Steel William Geoghan Jr., Charles Haydon, and Benedict Ginsberg. The show also attempted to be more spontaneous allowing the attorneys to even ad-lib their arguments at times. The show later would have episodes that depicted such notable people as Huey Long, Arnold Rothstein, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, and former New York Mayor Jimmy Walker. The show even had Peter Falk return to working with Tunick after working on Murder Inc. to reprise the role of Abraham "Kid Twist" Reles.{{cite news|url=https://archive.org/details/variety221-1960-12/mode/2up?q=%22the+witness%22+%22abe+reles%22+%22peter+falk%22|title=In New York City...|work=Variety|date=December 7, 1960|access-date=May 24, 2025}}

Tunick's last documented script was for "The Chasers", the fifth episode of the second series of Police Woman, which aired in October 1975.{{cite web |title=POLICE WOMAN - Series 2 - Episode 5 - "The Chasers" |website=YouTube |access-date=27 May 2025 |date=10 July 2025}} That episode featured Angie Dickinson in the title role and a young Ian McShane credited as a special guest star.

In the 1940s, various writers for radio banded together to form the Radio Writers Union.{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=37}} Later, many of the same people would go on to form a union related to television writers called the Television Writers of America including Dick Powell, Frank Tarloff, Carl Reiner, Norman Lear and Larry Gelbart.{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=37}} In the 1950s the Televisions Writers of America was split between an eastern and western division.{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=36}} Tunick founded the Eastern Region of the Television Writers of America and became the organization's president with Howard Cosell as their attorney, who was still practicing law at the time and had not entered into broadcasting.{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=36-41}}{{cite web|url=https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv78000|title=Irve Tunick Papers - Archives West|publisher=Archives West|accessdate=November 22, 2024}}

In January 1954, Joan LaCour Scott the executive secretary for the Western Region of the Televisions Writers of America invoked her Fifth Amendment rights in order to refuse to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee regarding any potential communist connections.{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=36}} In response to this refusal to cooperate, Tunick along with ten other members from the Eastern Region's executive board and their attorney Howard Cosell resigned from the union citing "a complete difference of opinion on basic union principles."{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=36-37}} Tunick explained his actions by stating that the inability of LaCour to testify before the committee hearing put the union in an "untenable position at the bargaining table" and required the union to be involved in an area outside of its concern by forcing it to be involved in the "political or philosophical convictions of a paid employee."{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=40}} The resignation of Tunick and others dealt a fatal blow to the Televisions Writers of America, which ended in 1954, and the Writers Guild of America was formed as a new union to fill the vacuum.{{sfn|Bloom|2010|p=41}}

In addition to writing scripts for TV, Tunick also worked on as a writer for several films. He wrote the screenplay for Lady of Vengeance (1957) and for High Hell (1958), both directed by Burt Balaban.

In 1960, Tunick co-wrote the screenplay for Murder, Inc., a film depicting the rise and fall of a notorious crime syndicate Murder, Inc. This film would go on to earn an Academy Award for best actor nomination for Peter Falk acting as Abraham "Kid Twist" Reles. Peter Falk stated that unlike his first film "Wind Across the Everglades", "Murder Inc. was a script of substance" about a "gang that other gangs could hire for murder."{{sfn|Falk|2006|p=74}} Falk would return to play the role of Kid Twist a year later after the release of the movie in an episode of Tunick's The Witness.

Tunick won the Robert E. Sherwood and George Foster Peabody Awards for achievements in the scriptwriting field.

Tunick married twice. He married Adele Lehnstul, who died in 1981, and later to Bea Greenberg.

He had three children : Carol Maxfield, Richard Tunick, and Lisa Sarasohn. He had 8 grandchildren at the time of his death.

On September 5, 1987, at the age of 75, Irve Tunick died from a cerebral hemorrahage at Putnam Hospital Center in Carmel, New York.

Radio

• Democracy In Action - scriptwriter{{sfn|Goodman|Hayes|2022|p=108-110}}
• The World Is Yours - scriptwriter (radio series, 1937–1941)
• Gallant American Women - scriptwriter (1940){{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}}
• Freedom's People- scriptwriter
• The Bold Ones - scriptwriter
• Towards a Better World - scriptwriter (1943–1944){{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}}{{cite web|url=https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8794bw3/|title=Tunick (Irve) Radio Scripts|publisher=California Digital Library|accessdate=November 22, 2024}}
• The American School of the Air - scriptwriter (1944–1945){{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}}
• CBS Is There - scriptwriter (1947–1948){{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}}
• Eternal Light - scriptwriter (1947–1950){{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}}
• You are There - scriptwriter (1947–1950){{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}}
• Cavalcade of America - scriptwriter (1949–1953).{{sfn|Ellett|2017|p=189}}
• The American School of the Air- scriptwriter
• Words at War- scriptwriter

TV

• Studio One - scriptwriter
• The Witness - creator/written by- 9 episodes (1960–1961)
• Bonanza - scriptwriter
• Armstrong Circle Theatre - scriptwriter (1950) - 16 episodes - (1954–1963)
• Ironside- scriptwriter
• The F.B.I- scriptwriter
• Police Woman- scriptwriter (1975)

Movies

• Lady of Vengeance (1957) - writer {{cite web |title=Lady of Vengeance |url=https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52256-LADY-OF-VENGEANCE?cxt=filmography |website=AFI Catalog of Feature Films |publisher=American Film Institute |access-date=2025-05-17}}
• High Hell (1958) - writer {{cite web |title=High Hell |url=https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52585-HIGH-HELL?cxt=filmography |website=AFI Catalog of Feature Films |publisher=American Film Institute |access-date=2025-05-17}}
• Murder, Inc. (1960) - co-writer along with Mel Barr{{cite web |title=Murder Inc. |url=https://catalog.afi.com/Film/53226-MURDER-INC?cxt=filmography |website=AFI Catalog of Feature Films |publisher=American Film Institute |access-date=2025-05-17 |archive-date=January 26, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250126053828/https://catalog.afi.com/Film/53226-MURDER-INC?cxt=filmography |url-status=live }}

• {{cite book|last=Savage|first=Barbara Dianne|title=Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948|date=1999|publisher=UNC Press Books|isbn=978-0-807-84804-3}}
• {{cite book|last=Ellett|first=Ryan|title=Radio Drama and Comedy Writers, 1928-1962|date=2017|publisher=McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers|isbn=978-1-476-62980-3}}
• {{cite book|last1=Goodman|first1=David|last2=Hayes|first2=Joy Elizabeth|title=New Deal radio : the educational radio project|date=2022|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn=978-1-978-81746-3}}
• {{cite book|last=Bloom|first=John|title=There you have it : the life, legacy, and legend of Howard Cosell|date=2010|publisher=University of Massachusetts Press|isbn=978-1-558-49837-2}}
• {{cite book|last=Falk|first=Peter|title=Just one more thing|date=2006|publisher=Carroll & Graf Publishers|isbn= 978-0-09-950955-4}}

{{reflist}}

• {{IMDb name|0876641}}
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJsTMWFnOMg&si=TC7XBhJkPFHmxJsW Link to first episode of Freedom’s People]
• [https://archive.org/details/KidTwist Link to Episode of The Witness where Falk reprises his role as Kid Twist from Murder Inc.]
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC7Ykj2AEDY Trailer for Murder Inc.]

{{Irve Tunick}}

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Category:1912 births

Category:1987 deaths

Category:20th-century American businesspeople

Category:20th-century American Jews

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:20th-century American screenwriters

Category:American male screenwriters

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Category:American television writers

Category:American weird fiction writers

Category:Georgetown University alumni

Category:New York University alumni

Category:Jewish American screenwriters

Category:Screenwriters from New York (state)

Category:Television show creators