Police Academy director created WKRP in Cincinnati
TV and film work filled with characters
Hugh Wilson, who created the CBS comedy WKRP in Cincinnati and directed the raucous hit film Police Academy in 1984, died Jan. 14 at his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was 74.
His wife, Charters Smith Wilson, said he had been battling lung cancer and emphysema.
Wilson worked his way into comedy writing after starting out in advertising, and in 1978 he graduated from writer to creator when WKRP made its debut.
The series, about a radio station full of misfits, ran for four seasons and had a cast that included Gary Sandy as the station’s level- headed program director, Loni Anderson as the sexy receptionist, and Howard Hesseman and Tim Reid as disc jockeys.
Wilson introduced a different brand of misfits in Police Academy, his first feature- film directing assignment, for which he was also one of the screenwriters. The movie, whose cast included Steve Guttenberg, Kim Cattrall and Bubba Smith, was about what happens when the mayor of a fictional city eliminates the admission requirements for the local police training program, attracting all manner of dubious recruits as a result.
The movie was a boxoffice hit and s pawned numerous sequels, though Wilson was not involved in those.
Hugh Hamilton Wilson Jr. was born on Aug 21, 1943, in Miami. “My father had a really nice, gentle sense of humour, and my mother had kind of a saber like sense of humour,” he once said. “I’m maybe a mix of those two.”
After graduating from the University of Florida in 1965 with a journalism degree, he went to New York to try to crack Madison Avenue, but had no luck and took a job in the advertising department of the Armstrong Co., a maker of flooring and related products in Lancaster, Penn.
Every year Armstrong would bring its sales representatives to Lancaster from around the country, and Wilson’s department would put on a show for them introducing new products, hiring actors from New York to perform the skits and songs.
That is how he met Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses, struggling performers who would soon form a comedy team, with Wilson serving as their road manager. After Wilson split off from them for a job at an advertising agency in Atlanta, Patchett and Tarses ended up in Los Angeles as comedy writers.
When Wilson visited them on a West Coast trip and expressed a desire to switch to comedy writing himself, they arranged an interview with Grant Tinker, Mary Tyler Moore’s husband and co-founder of her production company, MTM Enterprises. Though 30 years old, he took a job as a gofer.
The job allowed him to observe the TV- making process, and in 1976 he was given the chance to write some episodes of The Bob Newhart Show and The Tony Randall Show.
One day Tinker came through the Randall show’s set asking if anyone had any ideas for new pilots. Wilson responded with the pitch for WKRP, honing it by spend--
WKRP CAPTURED NEW FANS WHEN IT RAN IN SYNDICATION.
ing a week at WQXI, a radio station in Atlanta wh ere he knew a lot of the staff from his advertising days.
In an era dominated by comedies like MASH, Three’ s Company and Happy Days, WKRP was never a huge ratings success — partly, Wilson said, because its time slot was changed several times during its run. But it captured new fans later when it ran in syndication.
“We were kind of an afterthe-fact hit,” he said.
In addition to Police Academy, Wilson’ s films as a director included Guarding Tess ( 1994), starring Shirley MacLaine and Nicolas Cage, and The First Wives Club ( 1996), with Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler.
Wilson is survived by his wife of almost 40 years; his children, Cannon Wilson Sayers, Price Wilson White, Margaret Wilson Thomas, Caroline Charters Wilson and Hugh Patrick Wilson; and four grandchildren.