William Froug
Television has had a remarkable power to shape imaginations and public perceptions. For the generation of Americans who grew up watching television, this has been especially true. As TV began to mature in the 1960s, many iconic shows were seen by millions of people that have remained popular even decades after their airing. One of the people who helped shape some of these programs behind the scenes was a Little Rock native,
William Froug.
Froug (pronounced “Froog”) was born in New York City in May 1922. He was adopted by the Froug family in Little Rock while he was still very young. His new family was locally famous for the Froug department stores in Little Rock and Pine Bluff, where he would occasionally work during his youth. He would later recall how his parents would often take him to the movies when he was very young, which he credited with his later appreciation for storytelling.
He attended Little Rock schools. In high school, he was very bright and worked on the school magazine and with the drama department. He would ultimately graduate from Little Rock Senior High School by 1939 (known today as Central High School). Afterward, he attended the University of Missouri where he majored in journalism. While he was attending college, America was drawn into World War II. Froug graduated in 1943 and signed on with the navy. He skipped his college graduation to start officer training.
Froug was assigned to a “sub chaser” to patrol the Central Pacific; and by 1945, he was assigned to command his own sub chaser. At only 22, he was one of the youngest men in the U. S. Navy to have his own command. While he was at sea, he passed the time by writing, steadily sharpening his own storytelling skills.
He continued to serve in the navy reserves after the war. He had his first story published in 1946. He moved into work as a writer for radio programs and as a press agent. Eventually, he started working as a writer, director, and producer for CBS Radio. Though television was starting to become more common, millions of people still listened to radio programs, from comedies to dramas, each night through the 1950s. In 1956, he was promoted to vice-president of programs for CBS Radio.
In 1958, he moved into TV, working as a producer for the popular anthology series Playhouse 90 and Alcoa Theater. As a producer, he worked as the manager for the show, responsible for the financing and administrative side of everything behind the scenes. His special touch for storytelling left a remarkable impact on some of the most memorable television shows of the 1960s and 1970s. He worked with a variety of programs before becoming the producer for The Twilight Zone with Rod Serling for its final 1963-1964 season. His next job was the complete opposite in tone. He was the executive producer and creative consultant for Gilligan’s Island for its first season in 1964 and 1965, moving from gripping drama to slapstick comedy in the process. Afterward, he was the producer on Bewitched in 1966 and 1967, earning an Emmy nomination for his work.
By 1968, he began working part time as an adjunct professor for the University of Southern California, imparting his experiences on writing and producing TV and radio programs to a new generation of young writers. He continued to write for several TV series in the
1970s, including episodes of Quincy and Charlie’s Angels. Steadily, he gravitated to teaching, eventually working at the University of California at Los Angeles by 1975, where he was noted for changing the screenwriting program and greatly improving the reputation of the university’s TV and film department.
Froug formally retired from teaching in 1987, but he remained active. He traveled extensively for speaking engagements and also wrote several influential books on how to write screenplays, including Screenwriting Tricks of the Trade (1993) and the two-volume Zen and the Art of Screenwriting (1996-1997). While he was a passionate writer and teacher, he was quick to point out to his students how difficult it was to write a screenplay for the movies or television and even more difficult to find studio executives willing to adapt it into a real production.
In 2005, at the age of 83, he wrote his quirky memoir, How I Escaped from Gilligan’s Island. He lived most of his later years in Florida where he died in 2013 at age 91.