The gritty, black-and-white film noir did make history, inaugurating the police procedural genre and popularizing the method of shooting scenes on-location. Because of some intrigues by the producer Hellinger, Malvin would share credit on The Naked City with Albert Maltz, and their screenplay would receive nominations for the Writers Guild screenplay award and the Academy Award for best story in 1949.

In 1948 Malvin teamed up with Washington columnist Drew Pearson to write an inside story about presidential politics called The Washington Story. This was one of two screenplays he would write for legendary Columbia studio head Harry Cohn. In the course of his research, Malvin sneaked into a Harry Truman press conference at the White House and was present at a confrontational congressional investigation between Alger Hiss and Richard Nixon.

The final screenplay was a hard-hitting exposé of corruption on the highest level in Washington. Cohn said he thought it was a great script, as good as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but he couldn't produce it. Why? Malvin remembers Cohn saying, "After the war, Jack Warner and I visited Germany as guests of the U.S. Army, and I discovered that Hitler had used Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as anti-American propaganda, claiming that the character of the crooked senator played by Claude Rains was typical of all U.S. politicians." Cohn screamed that he was ashamed of having made the film and would never again produce anything critical of our government.

In 1952 Malvin was hired to write and help produce a TV series called The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. During the course of this production, he gave John Neville his first movie job and encountered Peter Ustinov and Orson Welles. Welles told Malvin that he was interested in narrating the tales, but first he would need $75,000 for expenses -- actually money he needed to finish his film version of Othello. After Malvin's attorney confronted him on this, Welles responded, "Look at me, Mr. Wald, I'm 37 years old, fast approaching middle age. No longer the boy wonder. I have lost years and years of my life fighting for the sacred right to do things my own way and mostly fighting in vain. The tycoons think I'm crazy for trying to subsidize my own films. But I will never surrender. Better to live one day as a lion than your whole life as a sheep."

In 1959 Malvin was hired to write a screenplay based on the life of Fidel Castro. The deal to make the movie was struck between Castro and oil magnate Frank B. Waters at the Shamrock Motel in Houston, TX. Castro had approval over the writer for the film, and laid down the following conditions: "1) No goddamn gringo. He must speak Spanish perfectly. I don't want to be insulted by having a person who can't speak my language. 2) No Hollywood creep. The writer had to have an academic background. And 3) The writer had to have a recent success." Malvin had five years of Spanish and had just become adjunct faculty at the University of Southern California. Throw in Malvin's recent success with Al Capone, and he was hired.

Interviewing Castro in June 1959 in Havana, Malvin asked if the Russian Revolution had been an inspiration for him. Castro answered, "No, it was the American Revolution. Why has Hollywood never made an important film about the American Revolution? Are they ashamed of it?" When he returned to the United States, Malvin was interviewed by the CIA and threatened by a pro-Castro group not to publish the information he had received in Cuba. The film was never produced.

Continuing his film writing, Malvin adapted James Warwick's play, Blind Alley, into the film noir The Dark Past, and co-wrote, with Collier Young and Ida Lupino, the story for Lupino's Outrage, before moving mostly into television. During the '50s he wrote for anthology series including Lux Video Theatre, Fireside Theatre, Goodyear Television Playhouse, The Alcoa Hour, Playhouse 90, and The George Sanders Mystery Theater. He also wrote episodes for Cavalcade of America, Climax, Brave Eagle, The Silent Service, Have Gun -- Will Travel, Shirley Temple's Storybook, Peter Gunn, Combat!, The Great Adventure, and Perry Mason. Later, Malvin wrote for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Daktari, and The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.

Continuing his interest in documentary writing, Malvin worked with Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes fame on a Marilyn Monroe documentary shortly after her death in 1962, and was assigned to work with an aging Walter Winchel on a series about his life.

He was a writer with an insatiable desire for research, ferreting out new stories, exploring new ideas and innovative ways to tell a story. A long list of credits for largely forgotten TV shows and movies isn't nearly as impressive as the long bookshelf in his Sherman Oaks, CA home, filled with his produced screenplays bound in leather. From his screenplay Homicide (later retitled The Naked City) to his work as a story editor on Daktari, Malvin was proud of each of his screenplays. He was a man who worked.

Reflecting on his life, Malvin wrote, "One of the wonderful by-products of being a Hollywood writer is that occasionally you get to meet real writers -- world-famous authors and playwrights. In my long career I had brief encounters with Dorothy Parker, Jack Kerouac, Upton Sinclair, James Hilton, John Hersey, James Cain, Henry Miller, and Clifford Odets, but the most memorable experiences were with two Nobel Prize Winners -- William Faulkner and John Steinbeck."

Malvin Wald was a real writer -- one of the finest and most prolific screenwriters in Hollywood history. But he was also my friend, mentor, and the nicest, most giving person I have had the privilege of meeting in Hollywood. He is gone now, but the stories he created and the lives he shaped live on.

Erik Bauer was the founding publisher and editor of Creative Screenwriting. He is currently developing feature screenplays for production and can be reached at erik@erikbauer.com.