Robert W. Campbell Dies

Author scripted Roger Corman's classic screen adaptation of Masque of the Red Death.

    October 02, 2000

Robert W. Campbell, a novelist and screenwriter who penned the big screen version of the Edgar Allen Poe short story The Masque of the Red Death, passed away Sept. 21 at the age of 73. Campbell broke into the film industry in 1955 with his screenplay for Five Guns West. Before moving to Carmel, Calif., in the 1970s, he wrote various movie screenplays and worked on such TV shows as Maverick and Marcus Welby, M.D..

In 1975, Campbell's first novel, The Spy Who Sat and Waited, received a National Book Award nomination. During the 1980s, he wrote mysteries under his own name and the pseudonyms R. Wright Campbell and F.G. Clinton. His 1986 novel The Junkyard Dog won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allen Poe award.--Reuters