Ronald M. Cohen

After selling a script for the CBS series "Wanted: Dead or Alive" starring Steve McQueen, Ronald M. Cohen quit his job as a taxi driver to concentrate on his writing. He wrote "Blue," a 1968 film starring Terence Stamp and Karl Malden and "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys" in 1969 featuring Robert Mitchum as an aging sheriff. Cohen's television series included ABC's "American Dream" a short-lived, controversial 1981 series focusing on racial relations. He was nominated for an Emmy for co-writing the series pilot. Viewer protests over the realistic dialogue helped to end the series. He followed with "Call to Glory" in 1984, a critically acclaimed series also on ABC featuring a family on Edwards Air Force Base during the Cold War. This political military show starred Craig T. Nelson as the head of the family. Cohen again tackled the topics of politics and racial interaction with the 1986 ABC series "Fortune Dane" and shared co-producing credits with Barney Rosenzweig and the show's star Carl Weathers. In this show, Weathers played a black trouble-shooter running the office of a white female mayor. Cohen also wrote episodes of "Walker, Texas Ranger"(CBS), returning to his western writing roots. Cohen's adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel "Last Stand at Saber River" for a 1997 TNT production starring Tom Selleck earned him a Western Heritage Wrangler Award for his script. It achieved the highest rating of any cable movie up to that time.