David P. Lewis

TV pioneer started out in advertising and went on to write, produce and direct early TV soap operas. An early Lewis credit was "Stories in One Camera," a 1946 pilot for the Dumont network which proposed a series of one-act plays presented in a simplistic style utilizing just one TV camera. His most enduring contribution to the history of the medium was as the producer, director, and writer of "Faraway Hill," the first serial ever on television, which ran on the DuMont network from October 2, 1946 through December 18, 1946. Lewis segued into cop dramas with "Barney Blake, Police Reporter" (NBC, 1948). He went on to write for numerous TV shows through the 1970s including "Columbo," "McMillan and Wife" and "Planet of the Apes." Lewis wrote one feature, "City on Fire" (1979), a disaster epic starring Barry Newman, Shelley Winters, Ava Gardner, and Henry Fonda, among many others.