David Davidson (3) (1908–1985)

David Davidson was born in New York City and graduated from City College of NY and the Columbia University School of Journalism. In 1933, he went to work at The New York Evening Post. Five years later, he turned to radio, writing hundreds of scripts for some of the most popular radio serial programs of the era. During World War II, he served as an officer in the U.S. armed forces and was responsible for rebuilding a democratic press in Bavaria, Germany. After demobilization, Davidson returned to the USA and worked as a prolific scriptwriter for various live television programs during what he called the Golden Age of TV drama. He also published novels, beginning with The Steeper Cliff (1947), based on his experience in post-war Bavaria. His second novel, The Hour of Truth (1949) was based on a mission he undertook for the federal Office of Inter-American Affairs in Latin America. Other novels included In Another Country (1950) and The Quest of Juror 19 (1971). By the late 1950s, Davidson had become disenchanted with television as a source of quality drama, saying that scriptwriters, like the rest of the industry, had abandoned standards to pursue mass production and ratings. In 1965, ABC supported a program to develop talented television writers at the Yale School of Drama, and Davidson was named to initiate it as lecturer and writer-in-residence. He later taught at New York University and the University of Iowa. He continued to write magazine articles and contribute to television series, including Heritage: Civilization and the Jews (1984). For his script for the documentary film The Ship That Wouldn't Die: The U.S.S. Franklin, he received the Screen Writers Guild Award in 1970.