Everett Freeman; Producer and Writer in Films and TV

Everett Freeman, the screenwriter and producer nominated for an Academy Award in 1947 for his story “It Happened on Fifth Avenue,” has died. He was 79.

Freeman, who wrote such classic films as “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and co-created the long-running television series “Bachelor Father,” died Thursday at his Westwood home. His daughter Elizabeth attributed his death to renal failure.

The veteran writer began his career in New York. At 18, he was the youngest regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post. Writing for radio, he created the character Baby Snooks for comedian Fanny Brice and introduced Danny Thomas to the airwaves.

Moving to Hollywood under contract to Samuel Goldwyn, Freeman wrote the Walter Mitty film, based on a James Thurber story and starring Danny Kaye. His other films included “The Princess and the Pirate” starring Bob Hope, “The Glass Bottom Boat,” “Marjorie Morningstar,” “Jim Thorpe--All American” and the W.C. Fields classic, “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man.”

To keep his creative edge, Freeman believed in regularly switching between films and television and between writing and producing. He also wrote for magazines, radio and occasionally the stage, as with “Prisoner of Zenda.”

“TV is a four-wall business,” he once told the The Times. “It requires very simple ideas for a series, a combination of characters who can work every week in an acceptable situation or the offshoots of it. . . . If the situation is not simple, not basic, it means we have to start explaining everything all over again every week.”

But film, he said, could explore more complex plots: “I think the future of movies is wrapped up in the unique--a single problem.”

Freeman is survived by his wife, Helena, sons Jack and Michael, daughters Andrea and Elizabeth, and one grandson.

Services are scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday at Pierce Brothers Mortuary in Santa Monica.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the Los Angeles Mission or the Union Rescue Mission.