Louis Pelletier; Wrote 500 Episodes of ‘FBI’ Radio Series

Louis Pelletier, writer for radio, television and films who penned more than 500 episodes of the radio classic “The FBI in Peace and War,” has died at the age of 93.

Pelletier, who also scripted five Walt Disney movies, died Friday in his sleep at his Rustic Canyon home in Santa Monica.

After moving to Los Angeles in the 1950s, Pelletier wrote television shows for Disney and screenplays for five popular family films--”Big Red” in 1962, about a boy who befriended an Irish setter; “Those Calloways” in 1965, starring Brian Keith as head of a New England family out to preserve a lake as a bird sanctuary; “Follow Me Boys” in 1966, with Fred MacMurray as a Boy Scout leader; “Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit” in 1968, with Dean Jones as an advertising man trying to relate to his daughter through her love of horses; and “Smith” in 1969, starring Glenn Ford as an eccentric farmer coming to the aid of a wronged Indian.

But Pelletier’s long career blossomed decades earlier at the other end of the country when the native New Yorker was serving in the Army on the city’s Governor’s Island. A graduate of Dartmouth, Pelletier had by then collaborated on a play, “Howdy Stranger,” which ran successfully on Broadway and has been adapted for film.

In the Army, he met radio writer Jack Finke, and the two spent their off-duty hours writing scripts for CBS, which had its headquarters nearby. They struck success with “The FBI in Peace and War,” adapted from the book of that title by Frederick L. Collins.

Pelletier and Finke wrote the show for more than 10 years, contributing more than 500 scripts to the annals of classic radio. The program ran from 1944 until 1958, dramatizing cases as seen through criminals’ eyes, with field agent Adam Sheppard (voiced by actor Martin Blaine) closing in for the arrests.

The dignified live program featured an orchestra playing the theme song, the march from Prokofiev’s “Love for Three Oranges.”

Each half-hour episode ended with the announcer intoning, “The radio dramatizations of ‘The FBI in Peace and War’ are written by Louis Pelletier and Jack Finke” and disclaiming any official connection with the real Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In California in his later years, Pelletier taught screenwriting at several colleges, serving as mentor to a number of future motion-picture writers. He was also active in the Writers Guild of America.

Pelletier is survived by his wife, Mary; a daughter from an earlier marriage, Carol Darnell; two granddaughters; and three great-grandchildren.