Edmund Hartmann, 92; TV Producer, Script Writer for Bob Hope

Edmund Hartmann, a versatile screenwriter and television producer who wrote comedy scripts for Bob Hope, including “Paleface,” and wrote and produced such durable family comedy series as “My Three Sons,” has died. He was 92.

Hartmann died Friday of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, N.M., according to a spokesman for producer A.C. Lyles of Paramount, where Hartmann worked for many years.

In a career that spanned well over half a century, Hartmann earned credits on some 60 motion pictures, from bombs to hits, and produced four television series. He also wrote other material from plays to songs and one-liners.

“What strikes me is the range of this man’s ability. He’s not just a joke writer,” author Donald McCaffrey told the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper in 2001 while working on “Bound and Gagged in Hollywood,” his biography of Hartmann. “He is a playwright, a member of the Writers Guild, a television producer, and has written just about every genre in the movies. He’s done just about everything.”

Hartmann served as president of the Writers Guild of America West from 1955 to 1959, later was national chairman, and in 1985 received the guild’s Morgan Cox award for guild service. He moved to Santa Fe in 1990.

At Paramount, Hartmann scripted several classic comedies for Hope, including not only “Paleface” in 1948, but also “Sorrowful Jones” in 1949, “Fancy Pants” in 1950, “Lemon Drop Kid” in 1951 and “Casanova’s Big Night” in 1954. In his prolific decade at the studio, he also wrote for other major stars, including Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in the 1953 comedy “The Caddy.”

Earlier, at Universal, Hartmann scripted adventure and mystery films including “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and the Sherlock Holmes thriller “The Scarlet Claw.” He also wrote comedies for Abbott and Costello.

In the late 1950s, Hartmann switched to television, and from 1960 to 1972 produced “My Three Sons,” starring Fred MacMurray. Hartmann also wrote several episodes of the show.

Hartmann reveled in the family situation comedy, and in 1966 produced “Family Affair,” which starred Brian Keith as a wealthy swinging bachelor who suddenly must rear three orphaned children, and Sebastian Cabot as the bachelor’s proper British manservant. The series ran on CBS for five years and enjoyed many reruns.

Similarly, Hartmann produced the 1969-71 CBS series “To Rome With Love,” starring John Forsythe as a widowed father teaching in Rome. Walter Brennan, as Forsythe’s father-in-law, helped him raise three daughters.

Altering his successful formula to include a wife for the beleaguered father, Hartmann also produced one of the rare television series starring Henry Fonda. That was “The Smith Family” which aired on ABC from 1971 to 1972 and starred Fonda as a Los Angeles cop meshing his dangerous job with rearing a family.

Hartmann ended his career as it began -- writing for the stage. Among his produced plays were “The Oscar Ladies” with Nanette Fabray and “Welcome Home” with Pernell Roberts.

Born in St. Louis, the son of a judge, Hartmann was studying law at the city’s Washington University when he became distracted by a playwriting competition.

He won.

“It was a musical called ‘Princess Nita,’ and I wrote the book, music and lyrics.... This was in 1931,” he told the Santa Fe New Mexican in 1999.

The show’s director -- Clark Clifford -- went on to become an internationally known lawyer and advisor to several U.S. Presidents. But Hartmann abandoned law and went to New York, where he scouted plays for the Shubert organization and wrote songs for nightclub performers and the Ziegfeld Follies.

Fox Studios lured Hartmann to Hollywood in 1934 to write screenplays, assigning him to a project for then little-known Spencer Tracy. The job lasted only six months, but Hartmann remained in Hollywood for 56 years, moving on to RKO, then Universal in 1937, Paramount a decade later, and television.

He is survived by his daughter, Susan Hartmann Pursley of Arroyo Grande, Calif.; and four grandchildren, Joseph T. Mendelson Jr. of Los Angeles, Laura Mendelson Oroke of Ventura, Patrick S. Mendelson of Manhattan Beach and Rachel Mendelson Rice of South Bend, Ind.