Writers Guild to honor TV veteran

Veteran television writer and producer Susan Harris will receive the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television from the Writers Guild of America, west, at the 57th Annual Writers Guild Awards ceremony Feb. 19. As a single mother, Harris turned to television writing as a means of support that allowed her to stay at home with her son. After selling her first teleplay to the short-lived series “Then Came Bronson” in 1969, producer Garry Marshall brought Harris to the hit anthology series “Love, American Style” in 1971, which led to Harris contributing several scripts to the ground-breaking sitcom “All in the Family,” whose daring sociopolitical bent would inform much of her later work. Following the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade, Harris wrote the sensitive “Maude’s Abortion” episode for “All in the Family,” for which she received the Humanitas Award.