Frank De Felitta

Frank De Felitta
Born Frank Paul De Felitta
(1921-08-23)August 23, 1921
The Bronx, New York City, New York, U.S.
Died March 29, 2016(2016-03-29) (aged 94)
Occupation Film director, author
Spouse(s) Dorothy Gilbert
Children Ivy Jones, Raymond De Felitta

Frank Paul De Felitta (August 3, 1921 – March 29, 2016) was an author, producer, pilot and film director.[1][2][3] He was most well known for his novels Audrey Rose and The Entity.

Life and career

Frank De Felitta was born in The Bronx, New York City, New York on August 3, 1921. He served as a pilot in World War II and in 1945 returned to New York, where he began to write scripts. His first effort, for the weekly radio program The Whistler, a popular thriller series, earned him $350 and started him on his writing career. He continued to write radio scripts before turning to television, in which medium he was successful as a writer, producer, and director, winning Emmy nominations in 1963 and 1968 for his documentaries as well as a Peabody Award and several Writers Guild nominations.

By the early 1970s he was working on film scripts, including two he wrote with Max Ehrlich, The Edict (1971)[4] and The Savage is Loose (1974).[5] The Edict was filmed as Z.P.G. (1972),[6] and both it and The Savage is Loose were published as novels by Max Ehrlich.

De Felitta's first novel, Oktoberfest (1973), a thriller, though not a bestseller nonetheless earned him enough to finance the year and a half he devoted to his next novel, Audrey Rose (1975). This novel, a horror story involving reincarnation, was a smash bestseller, selling more than 2.5 million copies and spawning a successful 1977 film adaptation (scripted by De Felitta) and a sequel, For Love of Audrey Rose (1982). His novel The Entity (1978), based on the real-life case of a woman named Doris Bither who claimed to have been haunted by a spectral rapist, was also a bestseller and was adapted by De Felitta for a 1982 film starring Barbara Hershey. Other successes include Golgotha Falls (1984) and the horror film Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981), directed by De Felitta.

Frank De Felitta died on March 30, 2016, of natural causes.

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ "Frank De Felitta". The New York Times.
  2. ↑ Good Reads
  3. ↑ People
  4. ↑ L. W. Currey, "Ehrlich, Max. THE EDICT." (bookseller description), accessed July 2, 2014
  5. ↑ AbeBooks, "The Savage is Loose (movie tie in) (bookseller description), accessed July 2, 2014
  6. ↑ Cover art for The Edict, accessed July 2, 2014
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