Eliason additionally wrote the 1996 CBS miniseries 'Titanic' and co-produced David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive.'
Joyce Eliason, an Emmy-nominated tv author and producer whose works embrace The Final Don, Titanic and The Jacksons: An American Dream miniseries, has died. She was 87.
Eliason died Monday night after a quick sickness in line with her agent.
A prolific author for tv, Eliason’s profession spanned 4 a long time and he or she was extensively identified for her work on miniseries and tv motion pictures, adapting best-selling books and biographies by the likes of Priscilla Presley and Katherine Jackson for the small display.
Born in 1937 in a small city in Central Utah, Eliason moved to Salt Lake Metropolis and labored for TV Information for some years. She had goals of being an actress and at age 30, a divorced single mom with two daughters, she moved to California to pursue a profession in Hollywood.
Eliason’s appearing profession did not take off, however she put collectively a few of her writing which ultimately led to screenwriting alternatives. Her first main TV writing credit score got here in 1972 writing for Love, American Fashion, Paramount Tv’s anthology comedy sequence. In 1974, Eliason’s assortment of writings, poems and letters, Contemporary Meat/Heat Climate, was printed and two years later her novel Laid Out was launched.
In 1980, Eliason co-wrote the screenplay for Inform Me a Riddle, her first function movie work. Directed by Lee Grant, the movie was primarily based on the brief story by Tillie Olsen. For a lot of the Nineteen Eighties, Eliason turned a writer-for-hire on tv motion pictures, her credit included Youngster Bride of Quick Creek, A Matter of Intercourse, Proper to Kill?, Mistress and Winnie.
Eliason wrote the 1985 TV film Surviving: A Household in Disaster, a wrought drama that examined teen suicide and starred a younger River Phoenix and Molly Ringwald. The movie earned Eliason a nomination for the Humanitas Prize. She additionally tailored Priscilla Presley’s 1985 best-selling autobiography Elvis and Me into the 1988 tv film of the identical title which starred Dale Midkiff as Elvis and Susan Walters as Priscilla. Her 1989 TV film Small Sacrifices, starring Farrah Fawcett, can be a essential hit and earn three Emmy nominations.
She skilled her best success within the Nineteen Nineties, notably writing and producing an adaptation of Katherine Jackson’s autobiography My Household into the five-hour ABC miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream. Charting the rise of The Jackson 5 and the later meteoric success of Michael and Janet Jackson, the sequence, which starred Angela Bassett as Katherine Jackson, was an enormous business, essential and cultural hit and was watched by over 38 million folks.
Eliason discovered extra Emmy success with the 1994 two-part CBS miniseries Oldest Dwelling Accomplice Widow Tells All, primarily based on the 1989 novel by Allan Gurganus and starring Cicely Tyson, Diane Lane, Anne Bancroft and Donald Sutherland.
She co-wrote the big-budget CBS miniseries Titanic that aired in 1996, a 12 months earlier than Titanic-mania gripped the world with the discharge of James Cameron’s monster function movie hit of the identical title. Directed by Robert Lieberman, the two-part sequence starred Catherine Zeta-Jones, Tim Curry, Roger Rees and George C. Scott.
The next 12 months, Eliason wrote and produced one other hit in her adaptation of Mario Puzo’s mafia crime saga The Final Don for CBS, which spawned a sequel sequence, The Final Don II, in 1998. The sequence starred Danny Aiello as Don Domenico Clericuzio, an ageing mafia boss perpetually tormented by plotting amongst his household.
Her different notable tv credit embrace the 2001 Marilyn Monroe biographical miniseries Blonde co-written with Joyce Carol Oates and the Lifetime motion pictures Gracie’s Selection and America.
Exterior of tv, Elias co-produced David Lynch’s 2001 movie Mulholland Drive.
Eliason is survived by her two daughters, Polly and Jill Eliason, and 4 grandchildren.