Ernest Kinoy

Ernest Kinoy was a writer who worked in radio, television, theater and film for more than 50 years. He received several awards for his work, including two Emmy Awards.

Born in New York City in 1925, Kinoy served in the Army during World War II. While fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, he was taken prisoner and held captive in a German labor camp. He drew upon the experience years later when he wrote a teleplay titled "Walk Down the Hill" for the anthology series Studio One in Hollywood.

He began writing plays as a student at Columbia University, which he attended after the war. Upon graduation, he took a job at NBC, where he began writing radio scripts in the late 1940s.

With the introduction of television, he began writing for new medium and flourished during the era of live production with contributions to such anthology series as The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre, Lights Out, The Alcoa Hour, Goodyear Playhouse, Playhouse 90 and others.

Prolific and versatile, Kinoy went on to write episodic dramas, made-for-TV movies, miniseries, Broadway plays and feature films.

His series credits included The Untouchables, Dr. Kildare, Naked City, The Defenders and The Bold Ones; his telefilms included The President's Plane Is Missing, The Rivalry, Victory at Entebbe, Skokie, Stones for Ibarra and Chernobyl: The Final Warning. 

He also wrote for the iconic miniseries Roots and Roots: The Next Generation, Lincoln and several others.

For the big screen, Kinoy wrote such features as Brother John, Buck and the Preacher, Leadbelly and White Water Summer. 

In addition, during the early 1960s, he wrote the Broadway play Something About a Soldier, based on the novel by Mark Harris, and the books for the musicals Bajour and Golden Rainbow.

He was nominated for five Emmys and won two — in 1961, for the drama series The Defenders, and in 1977, for Roots.

Kinoy died on November 10, 2014 in Townshend, Vermont. He was 89.