James Prideaux

James Prideaux was a writer and producer best known for his Emmy-nominated work on the 1986 telefilm Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry, starring Katharine Hepburn. Mrs. Delafield was nominated for three Emmys in the miniseries or special category, for outstanding drama/comedy, lead actress and supporting actor. The film followed the story of a widow who falls in love with her Jewish doctor, played by Harold Gould.

Prideaux worked with Hepburn twice more, on the 1988 telefilm Laura Lansing Slept Here, about a famous, pampered novelist, and 1992’s The Man Upstairs, about an escaped convict (Ryan O’Neal) who hides away in the house of an elderly woman (Hepburn).

Prideaux also wrote for the daytime television series The Secret Storm, the TV short Lemonade, the miniseries Lincoln, and the telefilms The Last of Mrs. Lincoln, The Booth, Lyndon Johnson and Return Engagement, starring Elizabeth Taylor.

He got his start in New York writing short stories for periodicals, and later became a member of the off-off Broadway collective Playwrights Unit, created by Edward Albee, Richard Barr and Clinton Wilder. The group debuted his first play, Postcards, which began off-off Broadway and eventually worked its way to Broadway.

Prideaux and Hepburn were friends for more than three decades, until her death in 2003. His memoir, Knowing Hepburn and Other Curious Experiences, was published in 1996.

He died November 18, 2015, in West Hills, California. He was 88.