William Hanley

William Hanley (October 22, 1931 – May 25, 2012) was an Emmy-winning William Hanley Sr. was born in Liverpool, England in 1899, of Irish Catholic immigrants. He was a seaman before settling in the US, and then worked as a housepainter. Shortly after Hanley's birth the family moved to Queens, New York. Hanley attended Cornell for a year, then served in the Army in the early 1950s, before enrolling at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, though he never pursued an acting career. He worked as a bank clerk, mail clerk, factory worker, and book salesman while writing his early scripts.

William Hanley died May 25, 2012, after suffering a fall in his home in Ridgefield, Connecticut and was buried in the family plot at Mapleshade Cemetery, next to his parents and sister. He was 80. However Hanley, subsequently he had a successful career in television, beginning with Flesh and Blood which was originally a stage play that Hanley sold in 1966, to NBC for $112,500, "at the time the most that television had paid an author for a single work".

Reputation Hanley was nominated for an Emmy award five times, and won twice: for the 1984 ABC movie Something About Amelia and again in 1988 for the mini-series The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank, which starred Paul Scofield, Mary Steenburgen and, as Anne, Lisa Jacobs. Something About Amelia also won a 1984 Golden Globe Award for Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture made for Television.

Novels Blue Dreams. Delacorte Press, New York, 1971 Mixed Feelings. Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1972 Leaving Mount Venus. Ballantine Books, 1977

Stage plays Whisper into My Good Ear. Cast Theater, New York, October 1, 1962 Mrs. Dally Has a Lover and Other Plays. October 1, 1962 Conversations in the Dark. Produced in Philadelphia, Pa. at Walnut Street Theatre, December 23, 1963 Slow Dance on the Killing Ground. Produced on Broadway at Plymouth Theatre, November 30, 1964; Greenwich Theatre, London, England: Opened November 11, 1991. Today Is Independence Day. First produced Berlin, Germany 1963; New York? September 22, 1965

Published plays (including anthologies) Mrs Dally Has a Lover and Other Plays. New York: Dial Press, 1963. (Mrs Dally Has a Lover; Today is Independence Day; Whisper in My Good Ear). Whisper in My Good Ear [and] Mrs. Dally Has a Lover; Two plays, Dramatists Play Service. 1963 Slow Dance on the Killing Ground. New York: Random House, 1964 No Answer. New York: Random House, 1968 (also in the anthology Collision Course—see below) Flesh and Blood. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1968 The Best Plays of 1964–1965, edited by Otis L. Guernsey Jr. Dodd, 1965 New Theater in America, Vol. 1. New York: Delta, 1965 Collision Course, edited by Edward Parone. New York: Random House, 1968 Best American Plays, Sixth Series, edited by John Gassner and Clive Barnes. New York: Crown Publishing, 1971

Screenplay The Gypsy Moths (1969)

Plays for television

1968 Flesh and Blood (TV movie) 1973 Mrs. Dally Has a Lover (TV movie) 1975 Whisper into My Good Ear (TV movie) 1977 Testimony of Two Men (TV mini-series) 1978 Who'll Save Our Children? (TV movie) 1979 Too Far to Go (TV movie) 1980 Father Figure (TV movie) 1980 The Silent Lovers (TV movie) (teleplay) 1980 The Scarlett O'Hara War (TV movie) (teleplay) 1982 Little Gloria... Happy at Last 1984 Something About Amelia (Won Emmy). 1984 Celebrity 1987 When the Time Comes (TV movie) 1987 Nutcracker: Money, Madness & Murder (TV mini-series) 1988 Tales from the Hollywood Hills: Golden Land (TV movie) (teleplay) 1988 The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank (TV movie) 1990 The Kennedys of Massachusetts (TV mini-series) 1991 Our Sons (TV movie) (written by) 1991 In Broad Daylight (TV movie) (teleplay) 1991The Last to Go (TV movie) (teleplay) 1994 Scarlett (TV mini-series) 1997 Ellen Foster (TV movie) (teleplay) 1997 Passion's Way 1998 The Long Way Home (TV movie) (teleplay) 1999 The Reef (teleplay)

Radio play A Country without Rain (1970)

Awards 1963 Vernon Rice Award 1965 John Gassner Award 1988 Emmy: The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank. Outstanding Writing in a Miniseries or a Special 1988 Edgar Award: Best Mystery TV Episode: Winner: Nutcracker: Money, Murder, and Madness