Ernest Tidyman
Writing
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ernest Tidyman (January 1, 1928 - July 14, 1984) was a Cleveland-born American author and screenwriter, best known for his novels featuring the African-American detective John Shaft. He also co-wrote the screenplay for the film version of Shaft with John D.F. Black in 1971. His screenplay for The French Connection garnered him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as a Golden Globe Award, a Writers Guild of America Award, and an Edgar Award. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1973 film High Plains Drifter, which was directed by Clint Eastwood, who was also its star. Tidyman also wrote the sequel to Shaft, Shaft's Big Score which appeared in theaters in 1972. In 1974, he published Dummy, a non-fiction account of the story of an accused deaf-mute murderer. It was nominated for an Edgar in the Fact Crime category. He co-wrote A Force of One in 1979, one of Chuck Norris's earlier films. Thereafter, Tidyman never attained the kind of success he enjoyed with The French Connection and the Shaft series, although he had a high note in 1980 with his teleplay for the TV movie Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (which he also had a hand in producing), which garnered him an Emmy nomination. For creating the Shaft books, he became one of the few white individuals to win an NAACP Image Award. Tidyman married Susan Gould, and fathered two children — Adam and Nicholas. Gould passed a few years later. In 1982, he married former Motown soul singer Chris Clark, who had co-written the screenplay for Lady Sings the Blues (1972). He died two years later from a perforated ulcer. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ernest Tidyman, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Known For
The BBC's flagship cinema review TV program featuring reviews of new releases, news items and interviews. The title of the program changes each year to incorporate the year of broadcast.
Film '72
New York police detective John Shaft arrests Walter Wade Jr. for a racially motivated slaying. But the only eyewitness disappears, and Wade jumps bail for Switzerland. Two years later Wade returns to face trial, confident his money and influence will get him acquitted -- especially since he's paid a drug kingpin to kill the witness.
Shaft
Tough narcotics detective 'Popeye' Doyle is in hot pursuit of a suave French drug dealer who may be the key to a huge heroin-smuggling operation.
The French Connection
JJ, aka John Shaft Jr., may be a cyber security expert with a degree from MIT, but to uncover the truth behind his best friend’s untimely death, he needs an education only his dad can provide. Absent throughout JJ’s youth, the legendary locked-and-loaded John Shaft agrees to help his progeny navigate Harlem’s heroin-infested underbelly.
Shaft
In the 1960s, Reverend Jim Jones began as an idealist helping minorities and working against racism. After a move to San Francisco and increased power and attention, Jones became focused on his belief in nuclear holocaust, declared himself a prophet, and founded the Peoples Temple. With a loyal following of over 1,000, who donated their entire life savings to him and to join his commune, he moves them to Guyana. When possible crimes come to the attention of the authorities, and once notified that some individuals are being held against their will, an investigation begins. Rather than face the charges, Jones commits suicide, and roughly 900 of his followers do the same.
Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones
A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago. After gunning down three gunmen who tried to kill him, the townsfolk decide to hire the Stranger to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.
High Plains Drifter
Cool Black private eye John Shaft is hired by a crime lord to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter.
Shaft
Fact-based story of the lives and attempted 1946 escape of several inmates in the famous correctional facility. Young inmate Clarence Carnes masterminds a grand escape involving several inmates who have nothing to lose, serving life sentences.
Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story
Police drama concerning a maverick chief of detectives dealing with two cop killings and a spate of bank robberies. He's also fighting a back stabbing police commissioner and a revolutionary leader plotting a police massacre.
To Kill a Cop
Shaft is a series of TV movies that aired along with Hawkins during 1973-74 television season on The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies. The series was based on three films beginning with Shaft, and starring Richard Roundtree as private detective John Shaft. Because it was aired on over-the-air television, CBS felt that the character needed to be toned down. Now instead of working against the police, he worked with them. The series rotated with Hawkins starring James Stewart as a country lawyer who investigates his cases, similarly to his earlier film Anatomy of a Murder. Contemporary analysts suggested that since the two shows appealed to vastly different audience bases, alternating them only served to confuse fans of both series, giving neither one the time to build up a large viewership.
Shaft
John Shaft is back as the lady-loved black detective cop on the search for the murderer of a client.
Shaft's Big Score!
Karate champion Matt Logan is enlisted by the police to train officers in self-defense after narcotics agents are killed by an assailant using the martial arts.
A Force of One
A Mafia boss is enraged when he is suspected of smuggling a heroin shipment into San Francisco. He dispatches his nephew, a hotshot Anglo-Sicilian lawyer, to identify the real culprit. The lawyer also enlists the aid of his best friend, a grand prix driver with an adventurous streak.
Street People
Police officer Patty Butler, alias "Chicklet," is the live-in girlfriend of Thomas 'Stick' Henderson to gather evidence. Detective Bo Lockley is instructed to try to find her, not knowing she's also a cop.
Report to the Commissioner
Filmed on location at Alcatraz Island, this two-part "whole story" actually concentrates on a handful of the denizens behind the cold grey walls of "The Rock". Michael Beck plays the real-life Clarence Carnes, an Oklahoma Choctaw Indian said to be the youngest man ever incarcerated in the notorious maximum security prison. Serving a 99-year sentence for a gas station holdup and murder, Carnes makes periodic attempts to escape, the final attempt being the most violent. Many of the subordinate characters are fictional (as are most of the details concerning Carnes' escape efforts); the one exception is Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz", here portrayed by Art Carney as a gentle, kindly philosopher. Telly Savalas, a costar of the Burt Lancaster vehicle Birdman of Alcatraz, also guest starred in the 1980 film. Originally titled Alcatraz and Clarence Carnes, this made-for-TV movie wavers between gritty realism and "I'm bustin' outta here!" artifice.
Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story
Earl Eischied is a man with his hands full. As the Chief of Detectives in New York City he is trying to break up a group of black militants that are on a crime spree including the killing of a police officer. He is also trying to battle with a mayor and police commissioner that want him out of his job.
To Kill a Cop
A businessman is stalked by his murderous twin brother, who has just been released from a mental hospital.
Brotherly Love
Detective John Shaft travels incognito to Ethiopia, then France, to bust a human trafficking ring.
Shaft in Africa
Loosely based on the life of Jimmy Hoffa, this traces the rise of Tommy Vanda (Joe Don Baker) from a Chicago dock worker to an influential labor leader who, like Hoffa, finds himself behind bars in a federal prison, and not long after, taken for a ride by shady men never to be seen again.
Power
Wichita policeman, Evan Stark, goes to Las Vegas in search of his missing sister, Laura.