Charles Eldridge O'Neal, Sr.

Charles O'Neal was born in North Carolina. He attended the University of Iowa. O'Neal met his wife, Patricia Callaghan, in a San Diego theater troupe. It was there that he discovered screenwriting. O'Neal achieved modest success with screenplays for such movies as The Seventh Victim, Cry of the Werewolf, The Missing Juror, and Montana in the 1940s and 1950s; then he moved on to writing for TV series, including The Untouchables, The Californians and Lassie. Also the author of two novels, he developed one into the 1952 musical Three Wishes for Jamie, which starred John Raitt and Anne Jeffrey and ran for several months on Broadway.