The End - the Classic Film Obituary thread 2020

With his long-time collaborator and producing partner, Richard Levinson, he also wrote several groundbreaking television films in the seventies, including The Execution of Private Slovak, a powerful account of the only soldier executed for desertion during World War II, My Sweet Charlie, about the friendship between a white pregnant runaway and an African American lawyer, and That Certain Summer, one of television’s first sympathetic portrayals of homosexuality, starring Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen.



Steven Spielberg, who directed the first episode of Columbo in 1971, shared this personal remembrance:

“Bill’s truly good nature always inspired me to do good work for a man who, along with Dick Levinson, was a huge part of what became my own personal film school on the Universal lot. Bill was one of my favorite and most patient teachers and, more than anything, I learned so much from him about the true anatomy of a plot. I caught a huge break when Bill and Dick trusted a young, inexperienced director to do the first episode of Columbo. That job helped convince the studio to let me do Duel, and with all that followed I owe Bill so very, very much. My thoughts are with Margery and his entire family.”
R.I.P William Link 1933-2020