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Eric Freiwald, 1927-2010
posted February 16, 2010
Through comics historian and writer Mark Evanier comes word that writer
Eric Freiwald has died. Best known as a prolific writer on 1950s-1960s family-focused television series, and then an award-winning writer on the soap juggernaut
The Young And The Restless Freiwald also wrote a substantial number of stories for Gold Key and Disney. He passed away in his sleep on January 29.
Freiwald met his longtime writing partner, the late Eric Schaefer, in a school for writers. According to
this posting on Schaefer by Mark Evanier, both men had relatives in the film industry they hoped to parlay into script sales. Thus began a long partnership. This included a hugely prolific run of comic book writing in the late '50s until the mid-'60s for both the television shows to which they were submitting teleplays and the various Disney movie adaptations when that studio was in some ways at the height of its powers in terms of assured, routine commercial success in the live-action field. According to Evanier, they also worked on some of the standard Disney animal characters and on early issues of
Magnus, Robot Fighter. Their writing partnership dissolved in 1984 with Schaefer's retirement.
Freiwald was born in 1927 in Detroit, and served during World War II in the Navy. Although he lived in Southern California for the bulk of his writing career, Prescott moved his family to Prescott, Arizona in 1986.
Eric Freiwald is survived by a wife, one son, two daughters, four grandsons and a great-grandson.