Planet of the Apes Wiki
Register
Advertisement

John Meredyth Lucas (1 May 1919 - 19 October 2002) was a director, writer and producer born in Los Angeles. He was the son of screenwriter Bess Meredyth and writer/director Wilfred Lucas, and the adopted son of Bess' third husband, director Michael Curtiz, who gave him his first job in the film industry. Lucas grew up in Southern California, where he attended a number of schools, including Urban Military Academy, Southwestern Military Academy, Pacific Military Academy, and Beverly Hills High School. After a failed attempt at college, he began his Hollywood career with a job as an apprentice script clerk at Warner Bros. He received his first credit, as dialogue director, on a 1943 Warners movie, and started scriptwriting with the Charlton Heston picture, Dark City (1950), and Peking Express (1951). In the mid-'50s he began directing for TV, and by the early '60s was also producing, continuing to practice all three talents up to the early 1980s.

Among his vast body of works were Medic (writer), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (director), Zorro (writer and director), Whiplash (associate producer and director), Ben Casey (writer, director and producer), Insight (writer, director and producer), The Fugitive (producer, writer and director), Mannix (writer and director), Star Trek (writer, producer and director), Rod Serling's Night Gallery (director), Planet of the Apes (director, episode "Up Above the World So High"), Harry O (writer), The Six Million Dollar Man (writer), Logan's Run (writer) and Beyond Westworld (producer). Lucas died from leukemia in 2002 in Orange County, and his ashes were launched into space in 2007.

External Links[]

References[]


Advertisement