KENDELL FOSTER CROSSEN

Born into a farming family in Ohio, Kendell Foster Crossen attended Rio Grande College in that state, playing football. After his formal education was over, he worked a variety of jobs including carnival barker and insurance investigator, knowledge of the latter definitely bringing him his best education for his later career. During the Great Depression, he was given a job as a writer on several WPA projects including a New York City guidebook. He would use that experience to transition to editing the Detective Fiction Weekly. In the 40s he really broke into the writing business with a steady stream of pulp fictions, largely detective stories. He then transitioned to penning scripts for radio dramas, producing hundreds in a few years. This would lead directly into television screenplays where he wrote for such famous shows as Perry Mason and 77 Sunset Strip.