Dalene Younger, the screenwriter whose credit included the coming-of-age comedy-drama Little Darlings, that includes Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol, and the Mary Steenburgen-starring drama Cross Creek, has died. She was 85.
Younger died Might 9 in Portland, Oregon, of issues from Alzheimer’s illness, her husband, director Robert Martin Carroll, introduced.
Younger acquired a Daytime Emmy nomination for co-writing the 1999 Showtime youngsters’s particular Locked in Silence and landed a Christopher Award and a Humanitas Prize nomination for her work on the 1992 NBC telefilm Jonathan: The Boy No person Wished.
She additionally wrote the movies The Child-Sitters Membership (1995) and Child Luv (2000) and different telefilms, together with 1983’s Will There Actually Be a Morning? — based mostly on actress Frances Farmer’s autobiography — 2000’s The Final Dance and 2002’s Miss Lettie and Me.
“In her heyday, she was arguably the highest author of made-for-television motion pictures,” her husband famous.
Younger had an extended profession on the stage as nicely, and her most up-to-date appearing credit score got here within the unbiased movie Pig (2021), starring Nicolas Cage.
Little Darlings (1980), which Younger co-wrote with Kimi Peck, was a success for Paramount, grossing $34.3 million domestically off a finances of $5.3 million.
Quickly after, she was employed by producer Robert B. Radnitz to adapt Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ memoir Cross Creek, in regards to the author’s experiences in rural Florida within the Thirties. The 1983 Common movie, directed by Martin Ritt, featured Rip Torn, Alfre Woodard and Peter Coyote alongside Steenburgen and drew Oscar noms for Torn, Woodard, costume design and rating.
Born in Hawaii in 1939, Younger spent her early years in Kuliouou, outdoors Honolulu, on a farm her household had inherited from the final king of Hawaii. Whereas taking part in with animals and browsing, she developed an curiosity in appearing, notably throughout her time on the Punahou College, the place President Obama would attend as nicely.
After commencement, Younger moved to San Francisco and some months later to New York, the place she sang in bars and golf equipment, a lot of which turned out to be owned by mobsters. “They wouldn’t ever let the purchasers put any strain on her,” Carroll mentioned. “They made certain she obtained dwelling protected at evening.”
Within the early Nineteen Sixties, Younger turned concerned within the off-off-Broadway scene, performing in espresso homes and low-rent theaters. It was then that she additionally began writing — she didn’t look after most of the roles she was being provided — and amongst her performs was 1969’s What Shade Is Love?
She was “not solely a gifted, vivid playwright, however some of the sensible younger actresses in our midst,” Theatre Arts journal as soon as wrote.
Younger left New York for Los Angeles within the late ’60s after being employed by famed producer Ray Stark. She made pals with such bohemian characters as Timothy Leary, however, not caring for the business Hollywood world and lacking the theater, returned to New York a number of months later. This time, she had a husband, Carroll, whom she had met at her going-away social gathering.
Hollywood beckoned once more a yr later, and she or he had her first huge hit with the 1976 NBC film Daybreak: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, a scores winner that starred Eve Plumb and was critically admired for its frank dialogue of teenage sexuality.
She additionally wrote such TV motion pictures as 1978’s Deadman’s Curve, 1979’s Can You Hear the Laughter? The Story of Freddie Prinze and 1980’s Marilyn: The Untold Story.
Younger, for a few years, ran an L.A.-based writing group earlier than she moved to Portland in 2006. She additionally carried out in quite a few stage performs, together with West Coast Ensemble productions of The Journey to Bountiful, The Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Along with her husband of 53 years — he directed the David Carradine-starring Sonny Boy (1989) — survivors embody her daughter, Eden.
Stephen Galloway is dean of the movie college at Chapman College.