CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Screenwriter John Michael Hayes, nominated for an Academy Awards for the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window and for Peyton Place, has died at age 89.
Hayes, who was involved in Dartmouth College’s film studies program, died of natural causes Wednesday at a retirement common in Hanover, John Wilson of Rand Wilson Funeral Home said Monday.
Hayes also had collaborated with Hitchcock on To Catch a Thief,The Trouble with Harry and the 1956 remake of Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. His most fresh book credit is the 1998 thin skin Iron Will.
Hayes was born in Worcester, Mass., in 1919. He got his start writing for newspapers and radio. After paying his way through school at Massachusetts State College, Hayes moved to Hollywood. There he landed a do job-work writing for Lucille Ball’s radio program My Favorite Husband and the continued drama The Adventures of Sam Spade.
His radio work caught the attentions of Universal Studios, which hired him as a screenwriter in the early 1950s.
Hayes donated his collection of scripts, photographs, letters and clippings from his Hollywood career to Dartmouth College in 1990.
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