image of person or book cover 7998574916249160311.jpg
Daily News, 20 August 1938, p.1
Ivan Goff Ivan Goff i(A55794 works by)
Born: Established: 17 Apr 1910 Perth, Western Australia, ; Died: Ceased: 23 Sep 1999 Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California,
c
United States of America (USA),
c
Americas,

Gender: Male
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

BiographyHistory

Journalist and script-writer.

Goff was born in Perth, Western Australia, to two concert musicians.

After starting work as a journalist at 15, Goff became gradually dissastified with the geographic and cultural isolation in Australia, and undertook a journey to England. In the UK, he worked a number of jobs, including as a bookmaker, before picking up a position on the Daily Mirror.

In the mid-1930s, the Mirror sent Goff to the United States as their Hollywood correspondent, and he decided not only to stay, but also to seek work as a script-writer.

Goff had several screenplays under his belt (Westerns, melodramas, and crime films) by the time World War II broke out. During the war, he made propaganda short films, and fortuitously met fellow script-writer Ben Roberts, engaged in the same work. Goff and Roberts were to collaborate on a range of scripts together over the next several decades, including White Heat (1949), which was nominated for an Oscar for script-writing (though the nomination, under Academy rules of the time, went to Virginia Kellogg, who had suggested the original idea).

In the mid 1950s, Goff was president of the screenwriters council of the Screen Writers Guild.

During the 1960s, Goff and Roberts (still working collaboratively) turned their attention to the relatively new medium of television, where they continued to be successful, writing and producing such programs as The Rogues and Charlie's Angels.

Goff died in 1999 of of Alzheimer's Disease.

Most Referenced Works

Notes

  • Goff and Roberts worked extensively in television, including episodes of:

    Bourbon Street Beat (1960)

    Ironside (1968)

    The Danny Thomas Hour (1968)

    Mannix (1973-1974)

    Goff and Roberts also created a range of television shows, including:

    The Rogues (1964-1965)

    My Friend Tony (1969)

    Time Express (1979)

    Charlie's Angels (1976-1981)

  • Goff and collaborator Roberts are sometimes credited with the script for the 1970 telemovie The Lawyer, but their roles are unclear, since the 'official' script-writers (the ones who appear on advertising posters and in the credits) are Sidney J. Furie and Harold Buchman.

  • Goff and Roberts are credited as producers and with 'story' on the telemovie (and failed TV pilot) The Killer Who Wouldn't Die (1976), but did not actually write the screenplay.

Awards for Works

form y separately published work icon White Heat ( dir. Raoul Walsh ) United States of America (USA) : Warner Brothers , 1949 6441881 1949 single work film/TV crime thriller

'Gangster film/melodrama. A psychopathic criminal, obsessed with his mother, is befriended and betrayed by an undercover policeman whom he meets in jail.'

Source: British Film Institute (http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/57918). (Sighted: 17/9/2013)

1950 nominated Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award Best Motion Picture Virginia Kellogg was also included in this nomination.
Last amended 17 Apr 2018 09:29:07
Other mentions of "" in AustLit:
    X