Eliason also wrote the 1996 CBS miniseries 'Titanic' and co-produced David
Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive.'
The Hollywood Reporter
By Abid Rahman
January 11, 2022
Joyce Eliason, the Emmy-nominated television writer and producer whose works
include the miniseries The Last Don, Titanic and The Jacksons: An American
Dream, has died. She was 87.
Eliason died Monday evening after a brief illness according to her agent.
A prolific writer for television, Eliason’s career spanned four decades and she
was known for her work on miniseries and television movies, adapting
best-selling books and biographies by the likes of Priscilla Presley and
Katherine Jackson for the small screen.
Born in 1937 in a small town in Central Utah, Eliason moved to Salt Lake City
and worked for TV Guide for some years. She had dreams of being an actress and
at age 30, a divorced single mother with two daughters, she moved to California
to pursue a career in Hollywood.
Eliason’s acting career failed to take off, but she put together some of her
writing which eventually led to screenwriting opportunities. Her first major TV
writing credit came in 1972 writing for Love, American Style, Paramount
Television’s anthology comedy series. In 1974, Eliason’s collection of
writings, poems and letters, Fresh Meat/Warm Weather, was published and two
years later her novel Laid Out was released.
In 1980, Eliason co-wrote the screenplay for Tell Me a Riddle, her first
feature film work. Directed by Lee Grant, the film was based on the short story
by Tillie Olsen. For much of the 1980s, Eliason became a writer-for-hire on
television movies, her credits included Child Bride of Short Creek, A Matter of
Sex, Right to Kill?, Mistress and Winnie.
Eliason wrote the 1985 TV movie Surviving: A Family in Crisis, a wrought drama
that examined teen suicide and starred a young River Phoenix and Molly
Ringwald. The film earned Eliason a nomination for the Humanitas Prize. She
also adapted Priscilla Presley’s 1985 best-selling autobiography Elvis and Me
into the 1988 television movie of the same name which starred Dale Midkiff as
Elvis and Susan Walters as Priscilla. Her 1989 TV movie Small Sacrifices,
starring Farrah Fawcett, would be a critical hit and earn three Emmy
nominations.
She experienced her greatest success in the 1990s, notably writing and
producing an adaptation of Katherine Jackson’s autobiography My Family into the
five-hour ABC miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream. Charting the rise of
The Jackson 5 and the later meteoric success of Michael and Janet Jackson, the
series, which starred Angela Bassett as Katherine Jackson, was a huge
commercial, critical and cultural hit and was watched by over 38 million
people.
Eliason found more Emmy success with the 1994 two-part CBS miniseries Oldest
Living Confederate Widow Tells All, based on the 1989 novel by Allan Gurganus
and starring Cicely Tyson, Diane Lane, Anne Bancroft and Donald Sutherland.
She co-wrote the big-budget CBS miniseries Titanic that aired in 1996, a year
before Titanic-mania gripped the world with the release of James Cameron’s
monster feature film hit of the same name. Directed by Robert Lieberman, the
two-part series starred Catherine Zeta-Jones, Tim Curry, Roger Rees and George
C. Scott.
The following year, Eliason wrote and produced another hit, the adaptation of
Mario Puzo’s mafia crime saga The Last Don for CBS, which spawned a sequel
series, The Last Don II, in 1998. The series starred Danny Aiello as Don
Domenico Clericuzio, an aging mafia boss perpetually plagued by his plotting
family.
Her other notable television credits include the 2001 Marilyn Monroe
biographical miniseries Blonde co-written with Joyce Carol Oates and the
Lifetime movies Gracie’s Choice and America.
Outside of television, Elias co-produced David Lynch’s 2001 film Mulholland
Drive.
ELIASON, Joyce
Born: 5/14/2022, Manti, Utah, U.S.A.
Died: 1/10/2022, Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A.
Joyce Eliason’s western – producer, writer:
Children of the Dust (TV) - 1995
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