Ernest Kinoy's long and productive career began with his writing for radio. Included among his early successes were the scripts for Radio City Playhouse (1948) and The Eternal Light (1949). Kinoy reached the peak of his radio career in the decade of the fifties when he was largely the creative genius behind such memorable productions as Best Plays, Production Time, Weekday Short Story, and the science-fiction series, X Minus One.
As television came to monopolize the field of home entertainment, Kinoy ventured into television writing. He is responsible for scripts for the popular TV shows Dr. Kildare, Suspense, Alcoa Hour, and numerous others. In 1967, Kinoy wrote the pilot script for The Happeners, a rock-satire program similar to that of NBC's The Monkees. Although the pilot program excited favorable comment, the ABC-TV network did not air the show. In 1968, Kinoy adapted Walt Disney's Pinocchio for the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Among his later television credits were Collision Course, based on the relationship between Harry S Truman and Douglas MacArthur; The Deadliest Season, which starred Meryl Streep; Victory at Entebbe, based on the 1976 Israeli hostage rescue; Roots, a mini-series which had the highest ratings in television history; and Roots: The Next Generations, its critically acclaimed sequel.
Kinoy is also a journalist, and his articles have appeared in various newspapers, including The New York Times. It was in the latter publication in 1964 that he expressed concern about the new television medium. Are reality and social responsibility significantly integrated into television productions, he asked, so as to shatter the “happy” image of “happy plays about happy people with happy problems”?
Not content with success as a radio and television writer and as a journalist, Ernest Kinoy began writing for the stage. In 1961, his play Something about a Soldier, based on a novel by his close business and personal friend, Mark Harris, opened in New York; the play was produced and directed by Dore Schary. In 1968, Golden Rainbow, for which Kinoy wrote the book, opened at the Shubert Theater in New York.
His motion picture credits include Brother John (1971), Buck and the Preacher (1972), and Leadbelly (1976).
