David Scott Milton

David Scott Milton (September 15, 1934 – January 13, 2020)^[1] was an American author, playwright, screenwriter, and actor. His plays are known for their theatricality, wild humor, and poetic realism, while his novels and films are darker and more naturalistic. As a novelist, he has been compared to Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, and Nelson Algren. Ben Gazzara’s performance in Milton’s play, Duet, received a Tony nomination. Another play, Skin, won the Neil Simon Playwrights Award. His theater piece, Murderers Are My Life, was nominated as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles. His second novel, Paradise Road, was given the Mark Twain Journal award "for significant contribution to American literature."

Early years

Milton was born during the

Gustav Kiepenheuer

, had also been optioned for German production.

Milton was an early member of the

Off-Off-Broadway including The Interrogation Room, Halloween Mask, The Metaphysical Cop, and Scraping Bottom. Scraping Bottom, under the title of Born to Win, became the Czech director Ivan Passer's first American film, and starred George Segal, Karen Black and Paula Prentiss. Pauline Kael

has characterized this title change as perhaps the most extreme in the history of American cinema.

Other plays were Duet for Solo Voice

Tony

nomination.

In Los Angeles, Skin, for which Milton won the Neil Simon Playwrights Award, ran for nearly a year at The Odyssey Theater.

He has had six novels published: The Quarterback (

Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich), Skyline (G. P. Putnam's Sons), The Fat Lady Sings (iUniverse

), and Iron City [White Whisker Books]. Paradise Road was given the Mark Twain Journal award "for significant contribution to American literature." His plays Duet and Skin are also in print.

Milton's short stories have appeared in The Southern California Anthology, The Pearl River Review, The Southern (Lafayette, Louisiana) Anthology, among others.

His adaptation of

Starsky and Hutch and scripts for the John Houseman syndicated show, Tales of the Unexpected

.

He had written screenplays for directors,

Sidney Pollack, Dick Richards, and Irvin Kershner

.

Since 1977, he had been a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Adjunct Professor in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He also taught screenwriting in the cinema department.

He had been a special lecturer at

Michael York, John Schlesinger, and Armistead Maupin

.

For thirteen years, until 2004, he ran a writers' workshop on the Maximum Security Yard of the

Croton Falls, New York

and The Studio Theater in Manhattan. It received a nomination as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles.

Family

Milton married Sheila Kuester, an intensive care nurse, in 1981. They have two children, Abby and Kyle. They were divorced in 1991. David (Also known as Dave) died on January 13, 2020. He was 85 years old.