William Bowers (January 17, 1916 – March 27, 1987) was an American reporter, playwright, and screenwriter. He worked as a reporter in Long Beach, California and for Life magazine, and specialized in writing comedy-westerns. He also turned out several thrillers.
Bowers was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the son of a local doctor. His family moved to Dallas, Texas when Bowers was five and then to Long Beach, California, where he attended Long Beach Poly High School in 1933. He attended the University of Missouri from 1933 to 1937.
He worked on newspapers for United Press. Bowers's first play was Where Do We Go From Here?, which was produced by Oscar Hammerstein and was based on his fraternity house at the University of Missouri. The play ran for 15 performances in 1938. This led to Bowers being offered a seven-year contract with Columbia Pictures to write movies starting at $100 a week. According to William Froug, "During the following twenty years he turned out scores of features ranging from wild comedies to melodramas to Westerns. His best work often combines elements of all three."
Bowers signed with RKO. His first credited screenplay was My Favorite Spy for Kay Kyser in 1942. Also at that studio Bowers helped write the musical comedy Seven Days' Leave (1942), which was a considerable hit, and The Adventures of a Rookie (1943) with the team of Carney and Brown. He also did Higher and Higher (1943), Frank Sinatra's second movie.
During World War II, Bowers served in the United States Army Air Forces Civilian Pilot Training Program where he met Arch Hall Sr. Bowers later wrote a screenplay based on his experiences, The Last Time I Saw Archie, where Jack Webb played Bowers.
He wrote Sing Your Way Home (1945) with Jack Haley for RKO.
For Columbia he helped write The Notorious Lone Wolf (1946). Cary Grant arranged for him to be hired on the Cole Porter biopic Night and Day (1946). Bowers said "that was one of those insane things when what I wrote in the morning, I mean this literally, they shot in the afternoon, and what I wrote in the afternoon, they shot the next morning. It was the first time I ever had this experience." He disliked the final movie but it was very popular.
For Republic Pictures he provided the story for The Fabulous Suzanne (1946) and he worked on Paramount's Ladies' Man (1947) for Eddie Bracken.
At Universal Bowers wrote The Web (1947), a noir, and Deanna Durbin's second last film Something in the Wind (1947). He provided the story for the Abbott and Costello comedy The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (1948) which he wrote with Bud Beauchamp, an old army friend of Bowers who comtimes collaborated with him; they sold it for $2,500.
Bowers wrote the Yvonne de Carlo-Dan Duryea Westerns Black Bart, Highwayman (1948) and River Lady (1948). He did some uncredited work on United Artists' Pitfall (1948).
He wrote a noir, Larceny (1948) then did a Sonja Henie musical, The Countess of Monte Cristo (1948).
A play he wrote entitled West of Tomorrow was filmed by 20th Century Fox as Jungle Patrol. Bowers did some uncredited work on Criss Cross (1949) and provided the story for the de Carlo vehicle, The Gal Who Took the West (1949). Bowers said he wrote the latter in four weeks at $750 a week; he claims Billy Wilder wanted to buy the latter and offered $100,000 but Universal decided to make it themselves.
He did some script work on Abandoned (1949).
He recalled in 1971 that " I think the guys who remember the studio system now remember it all wrong. Actually, it was one of the most pleasant systems in the world. I mean, they made fifty pictures a year, each one of them. They needed ail this material desperately. And if you were somebody who likes to do pictures, that was just heaven. I could do three or four a year, if I wanted to do them, if I wanted to work that hard."
In 1950 he was Oscar nominated for the gritty Gregory Peck Western, The Gunfighter at Fox. Bowers originally wrote this script, based on his own story, on "spec" for John Wayne. He says Wayne wanted to make it but only offered $10,000 so Bowers sold it to Fox for $70,000. He said " In a Western, like any other kind of story, the important thing is the story, not the authenticity. You have to first get a really good story then, if you put it in 1870, you go to your research department... But don't do that first. You'll waste more damn time trying to make it authentic before you ever even get a good story. The story is the important thing, the characterizations are the important thing, then you just put those characters in a Western."
Bowers wrote Convicted (1950) for Columbia, Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone (1951) for MGM, Cry Danger (1951) for Robert Parrish at RKO, The Mob (1951) for Parrish at Columbia, and The San Francisco Story (1952) for Parrish at RKO.
He did Assignment: Paris (1952) for Parrish at Columbia and Split Second (1953) for Dick Powell at RKO. He did "The Girl on the Park Bench" (1953) for Powell's Four Star Theatre and some work on Beautiful But Dangerous (1954) for RKO.
For Where's Raymond? (1953) Bowers wrote the episodes "Christmas" and "Redecorate the Coffeeshop". He did "Trouble with Youth" for Ford Television Theatre (1954).