Jackson Gillis

Jackson Gillis was the middle son of three boys born to Ridgway M. Gillis (a civil engineer for the Washington State Highway Department) and Marjorie Lyman. In the late 1920s the Gillis family moved to California, settling first in Fresno then in Sacramento, where he grew up before attending and graduating from Stanford University. In July 1941 he married stage actress Patricia Cassidy. Assigned as intelligence officer with the 184th Infantry Regiment, Gillis served in the Pacific during WWII; after leaving the Army as a lieutenant colonel at the end of the war, he returned to writing for radio, most prominently "Let George Do It." From there he moved into television, writing many episodes of such series as Perry Mason (1957) (for which he was also associate producer), Lassie (1954), Racket Squad (1950) and The Mickey Mouse Club (1955). He was a regular writer on the "Columbo" series starring Peter Falk and was nominated for an Emmy for one of scripts for that series. After more than 40 years of writing television scripts, Jackson Gillis retired from the business in 1996 and he and his wife moved to a small town in Idaho.