Richard Leighton Levinson (August 7, 1934 – March 12, 1987) was an American screenwriter and producer who often worked in collaboration with William Link.[1][2]
William Link and Richard Levinson began a 43-year-long friendship in 1946, on their first day of junior high school. Both were avid Ellery Queen fans from boyhood and enjoyed mental puzzles and challenges, a characteristic that would spill over into their work.
The partners also collaborated on two feature films, The Hindenburg (1975) and Rollercoaster (1977), and the Broadway show Merlin, featuring the magician Doug Henning.
The team occasionally used the pseudonym "Ted Leighton," drawn from each of their middles names—most notably on the telefilm Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You, (where their work was substantially rewritten by other screenwriters), and Columbo when they came up with stories to be scripted by their collaborators. They used the name as early as 1959 for short stories published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine[5] when the magazine already contained stories appearing as by Levinson and Link. They also used the name for their contribution to the script for Steve McQueen's final movie, The Hunter.
In 1979, Levinson and Link received a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for their work on Ellery Queen and Columbo. During the 1980s, they were three-time winners of the Edgar for Best TV Feature or MiniSeries Teleplay, and in 1989 they were given the MWA's Ellery Queen Award, which honors outstanding mystery-writing teams. In November 1995, they were jointly elected to the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
Levinson, Richard; Link, William (1983) [1981]. Stay Tuned: An Inside Look at the Making of Prime-Time Television. New York: Ace Books. ISBN978-0441785469.