Frankel, Ernest

Novelist, screenwriter, and producer, Ernest Frankel was a regular contributor to the "Perry Mason" television series and wrote the novels "Tongue of Fire" (1955) and "Band of Brothers" (1958).

Novelist, screenwriter, and producer, Ernest Frankel was a regular contributor to the Perry Mason television series and wrote the novels Tongue of Fire (1955) and Band of Brothers (1958). In addition to Perry Mason, his television credits include I Spy, The Mod Squad, Mannix, and numerous Movies of the Week, including Reluctant Heroes (1971) and Murder in Music City (1979).

Frankel was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on 15 January 1923. He was graduated from high school in Charlotte, N.C., in 1940 and from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1944. At the University of North Carolina, Frankel was co-president of Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity and worked on the Daily Tar Heel, the Carolina Magazine, the Yackety Yack, and the Publications Union Board.

Frankel served as a Marine in the Pacific Theater during World War II and was recalled for service during the Korean War. He completed a brief tour of duty in Vietnam and retired as a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Frankel wrote two novels in the 1950s: Tongue of Fire (1955), about the career of an American demagogue, and Band of Brothers (1958), about U.S. Marines serving in Korea during the Korean War. Frankel won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for fiction in 1959 for Band of Brothers .

Frankel worked for five years as a writer-director on the Apollo Project in the Space Division of North American Aviation. He subsequently worked as a writer and producer in network television.

Ernest Frankel married Louise Lazarus of Hendersonville, N.C., in 1944. They had two children, Sharyn Musika (UCLA 1968) and Elin Schwarz (UNC 1972).