Earl W. Wallace

Earl W. Wallace (October 23, 1942 – May 12, 2018) was an American screen and television writer who began his career in the 1970s writing episodes of the hit CBS Western series Gunsmoke, one of which inspired him, his wife Pamela, and William Kelley to develop the screenplay for the 1985 film Witness. Wallace's first submission to Gunsmoke came while he was city editor of a regional newspaper, the Thousand Oaks Acorn. He had enrolled in a screenwriting class where the assignments included the creation of an original episode of Gunsmoke. The professor submitted Wallace's teleplay to the Gunsmoke writing staff, who accepted it and ran it as an episode.