Howard Berk, a novelist, producer and screenwriter, died in Los Angeles on March 27 of natural causes. He was 91.
Berk’s credits included numerous episodes of television series including “Columbo,” “Mission: Impossible,” The Rockford Files” and “McMillan & Wife,” and several feature films, including the Arthur Penn-directed “Target” (1985), starring Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon.
Berk most recently wrote two episodes of CBS’ “The New Mike Hammer,” starring Stacy Keach, in the mid-’80s.
A longtime Distinguished Writer in Residence and professor at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia (where he studied journalism as a young man), Berk most recently published an essay entitled “My Lunch With Hemingway” on the National Geographic website in which he recounted a fateful meeting with Ernest Hemingway in 1950s Cuba.
He also wrote four novels.
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Berk is survived by his son, Peter; brother Robert; and two grandchildren.
