Eliot Wald
Eliot Wald was a comedy writer who worked for The Second City improv group in Chicago and for "Saturday Night Live" before turning to movies. He and a partner, Andrew Kurtzman, wrote scripts for the television movie "Hot Paint" (1988) and for the films "See No Evil, Hear No Evil" (1989), "Camp Nowhere" (1994) and "Down Periscope" (1996). Born Feb. 10, 1946, Wald grew up in the Bronx and then moved to Chicago where he wrote for underground papers and for WTTW, the public television station in that city. At the station, he came up with the idea for a movie critics' show, the program that eventually became "Siskel & Ebert" and now "Ebert & Roeper." Wald joined the staff of the Chicago Daily News to write for a youth-oriented section called Sidetracks. When the Daily New closed in 1978, he joined the Chicago Sun-Times where he wrote about music, television and other topics before joining the writing staff of Second City. One of many Second City alums to join "Saturday Night Live," Wald lived and wrote in New York for five years before he and Kurtzman moved to Los Angeles. He was married to Jane Wald, an intellectual property lawyer. Eliot Wald died at age 57 on July 12, 2003, of liver cancer in Los Angeles.