THE HAT SQUAD: GERALD GREEN

Gerald Green was a best-selling author and screenwriter whose screenplay for the NBC television miniseries “Holocaust” (1978) received an Emmy Award. His novel of the same title, derived from the screenplay and published by Bantam Books that year, sold more than two million copies and earned Mr. Green the Dag Hammarskjold International Prize in 1979.

In July 1979 the West German Parliament voted to revoke the statute of limitations on murder, allowing the prosecution of Nazi war criminals to continue indefinitely. Though similar proposals had been debated for years, “Holocaust,” which had recently been broadcast there, was widely credited with having solidified public opinion.

Gerald Green died of pneumonia on Tuesday in Norwalk, Conn. He was 84 and lived in New Canaan, Conn., and Boca Raton, Fla.

Green's most famous novel, “The Last Angry Man,” was the basis for the 1959 film starring Paul Muni as an altruistic doctor in a downtrodden Brooklyn neighborhood. The novel was later made into a TV movie starring Pat Hingle, Sorrell Brooke, Paul Jabara, Lynn Carlin, and Andrew Duggan which served as a pilot for a possible TV series.

His other TV screenplays were for "Fatal Judgment", "Kent State", and "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story". His books "Tourist" and "The Hostage Heart" were adapted for Television as well.

Originally named Gerald Greensberg, he was a former writer and producer at NBC News where he was also one of the creators of the 'Today' show, first broadcast in 1952.

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