2006 Award Recipient

Award-winning writer-director and former WGAw president Frank Pierson is slated to receive this year's Morgan Cox Honorary Service Award at the upcoming 2006 Writers Guild Awards ceremony held Saturday, February 4, 2006, recognizing Pierson's many years of dedicated service to empower his fellow writers.

“No one is more worthy of recognition by this union than Frank Pierson,” said WGAw President Patric M. Verrone. “He is one of the few members in guild history to win all three major honorary awards we offer. Honoring him makes my heart feel nearly as full as his mantel.”

Pierson served as WGAw president two separate terms, first from 1981- 1983, and again from 1993 - 1995. In addition, he also served as president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences from 2001 through 2005. In 1992 he received the WGAw's Screen Laurel Award in recognition for his body of work. In 1991, Pierson received the guild's prestigious Valentine Davies Award in 1991 for industry and community service, as well as the guild's Edmund J. North Award in 1999. The North is the guild's highest honor, recognizing both a body of work and service to the guild and community. Pierson has served on the boards of AMPAS, the Los Angeles Theater Center, Artists Rights Foundation, and Humanitas. He is on the board of governors at the American Film Institute, serving as AFI's co-artistic director and conducting the school's Narrative Workshop first-year core curriculum. He has been a faculty member of the Sundance Institute, as well as a lecturer at USC. In 2005, Pierson was the recipient of the Humanitas Prize's Kieser Award.

Pierson's active involvement in the Writers Guild spans several decades, having served on a wide variety of WGAw committees over the years, including the guild's Negotiating Committee (1985-86), Screen Credits, Contract Adjustment, CAC Steering, Copyright National Committee West, Screen Laurel and Valentine Davies awards selection, East-West Study, Membership Structure, President's Committee on Professional Status of Writers, Screen Authors Agreement, Screenwriters Council, Unit System, and the guild's Writers Image Campaign (WICC).  In addition, Pierson served as a Pension and Health trustee (1981-82).

Born in Chappaqua, New York, Pierson served in the Pacific during World War II, subsequently earning a degree with honors in cultural anthropology from Harvard University. As a field correspondent for Time and Life magazines, a young Pierson covered movies and military affairs. In 1958, he left journalism, sold his first script to the half-hour anthology Alcoa Goodyear Theater, and worked as script editor for Have Gun Will Travel.

Writer-director Pierson has carved out a prolific career that transcends small and big screens, garnering a slew of industry awards along the way. As a screenwriter, his Oscar-nominated credits include Cat Ballou (1965, Best Writing, Screenplay Based On Material from Another Medium, shared with Walter Newman, which also earned the pair a WGA nod for Best Written American Comedy that year) and Cool Hand Luke (1967, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium), as well his Oscar-winning original screenplay for Dog Day Afternoon (1975), which also earned Pierson a Writers Guild Award for Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen. Pierson's other notable writing credits include Presumed Innocent (1990), In Country (1989), and A Star Is Born (1976). Earlier on, three-time WGA nominee Pierson penned episodes for classic TV series such as Route 66 and Naked City.

As an acclaimed director, Pierson's credits have ranged from film features such as The Looking Glass War (1969), A Star is Born (1976), and King of the Gypsies (1978) to more recent cable fare, including DGA-nominated telefilms Citizen Cohn (1992) and Truman (1995), as well as Conspiracy (2001, for which he won a 2002 DGA Award for
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television), Soldier's Girl (2003), and Paradise (2004). A three-time Emmy nominee, Pierson received directing nods for Citizen Cohn, Conspiracy, and Soldier's Girl.

The Morgan Cox Award honors that WGAw member or group of members whose “vital ideas, continuing efforts, and personal sacrifice best exemplify the ideal of service to the guild.” Previous Morgan Cox recipients include Fay Kanin, Allen Rivkin, Mel Shavelson, Irma Kalish, Ann Marcus, George Kirgo, Del Reisman, David W. Rintels, James Buchanan, and last year's recipient, Hal Kanter. The late Morgan B. Cox, who died in 1968, devoted much of his professional life to serving the Writers Guild, helping ensure that television writers were included under the jurisdiction of the Writers Guild.