Michael McGreevey (born February 7, 1948) is an American actor and screenwriter. He starred in several Walt Disney films as a young actor and later became a writer for the Fame TV series. He is the son of Emmy Award-winning television and film screenwriter John McGreevey.
Career
Michael McGreevey's first major role was as young cabin boy Chip Kessler in the 1959–61 TV series Riverboat.[1] It starred Darren McGavin as the captain of a riverboat on the Mississippi River during the 1830s. In a 2015 interview, McGreevey confirmed the rumored friction between McGavin and his co-star Burt Reynolds: "They were just two very different personalities. I think that Burt was insecure. It was his first job in Hollywood and Darren was a very polished actor. It was Darren's show really--he was Captain Holden. I think Burt was a little jealous of Darren and they clashed quite a bit. What finally happened was that Burt left the show. But I loved them both. Darren was very much a father figure for me and Burt was like a big brother. He had been a football player at Florida State and I was impressed with that because I was into football. The first football I ever got--in fact, I've still got it--he got me. We used to play catch. I still see Burt every once in awhile [sic]. He still says: 'Don't tell people you were only 11 years old when we were on Riverboat.'"[2]
In 1978, after studying film at UCLA, Michael McGreevey collaborated with his father, John McGreevey, on the script for the 1978 made-for-TV movie Ruby and Oswald: "In reality, the movie, although it's called Ruby and Oswald, is a three-way depiction of those four days in Dallas where we cut back and forth between the documentary footage of Kennedy and the recreated story with Ruby and Oswald. Dad and I both knew a man named Alan Landsburg, who had done a lot of documentaries. We went to him with the project first and he knew Mel Stuart, who had done an Academy Award-winning documentary called Four Days in November (1964). So, Mel was attached to direct it and we went into CBS and sold it right away as a three-hour special event movie. I was very proud of that movie; it was very well done."[2]
McGreevey subsequently wrote episodes of TV series such as The Waltons; Quincy, M.E.; and Fame. He eventually became a script editor and then creative consultant for Fame.[6] In 1984, he received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing in Children's Programming for co-writing the ABC Afterschool Special "The Celebrity and the Arcade Kid".[7] In 2015, he co-wrote the feature-length documentary Earl Hamner Storyteller, which focused on the life and career of The Waltons creator Earl Hamner, Jr.[2]
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