| Fred Freiberger | |
| Birth Date: | 19 February 1915 |
| Nationality: | American |
| Television: | Ben Casey (season 3) The Wild Wild West(season 1) Star Trek (season 3) (1968 - 69) The Six Million Dollar Man (1977–78) |
| Occupation: | Television writer and producer Screenwriter |
| Years Active: | 1946 - 89 |
| Spouse: | Shirley Freiberger |
| Children: | 2 |
Fred Freiberger (February 19, 1915March 2, 2003)[1] was an American film and television writer and television producer, whose career spanned four decades and work on films such as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and TV series including Ben Casey (1963–64), The Wild Wild West (1965), Star Trek (1968 - 69) and (1976 - 77).
Freiberger was the producer of the third and final season of science-fiction series Star Trek, between 1968 and 1969. His screenwriting credits include 13 films made between 1946 and 1958. He appeared as himself in the short documentary Funny Old Guys,[2] which aired as part of the HBO series Still Kicking, Still Laughing in 2003, a few months after his death in March.
Freiberger died on March 2, 2003, at his Bel-Air home, according to his son, Ben. No cause of death was given.[3]
Freiberger was born to a Jewish family[4] in New York City. In the late 1930s, Freiberger worked in advertising in New York. During World War II, he was stationed in England with the United States Eighth Air Force, but was shot down over Germany and spent two years as a prisoner of war. After the war, he moved to Hollywood with the intention of working in film publicity, but a studio strike saw him move into screenwriting.[5] He was associated with Buddy Rogers' Comet Productions and Columbia Pictures.[6] He was one of the four credited writers on the monster movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953).[7]
From 1958, Freiberger worked almost exclusively in television. As a writer, he contributed scripts for dozens of tv shows in the period 1952 through 1989.[8] As a producer, his first assignment was in 1960 on the medical drama Ben Casey, followed by a brief stint as producer of The Wild Wild West during its first season (1965 - 66). In 1968, Freiberger was hired as producer for the third and final season of Star Trek. He then returned to writing, scripting episodes for a number of early-1970s TV series, including All in the Family, Emergency!, Starsky and Hutch and Ironside, and also worked as a story editor at Hanna-Barbera on the TV series The New Scooby-Doo Movies and Super Friends. Freiberger then moved on to produce the second (and last) season of the British sci-fi series (1976–77), the final season of The Six Million Dollar Man (1977 - 78), and the short-lived Beyond Westworld (1980). Toward the end of his career, he wrote six episodes of the 1980s syndicated series Superboy.
Freiberger had been interviewed as a possible producer for Star Trek before it entered production in 1966, but had left the selection process due to a planned trip. In 1968, as a result of creative differences with broadcaster NBC, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry resigned as showrunner. Freiberger was again contacted and hired as producer for the series' third season. He assumed this role with a reduced budget that made the series more difficult to produce,[9] as well as a new "Friday night death slot" that resulted in a further decline in viewing ratings for what was already a low-rated program. Many Star Trek fans have since criticised Freiberger for being the cause of this decline, but actress Nichelle Nichols (who played Uhura) wrote in his defense. Nichols argued that NBC's considerable budget cutbacks to the third season of Star Trek, in an environment of rising production costs and escalating actors' salaries, meant that: