James Costigan

James Costigan (March 31, 1926 – December 19, 2007) was an American actor, playwright, and Emmy Award-winning television screenwriter whose career spanned stage and screen across several decades. Born in East Los Angeles, California, where his parents ran a hardware store, Costigan went on to establish himself as both a Broadway performer and a prolific writer for television.

Costigan's writing career took shape in the 1950s, when he contributed scripts to television anthology series including Studio One and Kraft Television Theatre. His work in that format earned him his first Emmy Award for original teleplay in 1959, for Little Moon of Alban, which aired as part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. That same year, his script adaptation of The Turn of the Screw earned him a second Emmy nomination, though the award that cycle went to Ingrid Bergman for her performance in the production.

As the landscape of television shifted, Costigan turned his attention increasingly to the stage. His Broadway credits, spanning 1963 to 1964, included Little Moon of Alban, The Beast in Me, and Baby Want a Kiss, the last of which was a 1964 comedy starring Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman. He also contributed as a book writer during this period on Broadway.

Costigan resumed screenwriting for television in the early 1970s. Among his work from that period was A War of Children, written in 1972, which centered on a Roman Catholic family and a Protestant family in Northern Ireland whose longstanding friendship is tested by sectarian violence. He won his second Emmy for Love Among the Ruins, a 1975 television movie set in Edwardian England starring Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier. A third Emmy followed for Eleanor and Franklin, a 1976 two-part, four-hour television drama chronicling the lives of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Following the Roosevelt project, Costigan wrote a number of subsequent screenplays under the pseudonym Ivan Davis. He also collaborated with other writers, including John Huston, on a film adaptation of Thornton Wilder's novel Mr. North. Costigan died on December 19, 2007, at his home in Bainbridge Island, Washington, of heart failure, at the age of 81.