Via The Hollywood Reporter, writer and producer Ron Friedman passed away on Tuesday, September 16. He was 93 years old. Active from 1965 to 1995, Friedman was best known for his work in animation, including developing the original G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero TV show, and script editing The Transformers; writing the film spin-offs for both series; and for overseeing the 1994 Fantastic Four and Iron Man cartoons.
Born in West Virginia in 1932, Friedman originally trained as an architect at Carnegie Mellon University. He racked up multiple writing credits on live-action TV, including The Danny Kaye Show (for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award), The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, Gilligan’s Island, The Odd Couple, Happy Days, My Favorite Martian, Get Smart, I Dream of Jeannie, Starsky and Hutch, The Fall Guy, and Fantasy Island.
In a 2013 interview, Friedman stated he had been aiming to become a script doctor on Broadway, when he transitioned into animation. “Hasbro did a talent search to find ‘real writers’ to create the G.I. Joe pilot,” he recalled. “I won the contest. I won because I wanted to do a five-part miniseries because there were so many characters that over the course of a 22-minute episode you’d only have time to watch them walk by. That’s not going to endear a young audience to characters.”
Friedman’s work on G.I. Joe led him to his uncredited role on The Transformers, and to write the first two drafts of the movie’s screenplay (which an uncredited Flint Dille finalized), as well as the G.I. Joes’ own movie (completed by Buzz Dixon) in 1987. Despite naming his 2019 memoir I Killed Optimus Prime, Friedman said he had been opposed to the decision for the movie, and ultimately, the backlash to Optimus’s death led to a similar noble sacrifice for Duke in G.I. Joe: The Movie being altered at the last-minute.
Transformers: The Movie proved pivotal to the Marvel UK comic, providing plenty of source material for the original comics needed between reprints of its American counterpart, and the inspiration for writer Simon Furman to introduce the Transformers’ creator god, Primus. Friedman’s own comic book credits were negligible though, consisting of Marvel titles based on the shows he produced (including a 1990 Zorro series). He described his time on Fantastic Four and Iron Man (which composed the Marvel Action Hour block) as suffering from a lack of time or money, and was replaced after the first seasons of both shows by Tom Tataranowicz.
Friedman’s final TV work came in 1995 with an episode of Taz-Mania, and the live-action western series Legend. Afterwards, he worked as a screenwriting lecturer at the University of Southern California, and Chapman University. He and his wife, Valerie, had been in poor health for some time, including Ron receiving a prostate cancer diagnosis, and a GoFundMe had been set up for the couple. His cause of death was listed as being the result of complications from a gastrointestinal infection.
He is survived by Val, whom he married in 1973; information on other survivors was not available at the time of writing, although it is known they had three children, including two daughters, whom Friedman said prompted him to create the female Transformer Arcee for the 1986 movie. At the time, Hasbro’s policy was that there would be no female Transformers, because they considered it a boys’ toy line, but Friedman pushed back against this, wanting his girls to see themselves represented onscreen, and they relented, paving the way for other female Autobots to be introduced in the concurrently-produced second season of the cartoon (which aired before the movie’s release.)
