Morton Fine (December 24, 1916, Baltimore, Maryland – March 7, 1991, Santa Monica, California) was an American screenwriter.
A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Fine worked in an advertising agency, a bookstore, and an aircraft factory before joining the Army Air Force in 1942. A graduate of St. John's College in Annapolis, Fine returned to school after his military service ended in 1944 and earned a master's degree in English from the University of Pittsburgh. After an unprofitable stint writing for magazines, he moved to California and turned to writing for radio programs. It was then that he met David Friedkin and began a long writing partnership. Fine wrote several nationally-broadcast radio shows in collaboration with David Friedkin, including Broadway Is My Beat and Crime Classics.
The writing duo then moved on to film and television where their credits include The Pawnbroker (for which he won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Drama in 1965), The Nativity, The Greek Tycoon, I Spy, The Next Man, The Most Deadly Game, and several television Westerns including The Rifleman, The Big Valley, Maverick, and more.
Famous quotes containing the words morton and/or fine:
“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
—Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904)
“But this fully answered John’s purpose toward Betty, for as she did not understand, she highly admired him; and he concluded by again repeating that learning was a fine thing for a man but ‘twas both useless and blameworthy for a woman either to write or read.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)