Cooley Wyatt
by
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Born to European emigrants, William Kronick grew up in Amsterdam, New York. He won a scholarship to Columbia College where he was active in the Columbia Players’ stage productions. He also helped form The Gilbert and Sullivan Society at Barnard College.
While at Columbia, William Kronick was deeply impressed by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, especially by his major work, "Miss Julie," which had been made into a movie directed by Alf Sjoberg.
After graduation William Kronick was drafted into the U.S. Navy where he became a Photographer’s Mate. During a North Atlantic exercise, his ship anchored at Stockholm. Kronick took this opportunity to contact Alf Sjoberg, who agreed to meet with him.
Kronick asked Sjoberg about an apprenticeship. Sjoberg suggested that his protégé, Ingmar Bergman, might be a more rewarding filmmaker to observe and made the arrangements with Svenskfilmindustri Studios for Kronick, once out of the Navy, to be part of Bergman’s next film "The Magician." He was the first foreigner to be granted such entree.
Upon returning to New York Kronick found a job as Production Assistant with Louis de Rochemont Associates. So began his four-decade career as a writer, director and producer.
Kronick's first film was a twenty-seven minute comedy-satire called "A Bowl of Cherries" (1961). The film, which played in nearly a thousand art theaters in the U.S. and Europe, was seen in L.A. by a producer of TV documentaries, David L. Wolper. He offered Kronick the directing/writing position on a new reality series, "Story of…"
Over a period of decades, Kronick, with total creative control, would write and direct some of Wolper’s highest-rated Network Specials, ranging from "Alaska!" (National Geographic) to "Plimpton!" to "The Five-Hundred Pound Jerk" (A Movie-of-the Week, Director only) to "Mysteries of the Great Pyramid."
His first feature, independently financed, was "A Likely Story" (a.k.a. "The Dublin Murders"). Kronick also did long-term stints as Second Unit Director on features such as "King Kong" (1976) and "Flash Gordon" (1980), on which he was responsible for many action and special effects sequences.
In 2000 he devoted himself to writing novels. The tales are contemporary morality stories, dealing mainly with film and theater.
He has been married and divorced twice and has a son, Max, by his second wife. Kronick resides in Los Angeles.
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About the Book
It is the near-present: the end of the Twentieth Century. Jack Amory leaves his family-bequeathed Central Park West penthouse apartment to walk to a midtown Manhattan meeting. On this pristine May morning, he weighs the pros and cons of his present life, since his next birthday, his fiftieth, is on his fertile mind, along with another matter, far more pressing. He is broke. The once-in-demand ‘new journalist’s story idea is rejected at The New Yorker. Later, as he strolls aimlessly along cross-streets he has an encounter that will alter the balance of his life: pausing to let a couple exit a small hotel entrance to get themselves and luggage into a taxi, he and the bearded cowboy-tourist have a moment of mutual recognition. The cab pulls away. Hyperventilating, Jack bribes the doorman to reveal departing visitors’ identity. A ‘Mr. and Mrs. John Harding from Santa Fe, New Mexico.’ But Jack is convinced the lanky, long-haired man in his mid-fifties is Cooley Wyatt, the self-educated, authentic folk singer-writer, with whom he lived and traveled in 1972 while doing an exclusive story for Rolling Stone. Until this sighting, Jack believed Cooley died when his Cessna crashed in a formidably desolate region of the Arizona desert in 1974 while flying by himself to a major concert in Phoenix. At the peak of a stunning six-year career as a loner, maverick entertainer, he left behind millions of fans, an adoring wife and a great fortune. The nation mourned. Ann, Jack’s wife, fears for his sanity when he insists on rushing to Santa Fe to confirm or deny the possibility he may have hit upon what could be the major scoop of the century! Cooley Wyatt alive for the past twenty-five years?! The Amorys’ money problems will be over for good if he’s right!...But if he is, who died in the crash? And if he survived it, why would this major talent disguise his identity, surrendering fame and wealth for obscurity? Ann can give no credence nor airfare to his fantasy,
About the Author
Having been graduated from Columbia College,
Kronick has since written, directed and/or produced both documentaries and theatrical films. In the former arena his credits range from National Geographic and Plimpton! Network Specials to To The Ends Of The Earth, a feature-length chronicle of the British Antarctica-Arctic Transglobe Expedition. It received an Academy Award Special Certificate of Merit. He also produced many episodes for the Series In Search of… and Mysteries of the Bible.
In the theatrical field, he directed A Bowl of Cherries, The 500 Pound Jerk, Horowitz in
Cooley Wyatt is the second of a trilogy of novels to explore the dynamics of authentic artistic talent, celebrity and commerce in contemporary
Mr. Kronick resides in