Ernest Tidyman

Writer

January 1, 1928 (56 years)

† July 14, 1984

Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ernest Tidyman (January 1, 1928 - July 14, 1984) was a Cleveland-born American author and screenwriter, best known for his novels featuring the African-American detective John Shaft. He also co-wrote the screenplay for the film version of Shaft with John D.F. Black in 1971. His screenplay for The French Connection garnered him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as a Golden Globe Award, a Writers Guild of America Award, and an Edgar Awar…

Filmography

7.5

The French Connection

Tough narcotics detective 'Popeye' Doyle is in hot pursuit of a suave French drug dealer who may be the key to a huge heroin-smuggling operation.

7.3

High Plains Drifter

A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago. After gunning down three gunmen who tried to kill him, the townsfolk decide to hire the Stranger to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.

6.0

Shaft

New York police detective John Shaft arrests Walter Wade Jr. for a racially motivated slaying. But the only eyewitness disappears, and Wade jumps bail for Switzerland. Two years later Wade returns to face trial, confident his money and influence will get him acquitted -- especially since he's paid a drug kingpin to kill the witness.

6.5

Shaft

JJ, aka John Shaft Jr., may be a cyber security expert with a degree from MIT, but to uncover the truth behind his best friend’s untimely death, he needs an education only his dad can provide. Absent throughout JJ’s youth, the legendary locked-and-loaded John Shaft agrees to help his progeny navigate Harlem’s heroin-infested underbelly.

7.3

Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones

In the 1960s, Reverend Jim Jones began as an idealist helping minorities and working against racism. After a move to San Francisco and increased power and attention, Jones became focused on his belief in nuclear holocaust, declared himself a prophet, and founded the Peoples Temple. With a loyal following of over 1,000, who donated their entire life savings to him and to join his commune, he moves them to Guyana. When possible crimes come to the attention of the authorities, and once notified that some individuals are being held against their will, an investigation begins. Rather than face the charges, Jones commits suicide, and roughly 900 of his followers do the same.

6.4

Shaft

Cool Black private eye John Shaft is hired by a crime lord to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter.

5.0

Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story

Fact-based story of the lives and attempted 1946 escape of several inmates in the famous correctional facility. Young inmate Clarence Carnes masterminds a grand escape involving several inmates who have nothing to lose, serving life sentences.

8.0

To Kill a Cop

Police drama concerning a maverick chief of detectives dealing with two cop killings and a spate of bank robberies. He's also fighting a back stabbing police commissioner and a revolutionary leader plotting a police massacre.

7.0

Power

Loosely based on the life of Jimmy Hoffa, this traces the rise of Tommy Vanda (Joe Don Baker) from a Chicago dock worker to an influential labor leader who, like Hoffa, finds himself behind bars in a federal prison, and not long after, taken for a ride by shady men never to be seen again.

4.9

A Force of One

Karate champion Matt Logan is enlisted by the police to train officers in self-defense after narcotics agents are killed by an assailant using the martial arts.

6.1

Shaft in Africa

Detective John Shaft travels incognito to Ethiopia, then France, to bust a human trafficking ring.

5.0

Street People

A Mafia boss is enraged when he is suspected of smuggling a heroin shipment into San Francisco. He dispatches his nephew, a hotshot Anglo-Sicilian lawyer, to identify the real culprit. The lawyer also enlists the aid of his best friend, a grand prix driver with an adventurous streak.

N/A

To Kill a Cop

Earl Eischied is a man with his hands full. As the Chief of Detectives in New York City he is trying to break up a group of black militants that are on a crime spree including the killing of a police officer. He is also trying to battle with a mayor and police commissioner that want him out of his job.

6.1

Shaft's Big Score!

John Shaft is back as the lady-loved black detective cop on the search for the murderer of a client.

7.3

Brotherly Love

A businessman is stalked by his murderous twin brother, who has just been released from a mental hospital.

5.5

Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story

Filmed on location at Alcatraz Island, this two-part "whole story" actually concentrates on a handful of the denizens behind the cold grey walls of "The Rock". Michael Beck plays the real-life Clarence Carnes, an Oklahoma Choctaw Indian said to be the youngest man ever incarcerated in the notorious maximum security prison. Serving a 99-year sentence for a gas station holdup and murder, Carnes makes periodic attempts to escape, the final attempt being the most violent. Many of the subordinate characters are fictional (as are most of the details concerning Carnes' escape efforts); the one exception is Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz", here portrayed by Art Carney as a gentle, kindly philosopher. Telly Savalas, a costar of the Burt Lancaster vehicle Birdman of Alcatraz, also guest starred in the 1980 film. Originally titled Alcatraz and Clarence Carnes, this made-for-TV movie wavers between gritty realism and "I'm bustin' outta here!" artifice.

4.7

Stark

Wichita policeman, Evan Stark, goes to Las Vegas in search of his missing sister, Laura.

6.6

Report to the Commissioner

Police officer Patty Butler, alias "Chicklet," is the live-in girlfriend of Thomas 'Stick' Henderson to gather evidence. Detective Bo Lockley is instructed to try to find her, not knowing she's also a cop.

8.8

Dummy

The real-life account of an illiterate, deaf-and-mute, black youth who was accused of murdering a prostitute, and the relationship that developed between him and his court-appointed attorney, who also was deaf, and the events leading up to his precedent-setting trial.

4.2

Last Plane Out

An American journalist covering the civil war in Nicaragua falls in love with a beautiful Sandinista rebel.