Lowell S. Hawley Biography

The man best known as the screenwriter of the family classic The Swiss Family Robinson, Lowell S. Hawley proved a longtime Disney stalwart with work on such popular films as The Sign of Zorro and Babes in Toyland. Born in Lynden, WA, in 1909, Hawley began his writing career at a Bellingham radio station before moving to the West Coast in 1942. Spending his time in Los Angeles writing for the KFI radio program Art Baker's Notebook, Hawley also penned the novel A Few Buttons Missing: The Case Book of a Psychiatrist, which topped The New York Times bestseller list. He later teamed with author Ralph Bushnell Potts for the 1953 novel Counsel for the Damned, and retired shortly after the death of Walt Disney in 1966, although he wrote a final screenplay in 1997 for the Disney TV movie Beverly Hills Family Robinson. Hawley died in 2003. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi