SAD NEWS FOR KING FANS

Genre Producer Monash Dead

Veteran Hollywood writer and producer Paul Monash, who produced the original Carrie movie, as well as TV's Salem's Lot, died Jan. 14 after a brief illness at his Los Angeles home, the Reuters news service reported. He was 86.

Monash was a writer and producer of widely praised television films, pilots and series and was also a producer who scoured the bookstalls for projects that included such cinematic films as Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Big Trouble in Little China and Stephen King's Carrie. Monash also wrote the TV miniseries Salem's Lot, based on a King novel, the wire service reported.

Born in New York's Harlem and raised in the Bronx, Monash said his goal at age 21 was "to write the American novel," but instead he rode the rails and lived as an expatriate in Paris. He eventually became a writer for television. In 2000, the Writers Guild of America gave him its Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for his lifetime achievement, the wire service reported.