Bill Kerby, Screenwriter on ‘The Rose,’ ‘The Last American Hero’ and ‘Hooper,’ Dies at 88

Bill Kerby, the maverick screenwriter who wrote the first draft of the Bette Midler-starring rock drama The Rose and worked on The Last American Hero , The Gravy Train and Hooper as well, has died. He was 88.

Kerby died Aug. 13 on Whidbey Island in Washington state, producer John Ptak, his longtime agent, told The Hollywood Reporter . He had been in hospice care at home but had fallen and suffered a fracture, he added.

A full-time writer in Hollywood for 30 years, Kerby received an Emmy nomination and a WGA award for penning the three-part 2012 miniseries Hatfields and the McCoys , which starred Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton and was a huge ratings success for the History channel. Related Stories TV Barry Melrose, Entertaining ESPN Hockey Analyst, Dies at 70 TV Nina Shipman, Actress in 'The Oregon Trail' and 'The Munsters,' Dies at 88

He had started on the project for producer Leslie Greif at CBS in the 1980s, and it would turn out to be his last credit.

In 1973, Kerby had written reviews of rock concerts and interviewed musicians when was hired by producer Marvin Worth, who had a deal at 20th Century Fox, to write a rock movie, “one loosely based on Janis Joplin, a female singer, rise and fall, live the life, die the death,” he recalled in an entertaining 1980 interview for the Writers Guild Foundation. “I was even more of a nobody then than I am now, but they made me a deal.”

Bo Goldman , an Oscar winner for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , worked on a week-to-week contract revising Kerby’s script that was originally titled The Pearl , and The Rose (1979), starring Bette Midler, Alan Bates and Frederic Forrest and directed by Mark Rydell , would be nominated for four Oscars. (He and Rydell died on the same day.)

Kerby said he was extremely proud that one of his original scenes for the film, the one where Midler’s Mary Rose Foster is rudely dismissed by her idol, country music star Billy Ray ( Harry Dean Stanton ), remained intact through so many script iterations over so many years.

The colorful Kerby said he had to overcome some personal challenges early in his career, calling himself a “hyphenate … I was a ‘writer-producer hater’ — that was my hyphenate.

“Writing is hard enough. To be a great asshole is hard enough. But to do both things at the same time will kill your career.”

William Kerby was born on Dec. 13, 1937, in Buffalo, New York, and as a kid he lived in Lakeside, Michigan; San Diego; Bremerton, Washington; Phoenix; Michigan City, Indiana; and Tryon, North Carolina.

He attended Christ School for Boys in Arden, North Carolina, and then Tryon High School as president of the senior class before serving with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1955-57.

At Kent State University, he appeared in productions of The Little Foxes and Under Milkwood , then moved to New York City, where he pursued acting and worked as a welfare investigator.

Watching PBS one night, Kerby was taken by two student films made at UCLA and applied for admittance into its film school. He was accepted in 1964 and four years later earned his master’s degree.