Biography

Dean Hargrove is an American television producer who was born on July 27, 1938 in Iola, Kansas. After graduating from high school, he was offered a job to become a comedy writer. He became an Emmy nominated writer in 1962 when he was writing The Bob Newhart Show (1961).

After Newhart's cancellation, he quickly wrote for My Three Sons (1960) in 1963, before becoming a staff writer in 1964 for the spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964). Besides "U.N.C.L.E.", he contributed some work, like Jericho (1966) and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966), both of those were for MGM Television and Norman Felton's Arena Productions.

After "U.N.C.L.E."'s cancellation, he moved to Universal Studios. He stayed there until 1977. For Universal, he wrote scripts for The Name of the Game (1968), Columbo (1971) and McCoy (1975). He also produced various TV shows like Madigan (1972) and The Family Holvak (1975), thus making Hargrove the highest paid writer in history for the studio.

Around the same time, in 1972, he launched an independent film production company, Strathmore Productions. He wrote and directed The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery (1975). Five years later, he left Universal and worked at Viacom with Roland Kibbee who was a partner to start out Kibee/Hargrove Productions. The duo produced Dear Detective (1979) and Snavely (1978).

In 1980, Kibee and Hargove parted ways. Hargrove shut down two production companies. He then joined Henry Winkler's production company Fair Dinkum Productions, where he served as president. He oversaw the production of Gabe and Walker (1981) and Ryan's Four (1983). Both were made for Paramount and ABC.

Two years later, he left Fair Dinkum, and reactivated Strathmore Productions as a TV production company. Hargrove signed a deal with Warner Bros. Television. During his time at Warner, he wrote one script for an unsold pilot which was reworked into an episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983) and he served as producer on the show Goldie and the Bears (1985).

In 1984, his Strathmore company left the Warners, and moved to Viacom Productions for which Hargrove worked from 1977-1980. He served as writer/producer on Me and Mom (1985), the telemovies based on "Perry Mason", Matlock (1986), Jake and the Fatman (1987), Father Dowling Mysteries (1989) and Diagnosis Murder (1993), though most of them were partnered with fellow producer Fred Silverman and Joel Steiger. He stayed there until 1997 when he moved to Columbia TriStar Television.

His career at Sony/Columbia included Tequila & Bonetti (2000), As If (2001), Sea of Souls (2004) and Demons (2009). He signed a deal with Hallmark Entertainment in 2002 and worked there on the "Murder 101", "Jane Doe" and "McBride" telemovies, before becoming an independent producer.

- IMDb mini biography by: Dean Hargrove