Biography
William Read Woodfield (1928–2001) was an American television writer, producer and photographer. He began his career in photography, taking portraits of film stars for magazines including Life and Esquire, before moving into screenwriting in the 1960s.
Woodfield formed a writing partnership with Allan Balter and contributed scripts to series such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space (1965) and The Time Tunnel (1966). He joined Mission: Impossible (1966) as a writer and story consultant, later becoming a producer; the pair helped shift the series towards elaborate confidence games and illusions drawn from Woodfield’s interest in magic. He also wrote episodes of Columbo (1971).
Woodfield received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for his work on Mission: Impossible in 1968, along with further nominations. He died in Los Angeles in 2001.
