Henry
Denker (November 25,
1912 – May 15, 2012) was an American novelist and playwright. Denker was born
in New York, the son of a fur trader. After initially studying to be a rabbi,
he change to the study of law and graduated from New York Law School in
1934. He stopped practicing law but used his legal background for numerous
written works. Denker
was admitted to the New York Bar in 1935, at the height of the Depression, and
he soon left law practice to earn his living by writing. His legal training was
reflected in many of his works. During Denker's brief legal career, he won a
Workmen's Compensation case which, according to Denker, for the first time
established that a physical trauma can induce a mental disease. In another
case, Denker served a summons on heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. Denker was
the originator and writer of what he describes as the "first television
series ever produced," False Witness, on NBC-TV in 1939.
Despite its success, the series was discontinued when the nascent medium of
television was converted into an instruction tool for the mass training of Air
Raid Wardens in anticipation of the U.S. entry into World War II. Denker
started writing for radio with three productions on CBS Radio's Columbia
Workshop: "Me? I Drive a Hack," starring Richard Widmark,
"Emile, the Seal," a fantasy, and "Laughter for the
Leader," a political drama in which CBS, without explanation, forbade the
character of Hitler to be played with a German accent. During the War World II,
Denker worked as a writer on the English Desk of the Office of War Information.
In 1945, Denker began his full-time writing career as the writer of the Radio
Readers Digest on CBS. One of his scripts, he says, was the first radio drama
about a physical transplant, a corneal transplant of a human eye to restore
sight. In 1947, Denker wrote the first script for the religious radio
series The Greatest Story Ever
Told, which, in 1949, won a special George Foster Peabody Citation, the Christopher Award, the CCNY Outstanding
Program of the Year Award, the Variety Award of the Year 1947, and others.
Denker was to write every script in the series, which ran from 1947 to 1957. Later,
on television, Denker wrote, and David Susskind produced, the first dramatic treatment of
a heart transplant, "The Choice," which anticipated the challenge of
so many patients in need and so few hearts to give. With a cast including
Melvyn Douglas, George Grizzard and Frank Langella, the TV drama included film
of an actual surgery provided by Dr. Michael E. DeBakey. Denker
recalls that CBS allowed only 30 seconds of the surgical film for fear that the
audience would shrink from seeing a beating heart in an open chest cavity. While
writing for radio and television, Denker branched out into the theater, which
he described as "my first love." Later he began writing novels. Of
his 34 published novels, 17—more than any other author's—have been selected and
published by Reader's Digest Condensed
Books. Six
plays by Denker have been produced on Broadway, two in the Kennedy Center in
Washington, D.C., and two in other venues. Denker was married for 62 years to
Edith Heckman, whom he met when he was a patient and she was a
nurse in Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. Denker died of lung cancer on May
15, 2012.