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Remembering John Masius: A Principled Scribe
By Jim Longworth
In “St. Elsewhere” a doctor’s wife is killed in an accident, and he is left to raise his autistic son who seldom speaks. In “Dolphin’s Cove” a man’s wife dies, and his daughter is so traumatized that she cannot speak. In the original pilot for “Touched by an Angel” the lead character has died in an accident and becomes an angel whose first assignment is to care for an autistic girl who won’t speak. In “Dead Like Me” the grim reaper takes up residence in Seattle. In “Providence” a plastic surgeon’s dead mother appears in every episode, and in the premier episode of “HawthoRNe” a divorced nurse tries to prevent a stage four cancer patient from committing suicide.
 Over a period of about 40 years, these compelling stories about dealing with death and disability came from the heart and heartbreak of the same man, my friend John Masius, one of Hollywood’s most talented and decorated storytellers. John died on September 13 at the age of 75 following a year-long battle with ALS. He is survived by a remarkable body of work, a remarkable ex-wife, and three remarkable children.
Born in the suburbs of New York City, John displayed a talent for writing early on, yet never enjoyed the process, telling me, “Writing’s very difficult for me. It’s very hard. I don’t jump at the prospect of doing it, like homework. For me it’s like having an exam paper due.” John attended Penn then moved west and graduated from UCLA with, of all things, an M.B.A. He waited tables at an L.A. restaurant to make ends meet, where one day he happened to serve Bruce Paltrow, then the producer of “The White Shadow” for MTM and CBS. Paltrow hired John to be a gopher, and years later promoted him to writer/producer on “Shadow” and “St. Elsewhere”.
 I first got to know John (“Maysh” to his friends) when I was writing a series of articles about “St. Elsewhere”, and then when I interviewed him for the first volume of my “TV Creators” series of books. He also appeared on a panel that I moderated in 2000 on “Women in Drama” for the Television Academy which featured the actresses and creators of several new primetime series headlined by women.
Maysh was not a publicity seeker and didn’t care to be the center of attention, so I had to coax him into joining the panel which included Tyne Daly, Amy Brenneman, Sela Ward, Annie Potts, Lorraine Toussant, Kathleen Quinlan, Melina Kanakaredes, and Dixie Carter alongside their respective showrunners.
 I particularly wanted John to participate because it was his groundbreaking show “Providence” which launched a new era of TV dramas for the 21st century starring women in the lead role.
Maysh was a complex man of strong principals who didn’t suffer fools well. His lifelong friend and college roommate Matt Blank, former president of Showtime, once told me, “John is one of the most honest men you could meet. If he didn’t like you, he’d tell you, and that bothers some people. To me it always made him endearing. He is a very sensitive person. I think sometimes people confuse John’s honesty for hostility, but I think his honesty is a function of that sensitivity”.
John’s honesty showed in his writing, but sometimes his principles put him at odds with those in power. That’s what happened with “Touched by an Angel”. Four years before the show would make it to air, John’s wife Ellen Bry (an actress and ensemble star in “St. Elsewhere”) gave birth to son Max, then to his brother Sam. Both boys were diagnosed with Autism. While interviewing him for my book, Maysh told me, “At that time I was pretty angry at God, and I still don’t really understand what kind of God does terrible things to small kids. The other thing I couldn’t handle was people, in their urge to comfort us, would say, ‘God doesn’t give you more than you can handle’, which Ellen and I found incredibly disturbing.”
Ellen’s and John’s struggle to cope was an impetus for “Touched by an Angel”, where in the pilot episode, Angel Monica (Roma Downey) who had died in the 1920’s was now comforting her terminally ill, eighty year old “daughter” who she had saved seven decades earlier. Monica pleads with the Angel of Death to end her daughter’s suffering, but he refuses, saying, “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle”, to which Monica replies, “That’s a lot of crap.” Executives at CBS felt that Monica’s retort was too dark and told John to remove that line of dialogue. Maysh refused, his pilot never aired, and he was fired from the series.
Several years later John resurrected his career when he created “Providence” for NBC, followed by “HawthoRNe” for TNT, both of which were well received by audiences and critics alike. And though Maysh told me, “critically acclaimed doesn’t pay the mortgage”, he was, nevertheless, richly rewarded by his peers and admirers, picking up numerous honors including two EMMYs, a Peabody, the Humanitas Prize, a Writers Guild award, and several People’s Choice awards.
Over the years Maysh and I kept in touch by email and phone, but the last time I saw him in person was on the set of “HawthoRNe” where he greeted my wife Pam and me warmly and with his trademark impish smile. As I think of that day, I recall his response to a question I had asked him during our conversations for “TV Creators”.
Jim: Suppose there was no such thing as on-screen credits for TV shows. How would someone know they had just watched a John Masius show?
John: They’d get some laughs and probably be moved. They’d also be twisted up a little bit emotionally. They’d be manipulated because I would have fu#ked with their heads(laughs).
Rest in peace my perverse and principled friend.
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