Bill Kerby

Bill Kerby was an American screenwriter whose credits spanned Hollywood features and prestige television, from The Last American Hero and Hooper to the Bette Midler rock drama The Rose and the Emmy-nominated History channel miniseries Hatfields & McCoys. He died on 13 August 2026 on Whidbey Island, Washington, aged 88. His longtime agent, producer John Ptak, told The Hollywood Reporter that Kerby had been in home hospice care and fell, suffering a fracture.

William Kerby was born on 13 December 1937 in Buffalo, New York, and moved often as a child, living in Michigan, San Diego, Bremerton, Phoenix, Michigan City and Tryon, North Carolina. He attended Christ School for Boys in Arden and Tryon High School, served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the mid-1950s, studied and acted at Kent State University, then worked as an actor and welfare investigator in New York. Inspired by student films on PBS, he entered UCLA's film school in 1964 and earned an M.F.A. in 1968 among classmates who included Ptak, Rob Reiner and Ray Manzarek. He worked for Roger Corman while a student, wrote about music for the Los Angeles Free Press, and joined a Warner Bros. writers program in 1969.

His feature breakthroughs included rewriting The Last American Hero (1973) for Lamont Johnson, revising Terrence Malick's script for The Gravy Train (1974), co-writing Hooper (1978) for Burt Reynolds, and writing the first draft of The Rose (1979), which earned Midler and others Oscar nominations; Kerby retained sole story credit after a Writers Guild arbitration. Later film work included Firepower and Dead Men Can't Dance. On television he wrote Steel Cowboy, Dadah Is Death, Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee, Little Richard, On the Beach and, culminating a project begun in the 1980s, Hatfields & McCoys (2012), which brought an Emmy nomination and a WGA award. He taught screenwriting at London's National Film School and prized rewriting over blank-page starts.

Kerby married Paula in 1996; they moved from Santa Barbara to Whidbey Island three years later. Ptak placed him among the 1970s film-school wave that helped remake studio storytelling. Kerby said writing was so much fun he never wanted to direct or produce, only to keep at the craft.