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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
Clyde Coster Ware, Jr. (December 22, 1930 – August 30, 2010) was a writer and filmmaker born in Clarksburg and raised in West Union, Doddridge County.
Ware attended college for one year at West Virginia University, where he studied journalism and geology. In the early 1950s, he moved to New York and found a job at the New York Journal-American newspaper. He eventually quit his job at the newspaper and devoted himself full-time to playwriting. In New York, Ware studied acting under the instruction of renowned director and actor Lee Strasberg. Through classes at Strasberg’s studio, Ware met his first wife, actress Kay Doubleday.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Ware wrote a variety of plays and television scripts. He contributed scripts to such popular shows as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Rawhide, Daniel Boone, and Gunsmoke. In 1969 Ware’s first book, the Western genre novel The Innocents, was published by Norton. His second novel, The Eden Tree, was published in 1971. Ware considered The Eden Tree a semi-autobiographical depiction of his relationship with his family and his hometown.
Throughout the 1970s, Ware frequently collaborated with actor Martin Sheen. In 1972, Ware wrote and directed the film No Drums, No Bugles, a Civil War drama set and filmed in West Virginia. No Drums, No Bugles starred Sheen as well as Ware’s second wife, the actress Davey Davison. Ware directed Sheen again in another West Virginia-set film, 1973’s When the Line Goes Through, as well as 1974’s The Story of Pretty Boy Floyd and 1992’s Another Time, Another Place.
In 1975, Ware wrote and directed The Hatfields and the McCoys. Broadcast nationwide by ABC, the TV film starred Jack Palance as Devil Anse Hatfield and Steve Forrest as Randall McCoy.
In 1987, Ware wrote the TV film The Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glory, which reunited Ware with Gunsmoke star James Arness. Ware’s final credit was in 2010 as writer and producer of the film Dreamkiller. Ware died of cancer in Los Angeles at the age of 79.
Written by Jeffrey Webb
"Clyde Ware Interview":Profile WWVU-TV. YouTube: August 11, 1971, YouTube link.
Harrison, Alexa. “Writer-director Clyde Ware dies”. Variety, September 16, 2010.
Ryan, Evelyn. “Writer must aim high for goals, West Union’s Clyde Ware says”. Morgantown Dominion Post, May 17, 1970.