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Robert Garland, who wrote the features No Way Out, The Electric Horseman and The Big Blue, died Saturday in Baltimore of complications from dementia, his son announced. He was 83.
Early in his career, Garland wrote episodes of such 1970s comedies as That Girl, The Bill Cosby Show, Love American Style, The Bob Newhart Show and Sanford and Son.
Garland collaborated with director Sydney Pollack on The Electric Horseman (1979), starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, and on Tootsie (1982), on which he served as an uncredited writer. He worked without credit on Garry Marshall’s Pretty Woman (1990) as well.
Garland also produced No Way Out (1987), starring Kevin Costner. The Big Blue (1988), directed by Luc Besson and starring Jean Reno, marked his final credit.
Born in Brooklyn on May 1, 1937, Robert Warner Garland attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. In 1969, he landed a job as a talent coordinator for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and eventually helped prepare the host’s nightly monologues.
Garland retired from screenwriting in the mid-1990s and lived in Paris, the Liguria region of Italy and Key West, Florida.
Survivors include his son, Michael, daughter-in-law Hedda and grandsons Jonah and Felix.
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