Chris Hayward, 'Bullwinkle' writer
By Valerie J. Nelson
Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Chris Hayward, 81, a television writer who developed the klutzy cartoon character Dudley Do-Right and helped imbue the rest of the Rocky and Bullwinkle gang with the same sense of silliness and satire, has died.

Mr. Hayward, an Emmy winner who also helped create The Munsters for television, died of cancer Nov. 20 at his Beverly Hills home, said his wife, Linda.

Bullwinkle and his zany friends came out of the Sunset Boulevard studios of Jay Ward, who warned against underestimating television viewers and encouraged his writers to "take potshots at everything," Hayward once said.

"His philosophy was 'just write sharp stuff for yourself and the audience will get it.' It was very freeing," said Allan Burns, a Bullwinkle writer who became Mr. Hayward's writing partner.

There was no such thing as a bad pun on Rocky and His Friends, which debuted on ABC in 1959 and was renamed The Bullwinkle Show when it moved to NBC in 1961.

"The worse the better," Mr. Hayward said in a 1988 interview.

The first episode Mr. Hayward cowrote for the flying squirrel and his sidekick with the dimwitted voice was titled "Rue Britannia," according to The Moose That Roared (2000), a history of the show. When the plot required Bullwinkle to survive a week in the Abominable Manor in England, he said: "Shucks, I've been livin' in an abominable manner all my life!"

The writers' revelry in wordplay extended to other segments that filled out the half-hour show.

For the Ward studio, Mr. Hayward thought up and cowrote Fractured Flickers, a silent-film spoof that debuted in 1963. The 26 half-hour episodes scrambled silent films into new tales by reediting footage and adding dialogue. The Hunchback of Notre Dame became the story of a sappy cheerleader named Dinky Dunstan, while Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde turned into a tale about soda pop.

After leaving the studio, Burns and Mr. Hayward wanted to do a show, Burns said, "about a family that was just plain weird," in reaction to the wholesome families that populated television at the time.

By the time The Munsters debuted on CBS in 1964, the idea had been twisted to showcase an everyday family of friendly, unassuming monsters.

The Writers Guild of America intervened and the pair received monetary compensation and credit for helping to develop The Munsters, Burns said.

For their work on the CBS sitcom He & She, they received an Emmy in 1968. After writing for Get Smart (1965-70), the team split up. Burns went on to help create The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970.

Mr. Hayward turned to Barney Miller, an ABC series that satirized life in a police precinct house and starred Hal Linden.

Born in Bayonne, N.J., Christopher Robert Hayward moved to Los Angeles when he was 17.

In addition to his wife Linda, Hayward is survived by his children, Laurel, Victoria and Tony, from a previous marriage.