R. Barker Price

American screenwriter. The route from the Jeffboat shipyard in Jeffersonville. Ind., to Hollywood, Calif., may be the road almost never traveled, but R. Barker Price made the trip in a 1980 Mazda. The car had most of its contents stolen in a motel parking lot on Price’s first night of fulfilling a dream, but, fortunately, his Smith-Corona typewriter and the screenplay he’d written for the “Murder She Wrote” television series were spared. Price was 31 years old, creative, rolling the career dice and, soon, very lucky. Screenplay in hand, he quickly found an agent who was also entering the film industry and looking for clients. She shopped his script to “Murder She Wrote.”