Tom Rowe


Tom Rowe

ANDROS ISLAND, GREECE—Variety Magazine has reported that screenwriter Tom Rowe, whose varied career included work on 1968's "The Green Slime," died here June 15th of heart failure. He was 82.

"The Green Slime" was used as the movie in the 30-minute, never-aired pilot episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, created to sell the series to KTMA-TV in the Twin Cities. Although a host segment from the pilot was later released on video by Best Brains, the riffing of a portion of "The Green Slime" has never been publicly shown.

Information about Rowe's career is scarce and sketchy. Some movie sites conflate his career with a producer of the same name. On the Internet Movie Database, he appears to be Tom Rowe (II), Tom Rowe (III) and Tom Rowe (IV).

According to Variety, he was a Los Angeles native who attended UCLA and Michigan State. Skilled at languages, he served during the U.S. occupation of Japan as General Douglas MacArthur's chief translator.

In the 1950s, he became a film reviewer for Variety, and then moved on to penning film and television scripts. His scripts make an eclectic list, from Disney's "The Aristocats" to a 1964 documentary called "Paris Secret" to 1971's "The Light at the Edge of the World" and the 1981's "Tarzan, the Ape Man."

Variety says he also wrote several episodes of the TV series "Fantasy Island."

According to Variety, he also painted and exhibited in Paris, wrote on Asian topics and lived in Paris and on Andros, where he died.

He is reportedly survived by his wife Anne, three sons and a daughter.