Laird was born on May 8, 1923 in Monrovia, California to Leonard Schultheis, a businessman, and Thelma Laird, a Theater Director who taught night school dramatics, and from whom Laird took classes, in his high school years he was art editor of the school newspaper, while a student at Pasadena Junior College, Laird formed his dance band "Aris Laird and his ARIStocrats of Swing", the group was made up of players who later joined the likes of Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, and Les Brown, the band broke up when Laird enlisted in the Army Air Force during World War II, he was assigned as a pilot in the Ninth Air Force, he served with the First Allied Airborne while stationed in Manchester, England.
Career
Laird entered the entertainment industry at a young age. One of his first appearances as a child actor was in an unbilled bit part in the 1934 film The Circus Clown. After his discharge from the army, Laird resumed civilian life in New York, where he enrolled at the Dramatic Workshop and studied playwriting under John Gassner, he returned to Hollywood for a screen test and ultimately stared in a series of movie and radio roles, but eventually moved into writing and producing, he began writing for various television shows, such as The Lone Ranger, The Millionaire, M Squad, Private Secretary, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Ford Theatre, The Wild Wild West, The Ann Sothern Show, Mr. District Attorney, and Have Gun – Will Travel. Laird distinguished himself as a writer and story editor on the medical show Ben Casey, eventually becoming an associate producer, he would receive an Emmy nomination in 1962 for his work on the Episode "I Remember a Lemon Tree", he then went on to write and produce independent projects for Universal Studios. In the 1970s, Laird came into his own as a producer, working on such shows as The Psychiatrist, Night Gallery, Kojak, and many more. One of Laird's favorite actors was Leslie Nielsen with whom he made several made-for-TV movies, including 1964's See How They Run, the first feature in that genre, , Dark Intruder, The Return of Charlie Chan and numerous TV episodes. Nielsen also starred in a series produced by Laird was evidently an admirer of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. He based at least two episodes of Night Gallery on Lovecraft's work - "Pickman's Model" and "Professor Peabody's Last Lecture". The dialogue of the 1965 horror movie Dark Intruder, produced by Laird, includes some references to alien beings invented by Lovecraft, tying the film to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. In an early scene where Brett Kingsford meets with the police commissioner, opines that "gods older than the human race...deities like Dagon and Azathoth still have worshippers." He was also an avid film collector and jazz fan.
Personal life
In 1948, Laird married his first wife, actress Cicely Ann Browne, but due to their careers, the marriage ended, Browne retained custody of their son, Sean. In 1958, Laird married his second wife, Peggy Johnson, a young stage actress, they had a daughter, Sharon, after five years, Johnson and Laird divorced, in the mid 1960s, Laird married his third wife, Jeri Emmett, a former Playboy Bunny turned writer, they had a daughter, Persephone, Emmett wrote a few episodes for such television Shows as, The Fugitive, Iron Horse, And Mannix, as well as a Television Series Treatment called "Confessions of a Den Mother", and a book about her days working at the playboy club called "Point Your Tail in The Right Direction".
Throughout his career Jack Laird had a number of projects that were never produced or broadcast:
In the 1960s, Laird wrote a spec script called "Red Wolf Crossing", which was an adaptation of the Will Henry novel "To Follow a Flag", he was also set to produce "Crime! Pleasant Dreams Sweet Celia", a screenplay written by Gene R. Kearney.
In 1969, Laird was attached to two film projects that were never produced, "The Richest Hill On Earth" which was written by Halsted Welles, and "Unit Theta", which was written by Wilton Schiller.
In the 1970s to the 1980s, Laird had written several Television Series Treatments that were never picked up called "Talmadge", "Brute Force", "Atonement", "...& Cucamonga", "The Lorne Greene Project", and "Tokatyan".
At the time of his death, Laird was working on a television series based on stories by thriller writer Robert Ludlum
In 1967, he created an unsold comedy pilot, The Return of the Original Yellow Tornado, about two elderly, retired superheroes Mickey Rooney is the original Yellow Tornado and Eddie Mayehoff is his retired sidekick who must once again don their leotards to do battle with a super-villain who has been set free and has vowed to destroy the world. The pilot was eventually expanded to a film-that was never released.
In 1972, he worked as producer on one of the pilot episodes produced for Biography, an unsold TV series. Four pilots were completed and eventually appeared as TV movies, but Laird's episode about Houdini was never filmed.
In the 1970s, Laird was attached to several film projects, a spec script he had written called "Hotel Imperial - Tokyo", which was based on an original story by Alan Lee, "Mantrap", a spec script he co-wrote with Wilton Schiller, "The Broken-Field Runner", a screenplay written by Fred Segal, which Laird was going to produce.
In 1988, Laird wrote a spec script that was called "Suffer The Little Children".
