Alex Ayres

1953 - 2019

Alex Ayres (aka Glenn Allen Ayres) of Santa Clarita, California passed away peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of the morning on May 14, 2019 of complications from pancreatic cancer, diagnosed the previous fall.
He was a successful writer, editor, executive film producer and entrepreneur who will be greatly missed. He received a B.A. with honors from Harvard College, an M.A. from George Mason University and an M.F.A. from UCLA's Graduate School of Theater, Film and Television. During the peak of the running craze of the 1970s, Alex and his brother Ed founded Running Times magazine, still one of the two major magazines in the sport today. He served as Senior Editor of the magazine, but left to study script writing at UCLA, where he won the school's most prestigious writing award in his final year. His career included writing positions with the U.S. Army Research Institute, Running Times, Runner's World, CBS Productions, Fine Line, New Line, Mutual Films, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Fox 2000, Alliance-Atlantis, Capitol Films, The Artist's Studio, Cross Creek and Mark Gordon Productions. He wrote and edited many scripts that were made into television and feature films and served as Executive Producer and script consultant for the THE EVIL WITHIN (2017), produced by Andrew Getty, heir to the Getty oil fortune. His writing credits include the acclaimed made-for-television movie SEARCH FOR GRACE, as well as NAPOLEON AND JOSEPHINE and HELLFIRE CLUB. At the time of his death, Alex was working on the production of PLAYWRIGHT, an historical film based on the life of Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabethan playwright whom Alex and others (including Mark Twain and Orson Welles) have suggested was the true author of the works attributed to Shakespeare. He was a frequent speaker and panelist on this topic and had produced critical scholarship in the area, including the discovery of previously unknown details of Marlowe's life.
Between films, Alex edited over three dozen books for the WIT AND WISDOM series and the QUOTABLE WISDOM series that he created and continued to expand over the years. The series compiled quotations (many not commonly known) from Will Rogers, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and many others.
Alex considered his election as an editor of the Harvard Lampoon one of the landmark accomplishments of his life. He was one of the scriptwriters mentioned in the June 2001 article in BRILL'S CONTENT that coined the term "Harvard Lampoon Media Mafia." Jim Downey, former Head Writer of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and "godfather" of the Lampoon Media Mafia, once described Ayres as "the best writer on the Lampoon." His modest style and quiet personality camouflaged an extraordinary wit, notably demonstrated when he introduced John Wayne at the now famous John Wayne Roast at the premiere of Wayne's film McQ, which some consider the greatest Lampoon media event of all time. Several of Alex's jokes from that event were quoted in the national media and referenced in a biography of John Wayne, in which Wayne called this event the most fun he ever had in his life.

Alex is survived by his wife Janine Cooper Ayres, brothers Robert Ayres, Gene Ayres and Ed Ayres, as well as former wife Pam and daughter Ariel.

A memorial service will be held on 22 June 2019 in North Hollywood, California