Ivan Goff (17 April 1910 – 23 September 1999) was an Australian screenwriter, best known for his collaborations with Ben Roberts including White Heat (1949), Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981), and the pilot for Charlie's Angels (1976).
In January 1937 he signed a writing contract with Warner Bros.[22] He was linked romantically with fellow Australian expatriate, actor Constance Worth.
His work included uncredited contributions to several of the westerns in The Three Mesquiteers series, and a Gene Autry vehicle, Sunset in Wyoming (1941).
Roberts called Goff "a fellow with a proper English accent... We couldn't figure out what he was doing, writing a cowboy movie.
[30] During World War II, Goff joined the Army Signal Corps where he found himself making wartime propaganda shorts at the former Astoria Studios in Long Island, New York.
Working at night over a period of 13 months, they completed the play, which was called Portrait in Black and had runs in London and Broadway.
[32] They also wrote a screenplay based on a Ben Hecht story, The Shadow, which was never filmed, but attracted the interest of Warner Bros. who hired them to rewrite a murder mystery, Backfire (made in 1948, released in 1950).
[33] Although Goff and Roberts considered themselves primarily comedy writers, Warners saw them as action men and assigned them to rewrite another script, a gangster story called White Heat (1949).
White Heat was based on a story submitted to the studio by Virginia Kellogg, which had been inspired by a real-life robbery.
Goff and Roberts turned Kellogg's story inside out, making it a semi 'Greek tragedy' about a gangster with a mother complex.
[34] In an essay on the making of the film and writing of the script, writer Patrick McGilligan observed: Goff and Roberts regard themselves as slow, methodical craftsmen.
[36] They worked on Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951), with Gregory Peck in the title role, then were reunited with Cagney on Come Fill the Cup (1951).
Goff and Roberts stayed with Fox for two adventure films, White Witch Doctor (1953) and King of the Khyber Rifles (1954).
At MGM they wrote another adventure tale, Green Fire (1954) then returned to Warners to do a musical melodrama with Mario Lanza, Serenade (1956), from a novel by James M. Cain.
At Warners they did a Civil War era saga for Raoul Walsh, Band of Angels (1957), then made a third film with Cagney, Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), a biopic of Lon Chaney which earned Goff and Roberts an Oscar nomination..
Cagney used them again for an IRA thriller, Shake Hands with the Devil (1959) and they wrote an episode of Bourbon Street Beat (1960).
Three for Danger (1967) was another unsold pilot but they wrote an episode of Ironside and The Danny Thomas Hour, and enjoyed great success as writers and producers for Mannix (1968–75) from its second season onwards, overseeing significant changes on the show.
They wrote some thrillers, Diagnosis: Murder (1975) and The Killer Who Wouldn't Die (1976) (starring Mike Connors from Mannix) and had enormous success creating and writing the pilot for Charlie's Angels (1976–81).