[4] He then attended Yale University, but left in 1941 to join the American Field Service in North Africa during World War II, where his boyish beard earned him the nickname "the goat".

Aged 19, he was awarded the Médaille militaire and Croix de Guerre for his service as a volunteer ambulance driver with the Free French forces in Libya.

[5] Wounded in action at Bir Hakeim, he returned to the United States where he was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving as an intelligence officer in Europe.

Semple's writing career started in 1951, as a short story contributor to magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's Weekly.

[8] Semple wrote "China Boy" for the TV series Buckskin (1958), "Four Against Three Millions" and "Money Go Round" for Target (1958), and "Epitaph for a Golden Girl" for Pursuit (1958).

While living in Spain in 1965, Semple was approached by producer William Dozier to develop a television series for ABC based on the comic book Batman.

He received writing credit on a series of thrillers: The Super Cops (1974), The Parallax View (1974), The Drowning Pool (1975) and Three Days of the Condor (1975).

He wrote the popular but critically assailed King Kong remake (1976); Hurricane (1979), a major box office flop starring Mia Farrow, on which Semple is also credited as Executive Producer; and Flash Gordon (1980), again a comic strip derivative, done in a deliberately over-the-top style reminiscent of the "Batman" sensibility.