Beginning in New York and moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s, his credits included The Virginian, Banacek, Young Maverick, Flying High, Rafferty, Ellery Queen and Murder, She Wrote.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, to Robert Van Scoyk and Gertrude Wardlow, he wrote for local radio before joining the United States Army Air Corps during the last months of World War II.
[3] At that time he was also writing a column for the Dayton Daily News about life as a struggling radio and TV writer in Manhattan.
New York gossip columnist Earl Wilson helped his career by regularly recounting van Scoyk's adventures in his own column.
In 1979 van Scoyk received an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the Columbo episode Murder Under Glass, starring Peter Falk and Louis Jourdan.