Kathleen Hite

Kathleen was born in Wichita, Kansas, the youngest of three children of Estelle (née Worrell) and Frank Hite.[1][2] Her father was a cattleman, as was her older brother Russell, who later operated the family's ranch in New Mexico.[2] All of her grandparents had moved to Kansas during the days of the American frontier, and she noted that all were "great storytellers" about their lives, which she absorbed as a child. After attending high school in Hutchinson, Kansas, Hite attended Wichita State University, where she majored in journalism and history.[3][4]

Hite's career in radio and television started in Wichita, where she began working at a radio station soon after her graduation from Wichita State University.[3] By 1943, however, she moved to Los Angeles, California and accepted a position at CBS Radio to work as a secretary. Later, the would-be writer explained how she managed at that time to circumvent the company's employment restrictions:

CBS had a policy against hiring women writers so I hired on as a secretary. I figured once I got inside the building I could destroy them from within...I badgered the head of the writing department until he gave me a chance to write.[1]

Hite's plan quickly succeeded, for within a year she became the first woman staff writer for CBS.[1] She subsequently noted that World War II-related labor shortages also helped her to obtain that promotion, explaining that "a producer needed a radio scriptwriter—ANY radio scriptwriter. And there I was."[5] In the coming years, she also proposed stories and wrote scripts for several television series, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Mystery Playhouse, Thriller, Gunsmoke, and The Waltons.[3][5] Hite served as a script editor as well for The Whistler and The Adventures of Philip Marlowe in 1950. She quit CBS in late 1950/early 1951, because freelance writers were paid 350% more per script.[6]

Hite's contributions to TV series about the American West were particularly substantive, as she wrote over 100 scripts in total for shows like Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, The Monroes, and Empire.[7] During the 1950s and 1960s, she was among a small number of female writers for television Westerns and was identified in that period as "one of the top Cowboy-and-Indian scribes of all time".[8]

Hite received the Headliner Award from the National Professional Journalism Society in 1964, and the following year she was elected as a charter member of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She was also made an honorary member of the Choctaw Native American tribe in 1965.[7] In 1970, she was presented the Achievement Award from Wichita State University's alumni association, which is that organization's highest honor.[9]

Hite died on February 18, 1989, in Carefree, Arizona, at the age of 71.[10]