William Karl Thomas

William Karl Thomas was born 1/25/33 in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, a small Gulf Coast town in which Tennessee Williams lived and wrote about in his works. In 1951 Thomas married his former high school teacher and, after a four year childless marriage, was divorced.

His checkered background, before ending up on the West Coast, began in 1951- 1952 as a nightclub pianist in New Orlean's French Quarter, included in 1952-1953 being a map draftsman at the Army Map Service in Washington, D.C., in 1953-1954 serving a year of combat in Korea while in the U.S. Air Force, and in 1954-1957 finishing his 4 years in the Air Force while serving in El Paso, Texas; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Oxford, England.

His screen writing collaboration with Frank Ray Perelli began in New Orleans in 1951 and led them through Juarez, Mexico in 1956, to the West Coast where Perelli had begun to manage the then unknown Lenny Bruce in 1956. Bruce admired Thomas's multi-talents which led to collaborating in a variety of capacities including comedy writing, screen writing, album cover photos, cinematography, theatrical booking, publicity, and more in a collaboration that lasted ten years until Bruces' death in 1966, as chronicaled in Thomas' memoir, "Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet."

Thomas spent twenty years mostly in Hollywood as a screen writer, cinematographer, industrial film producer, photographer, journalist, and public relations executive. His work in these fields led him on extended six month periods in Tucson, Arizona; New Orleans, Louisiana, and Jamaica, West Indies. He currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he occasionally teaches writing and film production at a local community college, and continues work on a variety of book, film, and media projects.

In addition to ghost writing screenplays and biographies for producers and celebrities, Thomas' publishing career under his own name began with his move to Tucson, Arizona, in 1978. He currently has ten books available in print and Kindle e-editions, as described on his Amazon Author's Page.