13 Facts About Walter Wager

Walter Herman Wager was an American crime and espionage-thriller novelist and former editor-in-chief of Playbill magazine.

Walter Wager was born in The Bronx, New York City, the son of a doctor and a nurse who had emigrated from the Russian Empire.

Walter Wager spent a year in Israel as an aviation-law consultant for the Israeli Department of Civil Aviation, helping to negotiate a treaty on air space and working out of Lydda Airport in Tel Aviv.

Shortly afterward, Wager segued into writing and producing radio and television documentaries for CBS and NBC, and the United States Information Agency, while beginning a side career as a freelance writer for magazines including Playbill and Show.

From 1963 to 1996, Walter Wager was editor-in-chief of Playbill magazine, and from 1966 to 1978 as editor of ASCAP Today, the magazine of the music-licensing organization the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; he later became ASCAP's public-relations director.

Walter Wager held a similar position at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut in the early 1990s, until his retirement in 1993.

Walter Wager did public relations for organizations including the Juilliard School, the Mann Music Center, and the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center.

Walter Wager was a member of the board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America, and its secretary beginning in 2001.

Walter Wager married second wife Winifred McIvor Wage in 1975.

Walter Wager was best known as an author of crime and espionage thrillers.

Walter Wager's airport-based thriller 58 Minutes became the basis for the 1990 action film Die Hard 2, starring Bruce Willis.

Additionally, Walter Wager wrote a number of original novels in the 1960s under the pseudonym "John Tiger" that were based on the TV series I Spy and Mission: Impossible.

Walter Wager wrote the farce My Side, by King Kong as Told to Walter Wager, published by Macmillan in 1976.