Shelley List; ‘Cagney and Lacey’ Producer

Shelley List, novelist and a producer of the highly successful television series “Cagney and Lacey” as well as several television movies and miniseries, has died. She was 55.

List died Tuesday of cancer in her New York City apartment, said her husband and business partner, Jonathan Estrin.

List and Estrin were supervising producers of the series about two policewomen from 1986 to 1988. They wrote the landmark episode in which Christine Cagney, portrayed by Sharon Gless, confronted her own alcoholism after the death of her alcoholic father. That script was nominated for a Humanitas Prize, given for “humanizing achievement in television writing.”

“She and Jonathan lived a life of social relevance and wrote about what they lived,” said List’s Los Angeles friend and attorney Susan Grode. “They wrote and produced shows that were intended to make people think and care.”

The couple wrote a 1989 segment of the TV drama series “Sisters” that won the Writers Guild of America award for best single-episode program.

They also wrote and produced the miniseries “Between Friends,” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Carol Burnett, which received the Ace Award for Distinguished Writing.

That script was based on a novel by List, “Nobody Makes Me Cry,” concerning two women painfully adjusting to divorce in their 40s. Former Times arts editor Charles Champlin praised the book when it was published about 20 years ago as “a hymn to survival.”

List’s first novel was “Did You Love Daddy When I Was Born,” a semiautobiographical study of a woman responding to the values of her parents. She also wrote “Forgiving” in 1982 about a woman unable to live with her success, her family or the men in her life.

Other television credits of List and Estrin include Valerie Harper’s comedy series “City,” the miniseries “Remember” adapted from a novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford and starring Donna Mills, “Amazing Grace” with Patty Duke and “Something So Right” with Duke and James Farentino. Their miniseries script for Danielle Steele’s “Jewels” won two Golden Globe nominations.

A resident of the Venice area of Los Angeles for many years, List received the Scott Newman Award, the Nancy Susan Reynolds Award and the Viewers for Quality Television Award in recognition of her sensitive work.

Born in Manhattan, List was educated at Reed College and Columbia University and for a decade was a reporter with the Westport News and Fairpress in Connecticut. She later contributed articles to both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

List served on the board of the California-based Operation USA, for which she delivered medical supplies to such disaster areas as Somalia, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Cambodia. She also served on the board of the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee.

In addition to her husband, List is survived by two daughters from her previous marriage, Julie List Faggella and Abigail List; two brothers, Peter and Daniel Steinman; a stepson, Zachary Estrin; and a grandson, Nicholas Faggella.