John O'Toole (producer) in the United States Army from 1954 to 1956. O’Toole was the CEO of the Washington, D.C. -based production company, Eli Productions, for over 20 years. He wrote and produced documentaries, TV shows, and radio series on topics that included the arts and the aging process, many of which aired on NBC, CBS, and public television and radio. His work earned him a Writers Fellowship by The National Endowment for the Arts. In 1979, he wrote a TV miniseries adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales", which aired on PBS and earned an Outstanding Writer Emmy nod. He also did
The Canterbury Tales of Dante and Virgil in "The Divine Comedy". New research suggests that the General Prologue, in which the innkeeper and host Harry Bailey introduces each pilgrim, is a pastiche of the historical Harry Bailey's surviving 1381 poll-tax account of Southwark's inhabitants. "The Decameron" by Giovanni Boccaccio contains more parallels to "The Canterbury Tales" than any other work. Like the "Tales", it features a number of narrators who tell stories along a journey they have undertaken (to flee from the Black Death). It ends with an apology by Boccaccio, much like Chaucer's Retraction to the "Tales". A quarter of the tales