Screenplay writers I am Related to
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- Producer
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Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1909, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz first worked for the movies as a translator of intertitles, employed by Paramount in Berlin, the UFA's American distributor at the time (1928). He became a dialoguist, then a screenwriter on numerous Paramount productions in Hollywood, most of them Jack Oakie vehicles. Still in his 20s, he produced first-class MGM films, including The Philadelphia Story (1940). Having left Metro after a dispute with studio chief Louis B. Mayer over Judy Garland, he then worked for Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century-Fox, producing The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), when Ernst Lubitsch's illness first brought him to the director's chair for Dragonwyck (1946). Mankiewicz directed 20 films in a 26-year period, successfully attempted every kind of movie from Shakespeare adaptation to western, from urban sociological drama to musical, from epic film with thousands of extras to a two-character picture. A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950) brought him wide recognition along with two Academy Awards for each as a writer and a director, seven years after his elder brother Herman J. Mankiewicz won Best Screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941). His more intimate films like The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Barefoot Contessa (1954)--his only original screenplay--and The Honey Pot (1967) are major artistic achievements as well, showing Mankiewicz as a witty dialoguist, a master in the use of flashback and a talented actors' director (he favored English actors and had in Rex Harrison a kind of alter-ego on the screen).- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Herman J. Mankiewicz, now known primarily as the man who co-wrote Citizen Kane (1941) with Hollywood's greatest wunderkind, Orson Welles, was one of the highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood and the head of Paramount's screen-writing department in the late 1920s and early '30s. He reached the pinnacle of his craft soon after arriving in Hollywood, then started to make a quickening descent as alcoholism and cynicism adversely affected his career by the end of that decade. His collaboration with Welles, which brought both men the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1942, gave his career a boost in the early 1940s, and he garnered another Oscar nod the following year for writing The Pride of the Yankees (1942) about the recently deceased New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig.
Herman was born on November 7, 1897 in New York City, the son of Johanna (Blumenau) and Franz Mankiewicz. His parents were Jewish emigrants from Germany, and after living in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the family, along with Herman's kid brother Joe, moved back to the Big Apple in 1913. Mankiewicz took a degree in philosophy at Columbia and became an editor of the "American Jewish Chronicle" before going to fight the Great War with the Marine Corps.
The hard-drinking Mankiewicz, like so many of the screenwriters of the Talkie period, started out as a newspaperman. After World War One was over, he was hired by the Paris-based American Red Cross News Service, eventually moving on to the "Chicago Tribune" where he covered German politics in Berlin. He served as dancer Isadora Duncan's publicist while in Europe.
A married man who ultimately sired three children with his long-suffering wife, the former Sara Aaronson, Mankiewicz returned to the city of his birth to write for the "New York World". He established himself as a prime wit rivaled only by George S. Kaufman, and pieces he wrote appeared in the top magazines of the time, including "Vanity Fair." He eventually worked at the "New York Times" with Kaufman as a drama critic before moving on to the "New Yorker" magazine, where he served in the same capacity. He also tried his hand as a Broadway dramatist. His comedy "The Good Fellow" was a flop in 1926, closing after seven performances, though his next effort, "The Wild Man of Borneo (1941)" that he co-wrote with Marc Connelly, lasted all of 15 performances before closing in 1927.
In the last years of silent pictures, Mankiewicz heeded the admonition of Horace Greeley to "Go West, young man" and moved to Hollywood. He wrote intertitles, most notably for Josef von Sternberg's classic The Last Command (1928). Paramount made him the chief of their scenario department, where he hired talented writers in his own mold, men like Ben Hecht, another hard-drinking, ink-stained wretch from the newspaper industry. "Mank" was a talented wordsmith and he soon became the highest paid writer in Hollywood, as his position was solidified with the advent of sound and the need for real dialogue that could be spoken onscreen by actors, not read by audiences, many of whom moved their lips while following along, eyes agog. The new Talkies demanded fast, crisp dialogue, and Mank was the man to provide it. His biting wit and taste for satire went down well with the audiences for the new Talkies. He eventually brought his kid brother Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Hollywood. (With four Oscars out of 10 nominations, Joe -- a triple threat as writer-director-producer -- eventually surpassed his elder brother, creating some classics of his own such as All About Eve (1950).)
Herman Mankiewicz produced the The Marx Brothers pictures Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933). His penultimate gig as a producer at Paramount was on W.C. Fields's 1932 Olympics comedy Million Dollar Legs (1932), on which brother Joe worked as a writer. Surprisingly, Herman wold not produce another movie until 1949, but his bad-boy behavior, which included gambling as well as hard partying, apparently was taking its toll. Mankiewicz's career was hampered not just by his alcoholism, but also by his cynicism. He despised Hollywood.
Mankiewicz went back to New York in early 1932 to make his Broadway debut as an actor, playing a waiter, in the play "Blessed Event", which was a modest hit. Eventually, Paramount let him go. By 1934, he was a contact writer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and by the end of the decade, his reputation was suffering, as he had lost the lofty perch he once occupied.
Orson Welles claimed that he had to assign producer John Houseman to keep Mankiewicz sober during the drafting of the "Citizen Kane" screenplay. After that film gave his career a boost, film critic Pauline Kael wrote that he became even more erratic and unreliable due to his drinking. Mankiewicz apparently found it hard to fit into the increasingly hierarchical structure of the movie industry, which was far removed from the far more relaxed days of the early talkies.
He died in Hollywood, a place he despised, at the age of 55 on March 5, 1953.- Additional Crew
- Writer
- Director
Tom Mankiewicz was born on 1 June 1942 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a writer and director, known for Ladyhawke (1985), Live and Let Die (1973) and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). He died on 31 July 2010 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
- Additional Crew
Donald Mankiewicz was born in Berlin into an illustrious creative family, his father being the screen-writer Herman Mankiewicz and his uncle film director Joseph Mankiewicz, whilst his brother Frank would also distinguish himself as a journalist. Brought up in Beverly Hills - where his parents' dinner guests numbered the biggest screen stars of the 1930s - he graduated from Columbia University in 1942 and served in Army Intelligence before becoming a staff writer for the 'New Yorker'. In the early 1950s, he began writing for television, one of his early jobs being an adaptation of Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Last Tycoon'. At the time, he commented that, of his writing contemporaries, he was possibly the only one to have known the author, who was a friend of his father. In 1958 he was Oscar-nominated for writing 'I Want To Live', which gained Susan Hayward her Academy Award as convicted murderess Barbara Graham, though much of his work was in television, on such series as 'Marcus Welby,MD', 'Ironside', and 'Star Trek', and, as a key member of the writers' union, he helped to gain union recognition for quiz show writers. Don Mankiewicz died of heart failure at his home in Monrovia, California on 25 April 2015, leaving behind a widow Carol, to whom he had been married for 43 years and four children, son John being a screen-writer and daughter Jane an authoress.- Director
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Born in Shanghai and Cambridge-educated, Terence Young began in the industry as a scriptwriter. In the 1940s he worked on a variety of subjects, including the hugely popular wartime romance Suicide Squadron (1941), set to Richard Addinsell's rousing "Warsaw Concerto". His original story was devised while listening to a concert in an army training camp. As it turned out, Young was soon after involved in the war himself, as a member of the Guards.
By the end of the decade Young had graduated to directing. He made his debut with the psychological melodrama Corridor of Mirrors (1948), starring Eric Portman as a reclusive art collector obsessed with reincarnation and murder. During the following decade Young helmed a number of international co-productions, which featured imported stars from Hollywood (Alan Ladd in Paratrooper (1953); Olivia de Havilland in That Lady (1955); Victor Mature in Safari (1956), Zarak (1956) and Tank Force (1958)). These films were made by Warwick, an independent production company created jointly by Irwin Allen and future James Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli, and released through Columbia. Production values were often quite high, though scripts were of variable quality. "Safari", for instance, looked great, shot in Technicolor and CinemaScope on location in Africa, which partly compensated for the trite storyline.
Having acquired the rights to all available James Bond novels from Ian Fleming, producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli secured the necessary funding ($1,250,000) from United Artists and hired Young to direct the initial Bond entry, Dr. No (1962). That film's success got him re-hired to direct two subsequent Bond films, From Russia with Love (1963) (Young's own personal favorite) and Thunderball (1965). Young had acquired a solid reputation as a master of action subjects, and all three films move at a cracking pace. Exotic locales provide the background for a seamless mix of technical wizardry, sex, violence and tongue-in-cheek (sometimes campy) dialogue. Unfortunately, these films also marked the high point of Young's career, though he did direct another eerily effective psychological thriller, Wait Until Dark (1967), much in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock.
Among a brace of forgettable European co-productions, only two other films stand out: the bawdy, highly entertaining all-star period comedy The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965) and an intriguing expose of the inner workings--and dark beginnings--of the Cosa Nostra (based on an actual informant's testimony), entitled The Valachi Papers (1972). After that, Young's output became more patchy and his later career suffered as a result of two disastrous projects: first, the Korean War epic Inchon (1981), with Laurence Olivier badly miscast as Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The enterprise was reputedly financed by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's organization--aka the "Moonies"--to the tune of $40 million. Film critic Vincent Canby in the New York Times (September 17, 1982) referred to the picture as "hysterical" and "foolish", "the most expensive B-movie ever made". The second flop, a financially troubled production, was the predictably plotted spy thriller The Jigsaw Man (1983). Completed in 1982, the film was held back and not released until two years later. Young directed just one more film after that and left the industry in 1988. However, according to his daughter, he was working on a documentary in Cannes at the time of his death in September 1994. Though he went on record in 1966, asserting that he had grown rather tired of the Bond franchise, it is, nonetheless, that for which we will ultimately remember him.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
Typically British stiff-upper-lip war dramas and action adventure laced with moments of sophisticated comedy were Guy Hamilton's trademark. The son of a British diplomat, he spent most of his youth with his family in France, seemingly destined to be groomed for a career in the diplomatic service. Growing up, he became enthralled with French cinema (and, particularly, with the films of Jean Renoir). This instilled in him a burning ambition to become a director himself. In 1939 Hamilton got his first job as a clapper boy with Victorine Studios in Nice (now known as Studios Riviera). He worked his way up the hard way via the accounting department and as a producer's assistant. At the outbreak of World War II, British personnel were evacuated from France and Hamilton found work in the cutting room of British Paramount News which provided him with an excellent background in editing (albeit briefly--his career was soon interrupted by wartime duties in the Royal Navy with the 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla).
After the war, Hamilton got back into the movie business as a third assistant director (an experience he later described as amounting -- more or less -- to be a "gofer" and tea boy for the first assistant director). His big break eventually arrived courtesy of Carol Reed who took him under his wing as first assistant director for The Fallen Idol (1948). Reed became his mentor and a kind of father figure and exerted a profound influence on the budding filmmaker. Hamilton went on to work with Reed on The Third Man (1949) and Outcast of the Islands (1951)). For John Huston, he then served in the same capacity on The African Queen (1951) (one of his duties included building a pontoon made up of four or five pirogues to provide room for the cameras, as the "Queen" was too cramped to film on).
Hamilton's first film as director in his own right was The Ringer (1952), a minor thriller based on an Edgar Wallace story. He established himself properly with The Colditz Story (1955), a prisoner-of-war drama enlivened by deft humor and a pointedly "British" style. In the 1960s, his acquaintance with Albert R. Broccoli led to his directing four entries in the James Bond franchise (though he had turned down previous offers to helm the opener, Dr. No (1962)): Goldfinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973) and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). In a later interview, Hamilton recalled that he (and writer Tom Mankiewicz) particularly enjoyed putting Bond into the "snake-pit" in situations of mortal peril, then working out a way to extricate him within 50 seconds. Hamilton's "intellectual" interpretation of Bond, the witty, at times facetious humor --usually in the midst of hair-raising situations-- contributed greatly to the popular and commercial success of these films. While these films established his reputation, much of his later work (Force 10 from Navarone (1978), Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) proved less endearing.
In the mid-1980s, Hamilton retired to the island of Majorca with his second wife, actress Kerima (who had co-starred in "Outcast of the Islands"). He died there on 20 April 2016 at the age of 93.- Writer
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- Soundtrack
Dahl was born in Wales in 1916. He served as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He made a forced landing in the Libyan Desert and was severely injured. As a result, he spent five months in a Royal Navy hospital in Alexandria. Dahl is noted for how he relates suspenseful and sometimes horrific events in a simple tone.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Michael Crichton was born in Chicago, Illinois, but grew up in Roslyn, New York. His father was a journalist and encouraged him to write and to type. Michael gave up studying English at Harvard University, having become disillusioned with the teaching standards--the final straw came when he submitted an essay by George Orwell that was given a "B-." After giving up English and spending a year in Europe, Michael returned to Boston, Massachusetts, and attended Havard Medical School to train as a doctor. Several times, he was persuaded not to quit the course but did so after qualifying in 1969.
During his medical-student days, he wrote novels secretly mainly under the pseudonym of John Lange in reference to his almost 6ft 9 height. (Lange in German means long) One novel, "A Case of Need," written under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson, (Sir Jeffrey Hudson was a famous 17th century dwarf) contained references to people at Harvard Medical School, but he couldn't hide his identity when the novel won an award that had to be collected in person. After giving up medicine, Michael moved to Hollywood, California, in the early 1970s and began directing movies based on his books, his first big break being Westworld (1973).- Actor
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An eccentric rebel of epic proportions, this Hollywood titan reigned supreme as director, screenwriter and character actor in a career that endured over five decades. The ten-time Oscar-nominated legend was born John Marcellus Huston in Nevada, Missouri, on August 5, 1906. His ancestry was English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, distant German and very remote Portuguese. The age-old story goes that the small town of his birth was won by John's grandfather in a poker game. John's father was the equally magnanimous character actor Walter Huston, and his mother, Rhea Gore, was a newspaperwoman who traveled around the country looking for stories. The only child of the couple, John began performing on stage with his vaudevillian father at age 3. Upon his parents' divorce at age 7, the young boy would take turns traveling around the vaudeville circuit with his father and the country with his mother on reporting excursions. A frail and sickly child, he was once placed in a sanitarium due to both an enlarged heart and kidney ailment. Making a miraculous recovery, he quit school at age 14 to become a full-fledged boxer and eventually won the Amateur Lightweight Boxing Championship of California, winning 22 of 25 bouts. His trademark broken nose was the result of that robust activity.
John married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Harvey, and also took his first professional stage bow with a leading role off-Broadway entitled "The Triumph of the Egg." He made his Broadway debut that same year with "Ruint" on April 7, 1925, and followed that with another Broadway show "Adam Solitaire" the following November. John soon grew restless with the confines of both his marriage and acting and abandoned both, taking a sojourn to Mexico where he became an officer in the cavalry and expert horseman while writing plays on the sly. Trying to control his wanderlust urges, he subsequently returned to America and attempted newspaper and magazine reporting work in New York by submitting short stories. He was even hired at one point by mogul Samuel Goldwyn Jr. as a screenwriter, but again he grew restless. During this time he also appeared unbilled in a few obligatory films. By 1932 John was on the move again and left for London and Paris where he studied painting and sketching. The promising artist became a homeless beggar during one harrowing point.
Returning again to America in 1933, he played the title role in a production of "Abraham Lincoln," only a few years after father Walter portrayed the part on film for D.W. Griffith. John made a new resolve to hone in on his obvious writing skills and began collaborating on a few scripts for Warner Brothers. He also married again. Warners was so impressed with his talents that he was signed on as both screenwriter and director for the Dashiell Hammett mystery yarn The Maltese Falcon (1941). The movie classic made a superstar out of Humphrey Bogart and is considered by critics and audiences alike--- 65 years after the fact--- to be the greatest detective film ever made. In the meantime John wrote/staged a couple of Broadway plays, and in the aftermath of his mammoth screen success directed bad-girl 'Bette Davis (I)' and good girl Olivia de Havilland in the film melodrama In This Our Life (1942), and three of his "Falcon" stars (Bogart, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet) in the romantic war picture Across the Pacific (1942). During WWII John served as a Signal Corps lieutenant and went on to helm a number of film documentaries for the U.S. government including the controversial Let There Be Light (1980), which father Walter narrated. The end of WWII also saw the end of his second marriage. He married third wife Evelyn Keyes, of "Gone With the Wind" fame, in 1946 but it too lasted a relatively short time. That same year the impulsive and always unpredictable Huston directed Jean-Paul Sartre's experimental play "No Exit" on Broadway. The show was a box-office bust (running less than a month) but nevertheless earned the New York Drama Critics Award as "best foreign play."
Hollywood glory came to him again in association with Bogart and Warner Brothers'. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), a classic tale of gold, greed and man's inhumanity to man set in Mexico, won John Oscars for both director and screenplay and his father nabbed the "Best Supporting Actor" trophy. John can be glimpsed at the beginning of the movie in a cameo playing a tourist, but he wouldn't act again on film for a decade and a half. With the momentum in his favor, John hung around in Hollywood this time to write and/or direct some of the finest American cinema made including Key Largo (1948) and The African Queen (1951) (both with Bogart), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Red Badge of Courage (1951) and Moulin Rouge (1952). Later films, including Moby Dick (1956), The Unforgiven (1960), The Misfits (1961), Freud (1962), The Night of the Iguana (1964) and The Bible in the Beginning... (1966) were, for the most part, well-regarded but certainly not close to the level of his earlier revered work. He also experimented behind-the-camera with color effects and approached topics that most others would not even broach, including homosexuality and psychoanalysis.
An ardent supporter of human rights, he, along with director William Wyler and others, dared to form the Committee for the First Amendment in 1947, which strove to undermine the House Un-American Activities Committee. Disgusted by the Hollywood blacklisting that was killing the careers of many talented folk, he moved to St. Clerans in Ireland and became a citizen there along with his fourth wife, ballet dancer Enrica (Ricki) Soma. The couple had two children, including daughter Anjelica Huston who went on to have an enviable Hollywood career of her own. Huston and wife Ricki split after a son (director Danny Huston) was born to another actress in 1962. They did not divorce, however, and remained estranged until her sudden death in 1969 in a car accident. John subsequently adopted his late wife's child from another union. The ever-impulsive Huston would move yet again to Mexico where he married (1972) and divorced (1977) his fifth and final wife, Celeste Shane.
Huston returned to acting auspiciously with a major role in Otto Preminger's epic film The Cardinal (1963) for which Huston received an Oscar nomination at age 57. From that time forward, he would be glimpsed here and there in a number of colorful, baggy-eyed character roles in both good and bad (some positively abysmal) films that, at the very least, helped finance his passion projects. The former list included outstanding roles in Chinatown (1974) and The Wind and the Lion (1975), while the latter comprised of hammy parts in such awful drek as Candy (1968) and Myra Breckinridge (1970).
Directing daughter Angelica in her inauspicious movie debut, the thoroughly mediocre A Walk with Love and Death (1969), John made up for it 15 years later by directing her to Oscar glory in the mob tale Prizzi's Honor (1985). In the 1970s Huston resurged as a director of quality films with Fat City (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Wise Blood (1979). He ended his career on a high note with Under the Volcano (1984), the afore-mentioned Prizzi's Honor (1985) and The Dead (1987). His only certifiable misfire during that era was the elephantine musical version of Annie (1982), though it later became somewhat of a cult favorite among children.
Huston lived the macho, outdoors life, unencumbered by convention or restrictions, and is often compared in style or flamboyancy to an Ernest Hemingway or Orson Welles. He was, in fact, the source of inspiration for Clint Eastwood in the helming of the film White Hunter Black Heart (1990) which chronicled the making of "The African Queen." Illness robbed Huston of a good portion of his twilight years with chronic emphysema the main culprit. As always, however, he continued to work tirelessly while hooked up to an oxygen machine if need be. At the end, the living legend was shooting an acting cameo in the film Mr. North (1988) for his son Danny, making his directorial bow at the time. John became seriously ill with pneumonia and died while on location at the age of 81. This maverick of a man's man who was once called "the eccentric's eccentric" by Paul Newman, left an incredibly rich legacy of work to be enjoyed by film lovers for centuries to come.- George McDonald Fraser was an expert storyteller and master of the comic novel. His most widely read books chronicle the adult exploits of Harry Flashman (the original cowardly school bully of "Tom Brown's Schooldays"). Though fictionalised, these bawdy adventures are invariably set against an impeccably well-researched and annotated historical background, featuring the dissolute, craven anti-hero in the midst of significant historical events, including the Charge of the Light Brigade, Custer's last stand at the Little Bighorn, the Indian Mutiny, the Opium Wars, the Taiping rebellion, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and Britain's 1868 punitive Abyssinian campaign. Fraser carefully avoided romanticising the Victorian-era, instead adopting an often brutally realistic, yet highly satirical 'warts and all' approach. Fascinating historical characters abound, ranging from Madagascar's black queen Ranavalona to Otto von Bismarck and Abyssinia's self-styled Emperor Theodore II, brought to life by painstakingly researched detail, proof of the old adage that fact is often stranger than fiction. The swaggering, chauvinistic arch-cad, from whose vantage point the books are written, rides his luck from one harrowing crisis to another and continues to be elevated among Imperial Britain's military elite despite his total lack of merit (not to mention morality). Fraser's wit and craftsmanship as a writer have nonetheless made Flashman into a believable, even compelling central character.
The son of a doctor, Fraser had no direct qualifications as a historian. His interest in writing was likely kindled by frontier service with the British 14th Army in Burma and the Gordon Highlanders in Africa (his personal recollections of the 1944-45 campaign against the Japanese Army appeared in print in 1993 to considerable critical acclaim). After demobilisation, Fraser worked as a sports reporter and journalist in Canada and in his native Scotland, latterly as deputy editor for the Glasgow Herald (1964-69). His first Flashman book, "Royal Flash", was written in 1969. His twelfth (and last), "Flashman on the March", appeared in 2005. In addition, he authored several other novels and collections of short stories, each with a historical perspective. During the 1970's and 80's, Fraser also collaborated on several film scripts, including The Three Musketeers (1973), its sequel The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974) and the 13th James Bond entry, Octopussy (1983). He wrote the screenplays for two of his own novels, the unsatisfactorily filmed Royal Flash (1975) and The Pyrates (1986), a comical swashbuckler set along the Spanish Main and featuring another rakish anti-hero, Colonel Thomas Blood (loosely based on the historical character of that name). The 'Flashman Papers' yet await their true 'discovery' by an enterprising film maker, for they would make for splendid entertainment indeed.
George McDonald Fraser eventually settled on the Isle of Man, at once to find a tax refuge and to withdraw to a place more akin to, as he referred to it, 'England as it used to be'. A Tory of moderate right-wing beliefs and outspoken enemy of political correctness, he died there on January 2 2008 at the age of 82. - Writer
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The name is "Maibaum, Richard Maibaum".....the brilliant screenwriter who adapted the Ian Fleming 007 novels into the highly entertaining screenplays of nearly every James Bond film from Dr. No (1962) through to Licence to Kill (1989). Maibaum attended New York University, then studied acting at the University of Iowa. By the time he was in his late twenties, Maibaum was a well established Broadway actor and playwright. He entered films as a screenwriter in 1937, spending the war years with the army's Combat Film Division. In 1946, he joined Paramount as both screenwriter and producer, contributing to such films as The Big Clock (1948) & The Great Gatsby (1949). From advice that making films abroad was an excellent tax shelter, Maibaum formed a partnership in the 1950s with producers Irving Allen and Albert R. Broccoli This led to his involvement in the phenomenally successful James Bond series of the 1960s and 1970s and, after Ian Fleming, Maibaum has arguably been the person most responsible for shaping the image of the screen's most famous spy!- Berkely Mather was born on 25 February 1909 in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England, UK. Berkely was a writer, known for Dr. No (1962), The DuPont Show of the Week (1961) and The Avengers (1961). Berkely was married to Kay Jones. Berkely died on 7 April 1996 in Brede, Rye, East Sussex, England, UK.
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- Script and Continuity Department
Johanna Harwood was born in 1930 in County Wicklow, Irish Free State. She is a writer, known for Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963) and Ne jouez pas avec les Martiens (1968). She was previously married to René Clément.- Writer
- Music Department
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Paul Dehn's show-business career began in 1936 as a movie reviewer for several London newspapers. He later wrote plays, operettas and musicals for the stage. Dehn's first screenplay, for Seven Days to Noon (1950), garnered him an Oscar. He later wrote everything from James Bond films to entries in the "Planet of the Apes" series, and also was a lyricist for several film musicals.- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
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John Hopkins was born on 27 January 1931 in London, England, UK. He was a writer and director, known for Thunderball (1965), Z Cars (1962) and Murder by Decree (1979). He was married to Shirley Knight and Prudence Hopkins. He died on 23 July 1998 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
- Producer
Jack Whittingham was born on 2 August 1910 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England, UK. He was a writer and producer, known for Thunderball (1965), Never Say Never Again (1983) and The Birthday Present (1957). He was married to Margot Isobel Gough. He died on 3 July 1972 in Valletta, Malta.- Writer
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Harold Jack Bloom was born on 26 April 1924 in New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for You Only Live Twice (1967), The Naked Spur (1953) and Hec Ramsey (1972). He was married to Norene Fremont and Carolyn Kearney. He died on 27 August 1999 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- One of the most brilliant novelists of his generation, Simon Raven was also one of Britain's foremost television scriptwriters. His magisterial 'Alms For Oblivion' sequence of novels concerned the foibles and moral hubris of the upper and upper-middle classes in the post war years and were deserved classics which acquired him an international reputation as a writer and something of a notorious libertine.
A larger than life character he loved cricket, gambling, alcohol and had affairs with both sexes. Sometimes accused of snobbery he claimed that he wrote "for people like myself, well educated, worldly and sceptical."
His first book, Feathers of Death, the story of a homosexual romance in the Army, was published in 1959, but he quickly discovered that he could earn far more by writing for television. His first TV play, Royal Foundation, was broadcast by the BBC in 1961. Several others followed but his most famous works were his Anthony Trollope adaptations, The Way We Live Now, a six part series which the BBC subsequently wiped and The Pallisers (1974), which was broadcast in 26 episodes with Susan Hampshire in the lead.
In 1974 he adapted Frances Donaldson's _"Edward & Mrs. Simpson" (1980) (mini)_ for Thames Television, a seven part series which topped the ratings despite complaints from Wallis Simpson herself and reputedly the Queen Mother. He adapted two of Nancy Mitford's novels, Love in a Cold Climate (1980) and The Pursuit of Love for Thames TV and his last work for television was Julian Symons quirky whodunnit The Blackheath Poisonings (1992) for Central Televison in 1992. Central Television earned a reprimand from the Broadcasting Standards Council for the opening of the series which had a particularly noisy sex scene.
In his later years Raven had planned to adapt Vanity Fair for BBC television and also Brideshead Revisited in three episodes but neither projects ever materialised. In an interview with The Stage newspaper, shortly before his death, he said "I don't think there is a place for me on television anymore. I find the strain of working under modern telvision conditions increasing. It is too politically correct for me these days."
Summing up his life, in the same interview, he said "I would like to think that as a writer one had not deliberately done anyone else a bad turn or suffered from envy. If there is to be an epitaph then let it read: He always shared his bottle - and his bed." - Christopher Wood was born on 5 November 1935 in London, England, UK. He was a writer, known for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979) and Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985). He was married to Jane Patrick. He died on 9 May 2015 in France.
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An engineer turned tax lawyer he joined Eon Productions in 1972 as a tax lawyer then was a very junior assistant on Goldfinger, did some work on The Spy Who Loved Me before becoming executive producer on Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy. He was then co producer on A View to a Kill. Living Daylights ,and Licence to Kill. Cubby Brocolli made him his assistant on The Spy Who Loved Me- Jeffrey Caine was born in 1944 in London, England, UK. He is a writer and actor, known for The Constant Gardener (2005), GoldenEye (1995) and Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014).
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Bruce Feirstein was born in 1956. He is known for GoldenEye (1995), The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). He has been married to Madeleine Ruth Warren since 27 December 1987.- Movies made from Michael France's screenplays have earned well over one billion dollars in worldwide theatrical admissions, and at least another billion dollars in home video revenues. Michael France was born in 1962. He graduated from the University of Florida and attended Columbia University's School Of The Arts.
His breakthrough screenplay was his 1991 spec sale for Cliffhanger to Carolco Pictures - the movie was shot within the year and became a worldwide hit in 1993 for Sylvester Stallone and Renny Harlin. France then went on to revive the then-dormant James Bond franchise with his script for GoldenEye, which again yielded a worldwide hit in 1995 - and France's association with the James Bond franchise continued with uncredited work in The World Is Not Enough, which was released in 1999.
France's string of Marvel adaptations began with Hulk (2003) for Universal Pictures, continued with The Punisher (2004) for Lions Gate, and went further with the blockbuster release of Fantastic Four (2005) for Twentieth Century Fox.
He lived in Florida with his wife Elizabeth, son Thomas, and twin daughters Annabelle and Carolynn. He died in April 2013 aged 51. - Writer
- Producer
- Script and Continuity Department
Robert Wade was born in 1962 in San Diego, California, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Skyfall (2012), No Time to Die (2021) and Casino Royale (2006).- Writer
- Producer
- Script and Continuity Department
Neal Purvis was born on 9 September 1961. He is a writer and producer, known for Skyfall (2012), No Time to Die (2021) and Casino Royale (2006).