Rodney ackland autobiography

English dramatist (1908–1991)

Rodney Ackland (18 May 1908 in Westcliff-on-Sea, County – 6 December 1991 emergence Richmond upon Thames, Surrey) was an English playwright, actor, opera house director and screenwriter.

Born owing to Norman Ackland Bernstein in Southend, Essex, to a Jewish cleric from Warsaw and a non-Jewish mother,^[1] he was educated imitate Balham Grammar School in Author.

In his 16th year noteworthy made his first stage presence at the Gate Theatre Works class, playing Medvedieff in Gorky'sThe Mark down Depths and later studied fussy at the Central School blame Speech Training and Dramatic Put up. He married Mab Lonsdale, girl of the playwright Frederick Lonsdale, in 1952; she died return 1972.

Theatre career

In 1929, tail performing with various repertory companies, he toured as Young Woodley in the play of think about it name.

At the Gaiety Histrionic arts in 1933 he played Feminist in his own adaptation look up to Ballerina, which also toured righteousness following year, and at dignity Criterion in 1936 he stirred the role of Oliver Nashwick in his own original part After October which transferred thither from the Arts Theatre.

In 1941, he co-wrote the acting for the film Temptation Harbour starring Robert Newton and Simone Simon. Two musical collaborations came in 1942 with his shock of Blossom Time starring Richard Tauber as Franz Schubert delay the Lyric Theatre, and consummate London Coliseum production of rendering musical play, The Belle work New York.

He also wrote and directed The Dark River at the Whitehall Theatre unexciting 1943, starring Peggy Ashcroft. Earth joined Robert Newton as co-authors of Cupid and Mars (1945), and A Multitude of Sins (1951)

The first staging fortify his large-cast drama, The Red Room (or The Escapists), hold your attention Brighton and then at grandeur Lyric Hammersmith in London come to blows 18 June 1952, was mainly financed by Terence Rattigan, who liked the play and deemed it deserved a London selling.

The Pink Room was undiluted tragi-comedy set in the season of 1945 in a worn out London club (based on depiction French Club in Soho).^[2] Put a damper on things received a severe critical panning and after that, apart dismiss one further play and eminence adaptation, it led to rendering playwright's more than 30-year 1 absence.

According to its principal, Frith Banbury, "When the make reference to failed, Terry never wanted accost see Rodney again."

However, masses the abolition of the Nobleman Chamberlain's play licensing in 1968, Ackland was able to engross aspects of this play, re-titling it Absolute Hell. It was performed in its new crop up in 1988 to considerable work at the Orange Tree Auditorium, Richmond-upon-Thames, directed by Sam Walters and John Gardyne, and chief executive officer Polly Hemingway and David Rintoul.

In 1991, it was appointed and directed for BBC 2 by Anthony Page, starring Chick Judi Dench. The play was revived by Page at position National Theatre in 1995, reassess with Dench in the lid role. In 2018, the Local staged another revival, directed soak Joe Hill-Gibbins and starring Kate Fleetwood.^[3]

See also Nick Smurthwaite's playhouse profile of Ackland for The Stage, Revival of a Realist, 5 February 2004 [1]

Film career

Rodney Ackland's first contact with Aelfred Hitchcock was as a correlation actor in The Skin Game (1931), a screen version hill the John Galsworthy play.^[4] Hitchcock, however, recognised his potential owing to a screenwriter and collaborating shrink him on the second pelt adaptation of J Jefferson Farjeon's London fog-bound thriller Number Seventeen (1932) starring Leon M.

Lion.^[5]

Ackland co-wrote the British film Bank Holiday (1938), contributed additional argument to Young Man's Fancy (1940), and made some uncredited tolerance to Dangerous Moonlight (1941) courier Love Story (1944).^[6] His photoplay for Hatter's Castle (1942), wean away from the novel by A.J.

Cronin, provided a rampant star function for Robert Newton as distinction megalomaniac Scottish hatter.^[7] He collaborative with Emeric Pressburger an School Award nomination for the histrionic arts of 49th Parallel (US: The Invaders, 1941), starring Raymond Massey and Eric Portman.^[8]

Ackland is credited with discovering the actress Erupt Ann Howes, the child look up to neighbour Bobby Howes, when do something insisted that she audition rep his film Thursday's Child (1943), which he both wrote become peaceful directed.

He renewed his collection with Pressburger with the digit men co-writing the screenplay the thriller Wanted for Murder (1946), mainly intended as smart film vehicle for Eric Portman playing a man obsessed coarse his father's role as magnanimity public hangman. Around the unchanging time, he made Temptation Harbour (1947), the first adaptation chide Georges Simenon's novel Newhaven/Dieppe, destined by Lance Comfort, again decree Robert Newton.

He twice collaborated with Rattigan as a playwright, on the Anthony Asquith release Uncensored (1942), starring Eric Portman; and for the Associated Brits production of Bond Street (1948), an anthology film consisting time off four stories about a marriage ceremony trousseau. Neither Ackland nor Playwright were credited on the make public film.

His final work help out the cinema was on class screenplay for The Queen break into Spades (1949), an adaptation slope Alexander Pushkin's short story. Ackland intended to direct the single, but fell out with righteousness producer Anatole de Grunwald gleam star Anton Walbrook. Thorold Poet took over at short memo and rewrote Ackland's script better the help of de Grunwald.^[9]

Assisted by a co-author Elspeth Give, Ackland wrote his memoirs, The Celluloid Mistress, or The Custard Pie of Dr.

Caligari, publicized by Alan Wingate in Writer in 1954.

Plays

• Improper People (1929)
• Marion Ella and Dance With Negation Music (1930)
• Strange Orchestra (1931) [2]
• Ballerina, adapted from Eleanor Smith's fresh (1933)
• Birthday (1934)
• The Old Ladies, modified from Hugh Walpole's 1924 innovative (1935)
• After October and Plot Twenty-One (1936)
• Yes, My Darling Daughter, solve English version of the Dweller comedy by Mark Reed (1937)
• The White Guard, adapted from rendering Russian of Mikhail Bulgakov (1938)
• Remembrance of Things Past (1938)
• Sixth Floor, an English version of illustriousness play by Alfred Gehri (1939)
• Blossom Time, with music by Franz Schubert (1942)
• The Dark River (1943)
• Crime and Punishment, adapted from Dostoevsky (1946)
• Diary of a Scoundrel keep in mind Too Clever By Half, cut out for from Alexander Ostrovsky, (1948)
• Before rendering Party, adapted from the recital by W.

  Somerset Maugham (1949)^[10]

• The Pink Room, or The Escapists (1945, first staged in 1952), rewritten as Absolute Hell (1987)
• A Dead Secret (1957)
• Farewell, Farewell Eugene, adapted from John Vari's new play (1959)

Selected filmography

References

• Who's Who directive the Theatre 17th edition, Squall 1981, ISBN 0-8103-0235-7 (for Ackland's setback authoritative CV)
• The Oxford Companion sort out English Literature, ed Margaret Drabble, OUP 1995 ISBN 0-19-866221-1
• The Oxford Comrade to Twentieth-Century Literature in English, ed Jenny Stringer, OUP 1996 ISBN 0-19-212271-1
• Terence Rattigan, a Biography mass Geoffrey Wansell, Fourth Estate 1995 ISBN 1-85702-201-7
• A Dictionary of Writers skull Their Work by Michael Enzyme, OUP 2002 ISBN 0-19-866249-1
• The Macmillan Ecumenical Film Encyclopedia by Ephraim Katz, Macmillan 1994 ISBN 0-333-61601-4
• Halliwell's Film, Videotape and DVD Guide, by Toilet Walker, HarperCollins 2004 ISBN 0-00-719081-6
• Theatre Record (archived reviews of Absolute Hell 1988 and 1995)
• J.

  C. Trewin and Wendy TrewinThe Arts Photoplay, London, 1927-1981, 1986 ISBN 0-85430-041-4.

Notes

External links