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Williams, Emlyn, 1905-1987We have 1 book for this author.
George Emlyn Williams CBE (26 November 1905–25 September 1987), known as Emlyn Williams, was a Welsh dramatist and actor. He was born into a Welsh-speaking, working-class family in Mostyn, Flintshire, Wales. At the age of 11 he won a scholarship to Holywell Grammar School. At the end of his time at the grammar school he won a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford. In 1927, he joined a repertory company and began his stage career. By 1930, he had branched out into writing, and his first major success was with the thriller Night Must Fall (1935), which was made into a film in 1937 and again in 1964. His other great play was very different: The Corn is Green (1938), partly based on his own childhood, and also later filmed. In addition to stage plays, Williams wrote a number of film screenplays, working with Alfred Hitchcock and other directors. He acted in and contributed dialogue to various films based on the novels of A.J. Cronin, including The Citadel (1938), The Stars Look Down (1940), Hatter's Castle (1942), and Web of Evidence (1959). In 1941 Williams starred in the film You Will Remember, directed by Jack Raymond and written by Sewell Stokes and Lydia Hayward. The film is based on the life of the popular late Victorian songwriter Leslie Stuart, played here by Robert Morley, with Williams as Stuart's best friend. He often appeared in his own plays, and was famous for his one-man-show, with which he toured the world, playing Charles Dickens in an evening of readings from Dickens' novels. His autobiography, in the volumes George (1961) and Emlyn (1973), was also highly successful. In it, he wrote frankly of his early homosexual experiences, though he later married in 1935 and had a son; his wife died in 1970. Among Williams' other books was the best seller Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and its Detection (1968), a semi-fictionalized account of the Moors murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. His novel, Headlong, was the basis of the film King Ralph, but little of the characters or story survived the transition to the screen. Williams was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1962. Emlyn Williams died in London, aged 81, from complications from cancer. External links
This biographical information was gathered from the Emlyn_Williams page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project. BooksNight Must Fall : a Play in Three Acts |
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