John Richard Hopkins (sometimes credited as John R. Hopkins; 27 January 1931 – 23 July 1998) was an English film, stage, and television writer.
Biography
Born in southwest London, Hopkins was educated at
Raynes Park County Grammar School, then completed his
National Service
National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939.
The l ...
in the Army from 1950 to 1951. He read English Literature at
St Catharine's College, Cambridge
St Catharine's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1473 as Katharine Hall, it adopted its current name in 1860. The college is nicknamed "Catz". The college is located in the historic city-centre of Camb ...
and joined
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 193 ...
as a studio manager on graduation.
Hopkins began his writing career in radio, writing episodes of the BBC serial ''
Mrs Dale's Diary
''Mrs Dale's Diary'' was the first significant BBC radio serial drama. It was first broadcast on 5 January 1948 on the BBC Light Programme, later BBC Radio 2; it ran until 25 April 1969. A new episode was broadcast each weekday afternoon, with ...
'' for eighteen months. An attempt to become a trainee television director at the commercial television franchise holder
Granada Television
ITV Granada, formerly known as Granada Television, is the ITV franchisee for the North West of England and Isle of Man. From 1956 to 1968 it broadcast to both the north west and Yorkshire but only on weekdays as ABC Weekend Television was it ...
was unsuccessful. The company did accept his first play, ''Break Up'' (1958), about the end of the marriage of a young couple, although it was only shown in the Granada region.
He established himself as a writer beginning when his then father-in-law
Nigel Balchin
Nigel Marlin Balchin (3 December 1908 – 17 May 1970)Peter Rowland, "Balchin, Nigel Marlin (1908–1970)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, accessed 9 December 2008 was an English psyc ...
asked him to try to adapt his novels for television, Adaptations of both ''
The Small Back Room
''The Small Back Room'', released in the United States as ''Hour of Glory'', is a 1949 film by the British producer-writer-director team of Powell and Pressburger, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger starring David Farrar (actor), David Farrar ...
'' (for ''
Sunday Night Theatre
''Sunday Night Theatre'' was a long-running series of televised live television plays screened by BBC Television from early 1950 until 1959.
The productions for the first five years or so of the run were re-staged live the following Thursday, pa ...
'') and ''
Mine Own Executioner
''Mine Own Executioner'' is a 1947 British psychological thriller drama film starring Burgess Meredith and directed by Anthony Kimmins, and based on the novel of the same name by Nigel Balchin. It was entered into the 1947 Cannes Film Festival. ...
'' were broadcast in April and August 1959 respectively.
Hopkins then adapted
Margery Allingham
Margery Louise Allingham (20 May 1904 – 30 June 1966) was an English novelist from the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", and considered one of its four " Queens of Crime", alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.
Alli ...
's novels about the private detective
Albert Campion
Albert Campion is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and short stories by Margery Allingham. He first appeared as a supporting character in ''The Crime at Black Dudley'' (1929), an adventure story involving a ring of criminals, ...
into ''
Campion'' featuring two six-part serials, ''Dancers in Mourning'' (1959) and ''Death of a Ghost'' (1960). Hopkins followed with a series based on
Rosamund Lehmann
Rosamond Nina Lehmann (3 February 1901 – 12 March 1990) was an English novelist and translator. Her first novel, ''Dusty Answer'' (1927), was a ''succès de scandale''; she subsequently became established in the literary world and intimate ...
's ''The Weather in the Streets'' (1961). He wrote his own thriller series, ''
A Chance of Thunder
''A Chance of Thunder'' is a 1961 British television series written by John Hopkins and produced by the BBC. It was transmitted in six episodes.Baskin p. 59
The BBC later wiped the series, and none of the six episodes are thought to survive.
C ...
'' in 1961.
Hopkins wrote over fifty episodes of the BBC police drama ''
Z-Cars
''Z-Cars'' or ''Z Cars'' (pronounced "zed cars") is a British television police procedural series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, near Liverpool. Produced by the BBC, it debuted ...
'', remaining with the series for 2, serving as the series' script editor for a time.
One episode featured
Judi Dench
Dame Judith Olivia Dench (born 9 December 1934) is an English actress. Regarded as one of Britain's best actresses, she is noted for her versatile work in various films and television programmes encompassing several genres, as well as for her ...
in the role of a delinquent. This character inspired Hopkins to write what is probably his best remembered work for the small screen, the four-part play sequence ''
Talking to a Stranger
''Talking to a Stranger'' (1966) is a British television drama, written by John Hopkins for the BBC, which consists of four separate plays recounting the events of one weekend from the viewpoints of four members of the same family. The play cycl ...
'' (1966) directed by
Christopher Morahan
Christopher Thomas Morahan Order of the British Empire, CBE (9 July 1929 – 7 April 2017) was a British stage and television director and production executive.
Biography Early life and career
Morahan was born on 9 July 1929 in London, the son ...
, with whom he had developed a rapport while working with him on ''Z-Cars''. Starring Dench, and
Michael Bryant, as the adult children of characters played by
Maurice Denham
William Maurice Denham OBE (23 December 1909 – 24 July 2002) was an English character actor who appeared in over 100 films and television programmes in his long career.
Family
Denham was born on 23 December 1909 in Beckenham, Kent, the son ...
, and
Margery Mason
Margery Mason (27 September 1913 – 26 January 2014) was an English actress and director. She was the artistic director of the Repertory Theatre in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland in the 1960s.
Career
Mason played Sarah Stevens, the ...
, ''Talking to a Stranger'' was transmitted as part of
BBC2
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...
's ''
Theatre 625
''Theatre 625'' is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and ...
'' anthology series. The plays told the story of one bleak weekend from the viewpoints of the four individuals. It won the British Directors' Guild Writers' Award and an
Emmy
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
in 1968 after the sequence was shown on American television.
Critic
George Melly
Alan George Heywood Melly (17 August 1926 – 5 July 2007) was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer, and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973 he was a film and television critic for ''The Observer''; he also lectured on art history, with an e ...
described in ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'' as "
e first authentic masterpiece written directly for television".
Two ''
Wednesday Plays'' from this period by Hopkins were ''
Fable
Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular mo ...
'' from January 1965
and ''Horror of Darkness'' broadcast the following March. The former imagines an inverted South African apartheid in Britain
(which was postponed by the BBC in case it affected a by-election),
while the latter is a rare exploration of homosexuality in the 1960s. ''Hour of Darkness'' featured
Glenda Jackson
Glenda May Jackson (born 9 May 1936) is an English actress and former Member of Parliament (MP). She has won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice: for her role as Gudrun Brangwen in the romantic drama ''Women in Love'' (1970); and again for ...
and
Nicol Williamson
Thomas Nicol Williamson (14 September 1936 – 16 December 2011) was a Scottish actor, once described by playwright John Osborne as "the greatest actor since Marlon Brando". He was also described by Samuel Beckett as "touched by genius" and view ...
in the lead roles.
Hopkins made his feature film debut with the screenplay he co-wrote with director
Roy Ward Baker
Roy Ward Baker (born Roy Horace Baker; 19 December 1916 – 5 October 2010) was an English film director. His best known film is ''A Night to Remember (1958 film), A Night to Remember'' (1958) which won a Golden Globe for Golden Globe Award for ...
''
Two Left Feet'' (1963), a lightweight comedy-drama with
Michael Crawford
Michael Patrick Smith, (born 19 January 1942), known professionally as Michael Crawford, is an English tenor, actor and comedian.
Crawford is best known for playing both the hapless Frank Spencer in the sitcom ''Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em'' an ...
.
He received co-screenwriter credit with
Richard Maibaum
Richard Maibaum (May 26, 1909 – January 4, 1991) was an American film producer, playwright and screenwriter best known for his screenplay adaptations of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.
Among his works are the first anti-lynching play on Bro ...
for the fourth James Bond film
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
movie ''
Thunderball'' (1965).
He co-wrote the screenplay for
Leslie Thomas
Leslie Thomas, OBE (22 March 1931 – 6 May 2014) was a Welsh author best known for his comic novel ''The Virgin Soldiers''.
Early life
Thomas was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales. He was orphaned at the age of 12, when his mariner fath ...
' boys-in-uniform comedy ''
The Virgin Soldiers
''The Virgin Soldiers'' is a 1966 comic novel by Leslie Thomas, inspired by his own experiences of National Service in the British Army. It was Thomas' debut novel; he had previously published an autobiography. ''The Virgin Soldiers'' sold mill ...
'' (1969) and worked on the screenplay for the film adaptation of ''
Man of La Mancha
''Man of La Mancha'' is a 1965 musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh, and lyrics by Joe Darion. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay ''I, Don Quixote'', which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes ...
'' (1972), although he was removed from this project by
United Artists
United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the studi ...
when the studio discovered his draft omitted most of the songs from the musical. His screenplay for ''
Murder by Decree
''Murder by Decree'' is a 1979 mystery thriller film directed by Bob Clark. It features the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who are embroiled in the investigation surrounding the real-life 188 ...
'' (1979) places
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a " consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and ...
against
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in the autumn of 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer wa ...
. The film was directed by
Bob Clark
Benjamin Robert Clark (August 5, 1939 – April 4, 2007) was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. He is best known for his work in the Canadian film industry throughout the 1970s and 1980s, where he was responsible ...
and featured
Christopher Plummer
Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer (December 13, 1929 – February 5, 2021) was a Canadian actor. His career spanned seven decades, gaining him recognition for his performances in film, stage, and television. He received multiple accolades, inc ...
as Holmes and
James Mason
James Neville Mason (; 15 May 190927 July 1984) was an English actor. He achieved considerable success in British cinema before becoming a star in Hollywood. He was the top box-office attraction in the UK in 1944 and 1945; his British films inc ...
as Watson.
Hopkins wrote his first stage play, ''This Story of Yours'', in 1968. Though it had poor reviews when it was staged at the
Royal Court
A royal court, often called simply a court when the royal context is clear, is an extended royal household in a monarchy, including all those who regularly attend on a monarch, or another central figure. Hence, the word "court" may also be appl ...
. One audience member who was impressed by the play was
Sean Connery
Sir Sean Connery (born Thomas Connery; 25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020) was a Scottish actor. He was the first actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond on film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. Origina ...
who chose it as a personal film project which became ''
The Offence
''The Offence'' is a 1973 British crime neo noir drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, based upon the 1968 stage play ''This Story of Yours'' by John Hopkins. It stars Sean Connery as police detective Johnson, who kills suspected child molest ...
'' (1973). Connery not only produced the film under a deal with United Artists when he returned to the role of James Bond, but also acted in the film version, directed by
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Arthur Lumet ( ; June 25, 1924 – April 9, 2011) was an American film director. He was nominated five times for the Academy Award: four for Best Director for ''12 Angry Men'' (1957), ''Dog Day Afternoon'' (1975), ''Network'' (1976), ...
. Hopkins' plays for the stage included ''Next of Kin'', which was produced at London's
National Theatre in 1974 with
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanne ...
directing. His play, ''Find Your Way Home'' (1970) was produced in London and then on Broadway where it won a "Best Actor"
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual cer ...
for
Michael Moriarty
Michael Moriarty (born April 5, 1941) is an American-Canadian actor and jazz musician. He received an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award for his first acting role on American television as a Nazi SS officer in the 1978 mini-series ''Holocaust'' ...
.
Hopkins adapted Dostoevsky's ''The Gambler'' (1973) for television, it starred
Edith Evans
Dame Edith Mary Evans, (8 February 1888 – 14 October 1976) was an English actress. She was best known for her work on the stage, but also appeared in films at the beginning and towards the end of her career. Between 1964 and 1968, she was no ...
and
Philip Madoc
Philip Madoc (born Philip Arvon Jones; 5 July 1934 – 5 March 2012) was a Welsh actor. He performed many stage, television, radio and film roles, and was recognised for having a "rich, sonorous voice" and often playing villains and office ...
, and he wrote the two-part television screenplay, ''
Divorce His, Divorce Hers
''Divorce His, Divorce Hers'' is a 1973 British/American made-for-television drama film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The film examines the conflicted emotions felt by a couple whose 18-year marriage has frayed beyond repair. The ...
'' (1973), which starred
Richard Burton
Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. Noted for his baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, and he gave a memorable pe ...
and
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. ...
.
His later television work also includes the ''
Play for Today
''Play for Today'' is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage ...
'' ''A Story to Frighten the Children'' (1976), and the serial adaptation of
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 193112 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré ( ), was a British and Irish author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. ...
's novel ''
Smiley's People
''Smiley's People'' is a spy novel by British writer John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the " Karla Trilogy", following ''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' and ''The Hono ...
'' (1982), starring
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing comedies, including ''Kind Hearts and Coronets'' (194 ...
, both for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
; and the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
espionage thriller ''
Codename: Kyril'' (1988) for
ITV
ITV or iTV may refer to:
ITV
*Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of:
** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...
. Hopkins' six-play cycle, ''Fathers and Families'' (1977), again directed by Christopher Morahan, was unsuccessful.
Hopkins died at his home in
Woodland Hills, California, United States, in July 1998, following an accident in which he slipped, hit his head and fell unconscious into his swimming pool, where he drowned.
Private life
In 1954, Hopkins married Prudence Anne Balchin, a daughter of author
Nigel Balchin
Nigel Marlin Balchin (3 December 1908 – 17 May 1970)Peter Rowland, "Balchin, Nigel Marlin (1908–1970)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, accessed 9 December 2008 was an English psyc ...
. They divorced in 1969.
In 1969, he married the American actress
Shirley Knight
Shirley Knight Hopkins (July 5, 1936 – April 22, 2020) was an American actress who appeared in more than 50 feature films, television films, television series, and Broadway and Off-Broadway productions in her career, playing leading and charac ...
; the couple had one daughter, Sophie. His stepdaughter from his marriage to Knight is actress
Kaitlin Hopkins
Kaitlin Persson Hopkins (born February 1, 1964) is an American actress and singer, the daughter of actress Shirley Knight and stage producer/director Gene Persson.
Biography
Hopkins was born in New York City to actress Shirley Knight and actor ...
, whom he raised.
Notes
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hopkins, John Richard
1931 births
1998 deaths
Accidental deaths in California
Deaths by drowning in California
Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge
English television writers
People educated at Raynes Park County Grammar School
British male television writers
20th-century English screenwriters
20th-century English male writers