Rodney Ackland

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Rodney Ackland (birth name: Norman Ackland Bernstein ; * 18th May 1908 in London , † 6. December 1991 in London Borough of Richmond upon Thames , Surrey ) one was British screenplay author , playwright , actor and film director , who once for an Oscar was nominated.

Life

Actor, screenwriter and film director

Ackland completed an acting training at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art in London and made his stage debut in 1924 at the Gate Theater in Dublin . He was as an actor at after several years theaters operate before it in 1931 by Alfred Hitchcock staged feature film The Skin was (The Skin Game) made his debut as a film actor and on the side of Edmund Gwenn , Jill Esmond and Helen Haye a minor role.

At the same time he began his work as a writer for the British film industry with the script for the 1931 crime film Shadows directed by Alexander Esway with Jacqueline Logan , Bernard Nedell and Gordon Harker . In the following decades, he wrote to 1969 the screenplays for almost forty films such as Number Seventeen (Number Seventeen, 1932) by Alfred Hitchcock with Leon M. Lion , Anne Gray and John Stuart or A Letter from Home (1942) by Carol Reed with Joyce Grenfell , Kathleen Harrison and Celia Johnson .

At the 1943 Academy Awards , Ackland was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay , along with Emeric Pressburger, for Michael Powell's war film 49th Parallel (1942) starring Leslie Howard , Laurence Olivier and Richard George . The film is about a submarine crew in World War II who got stranded off northern Canada and made their way across the border to the still neutral USA to avoid capture.

As an assistant director and director, he only worked on two short films . He also directed the 1943 film Thursday's Child , based on his drama , in which Sally Ann Howes played her first leading role on the side of Wilfrid Lawson and Kathleen O'Regan .

Stage works, adaptations and productions

In addition to his work as a screenwriter and theater actor, Ackland also wrote a number of stage works himself, some of which were also filmed. After his first piece Strange Orchestra (1931), which was filmed by the BBC in 1952 for their Night Theater series, his piece After October was in 1936 at the Aldwych Theater in London by AR Whatmore with Mary Clare , Griffith Jones, John Moody, Diana Beaumont and Iris Baker listed. In 1942 he adapted a version of the musical Das Dreimäderlhaus with songs by Franz Schubert at the Lyric Theater in London with Richard Tauber . In the same year he produced the musical The Belle of New York by Gustave Adolph Kerker at the London Coliseum with Evelyn Laye , Billy Tasker , Billy Danvers and Enid Stamp Taylor .

In October 1936 Harold Clayton staged a performance of his play Plot Twenty-One at the Embassy Pepertory Theater in London, in which Molly Rankin, Avice Landone, Clare Greet, John Ruddock, Margaret Scudamore and Jack Livesey played. Other pieces of his own were The Dark River (1943), The Pink Room (1952) and A Dead Secret (1957).

An adaptation of the novel Guilt and Atonement by Fyodor Michailowitsch Dostoevsky was written by Anthony Quayle with John Gielgud , Edith Evans , Audrey Fildes , Jessie Evans , Sebastian Cabot , Ferdy Mayne , Rosalind Atkinson , Peter Jones and Peter Ustinov in 1946 and by Theodore in 1947 Komisarjevsky with Gielgud, Lillian Gish , Wladimir Sokoloff , Alice John , Sanford Meisner , EA Krumschmidt and Dolly Haas at various British theaters.

In 1950 he also adapted the play The Old Ladies of Hugh Walpole for a production of Frith Banbury at London's Lyric Theater with Mary Jerrold , Mary Clare and Jean Cadell in the lead roles. This adaptation was also adopted by Wilm ten Haaf in 1964 for the television film Bis ans Ende with Hilde Körber , Lil Dagover and Hilde Hildebrand .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ackland, Rodney
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bernstein, Norman Ackland
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actor, screenwriter, playwright and director
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1991
Place of death London Borough of Richmond upon Thames , Surrey