John Hopkins (screenwriter)

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For other people named John Hopkins, see John Hopkins (disambiguation).

John Hopkins
Born
John Richard Hopkins

(1931-01-27)27 January 1931
Woodland Hills, California, U.S.
OccupationWriter
Years active1957–1995
Spouse(s)Prudence Balchin (1954–69, div.)
Shirley Knight (1969–1998)
Children1

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 in the Army from 1950 to 1951. He read English Literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge and joined BBC Television as a studio manager on graduation.[1]

Hopkins began his writing career in radio, writing episodes of the BBC serial

Rosamund Lehmann's The Weather in the Streets (1961). He wrote his own thriller series, A Chance of Thunder in 1961.[4]

Hopkins wrote over fifty episodes of the BBC police drama

Fable from January 1965[6] and Horror of Darkness broadcast the following March.[7] The former imagines an inverted South African apartheid in Britain[6] (which was postponed by the BBC in case it affected a by-election),[4] while the latter is a rare exploration of homosexuality in the 1960s.[8] Hour of Darkness featured Glenda Jackson and Nicol Williamson in the lead roles.[9]

Hopkins made his feature film debut with the screenplay he co-wrote with director Roy Ward Baker Two Left Feet (1963), a lightweight comedy-drama with Michael Crawford.[2] He received co-screenwriter credit with Richard Maibaum for the fourth James Bond film James Bond movie Thunderball (1965).[5][10] He co-wrote the screenplay for Leslie Thomas' boys-in-uniform comedy The Virgin Soldiers (1969) and worked on the screenplay for the film adaptation of Man of La Mancha (1972), although he was removed from this project by United Artists when the studio discovered his draft omitted most of the songs from the musical. His screenplay for Murder by Decree (1979) places Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper. The film was directed by Bob Clark and featured Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason 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

Tony Award for Michael Moriarty.[4]

Hopkins adapted Dostoevsky's The Gambler (1973) for television, it starred Edith Evans and Philip Madoc, and he wrote the two-part television screenplay, Divorce His, Divorce Hers (1973), which starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.[4] His later television work also includes the Play for Today A Story to Frighten the Children (1976), and the serial adaptation of John le Carré's novel Smiley's People (1982), starring Alec Guinness, both for the BBC; and the Cold War espionage thriller Codename: Kyril (1988) for ITV. Hopkins' six-play cycle, Fathers and Families (1977), again directed by Christopher Morahan, was unsuccessful.[13]

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. They divorced in 1969.

In 1969, he married the American actress Shirley Knight; the couple had one daughter, Sophie. His stepdaughter from his marriage to Knight is actress Kaitlin Hopkins, whom he raised.

Notes

  1. ^ Millington, Bob (1997). "John Hopkins". In Newcomb, Horace (ed.). Museum of Broadcast Communication: Encyclopedia of Television (PDF). Chicago & London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. pp. 799–801.
  2. ^ a b c Vahimagi, Tise (2003–14). "Hopkins, John (1931-98)". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  3. ^ a b Van Gelder, Lawrence (3 August 1998). "John R. Hopkins, 67, Writer for TV, Theater and Movies". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Hayward, Anthony (31 July 1998). "Obituary: John Hopkins". The Independent. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  5. ^ a b Fulton, Niall Greig (22 May 2017). "Who Was John Hopkins?". Edinburgh Film Festival. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  6. ^ a b Duguid, Mark (2003–14). "Fable (1965)". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  7. ^ Vahimagi, Tise (2003–14). "Horror of Darkness (1965)". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  8. ^ Brown, Mark (16 March 2013). "Newly unearthed ITV play could be first ever gay television drama". The Guardian.
  9. ^ Plater, Alan (6 May 2006). "Law and disorder". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  10. ^ Collinson, Gavin (2003–14). "Thunderball (1965)". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  11. ^ Next of Kin by John Hopkins, The National Theatre, 1974 at haroldpinter.org
  12. ^ Otis L. Guernsey, The Best plays of 1973–1974 (Dodd, Mead, 1974), p. 108.
  13. ^ Billington, Michael (11 April 2017). "Christopher Morahan". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 April 2017.

External links

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