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Alan Beverley Cross | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1931-04-13)13 April 1931 London, England |
| Died | 20 March 1998(1998-03-20) (aged 66) London, England |
| Occupation(s) | Screenwriter,playwright |
| Years active | 1960–1998 |
| Spouses | |
| Relatives | Chris Larkin (step-son) Toby Stephens (step-son) |
Alan Beverley Cross[2] (13 April 1931 – 20 March 1998) was an Englishplaywright,librettist, andscreenwriter.[3]
Born inLondon into a theatrical family, and educated at theNautical College Pangbourne, Cross started off by writing children's plays in the 1950s. He achieved instant success with his first play,One More River, which dealt with amutiny in which a crew puts its first officer on trial for manslaughter. The play premiered in 1958 at the New Shakespeare Theatre Liverpool, starringRobert Shaw, directed bySam Wanamaker, and in 1959, still with Robert Shaw, directed byGuy Hamilton at the Duke of York's Theatre in London.
Cross' second play,Strip the Willow, was to make a star out of his future wife,Maggie Smith, though the play never received a London production. In 1962, he translatedMarc Camoletti's FrenchfarceBoeing Boeing, which had a lengthy run in theWest End. In 1964, he directed the play inSydney. Another success wasHalf a Sixpence,[4] a musical comedy based on theH. G. Wells novelKipps, for which he wrote the book, and for which he received a nomination for aTony Award for Best Author. This opened in 1963, and like his first play, ran in London for more than a year.
He also wrote opera librettos forRichard Rodney Bennett (The Mines of Sulphur,All the King's Men, andVictory) andNicholas Maw (The Rising of the Moon).
Cross later became well known for his screenplays, includingJason and the Argonauts (1963),The Long Ships (1964),Genghis Khan (1965), andClash of the Titans (1981). He also adaptedHalf a Sixpence for the1967 film version. He also worked uncredited on the script forLawrence of Arabia (1962), although whether any of his material made it to the final edit is unknown.
He had known Maggie Smith since her years acting in Oxford in the 1950s, but they did not marry until 1975, following the end of Smith's marriage toRobert Stephens.[5] He was the stepfather of Smith's children from that marriage, actorsChris Larkin andToby Stephens. He died in London in 1998 aged 66 from ananeurysm.[1][6]
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