David Wood (actor)
David Bernard Wood OBE (born 21 February 1944) is an English actor, author, composer, director, magician and producer. ''The Times'' called him "the National Children's Dramatist". In 1979, he joined Bernard Cribbins, Maurice Denham, and Jan Francis in a reading of ''The Hobbit'' for the BBC Television show ''Jackanory''. Early life Wood was born on 21 February 1944 in Sutton, Surrey. He was educated at Chichester High School for Boys and Worcester College, Oxford. Stage work Along with John Gould, he founded the Whirligig Theatre, a touring children's theatre company. His most famous story, '' The Gingerbread Man'' (1976), has been all across the world since its premiere at the Towngate Theatre in Basildon. Wood, FilmFair, and Central adapted the musical into an animated children's television series. The adaptation, also called '' The Gingerbread Man'', aired on ITV in 1992. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2004 Queen's Birth ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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:Template:Infobox Writer/doc
Infobox writer may be used to summarize information about a person who is a writer/author (includes screenwriters). If the writer-specific fields here are not needed, consider using the more general ; other infoboxes there can be found in :People and person infobox templates. This template may also be used as a module (or sub-template) of ; see WikiProject Infoboxes/embed for guidance on such usage. Syntax The infobox may be added by pasting the template as shown below into an article. All fields are optional. Any unused parameter names can be left blank or omitted. Parameters Please remove any parameters from an article's infobox that are unlikely to be used. All parameters are optional. Unless otherwise specified, if a parameter has multiple values, they should be comma-separated using the template: : which produces: : , language= If any of the individual values contain commas already, add to use semi-colons as separators: : which produces: : , pseu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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FilmFair
FilmFair was a British production company and animation studio that produced children's television series, animated television series, educational films, and television advertisements. The company made numerous stop motion films using puppets, clay animation, and cutout animation. History Foundation FilmFair was founded in 1959 by American animator Gus Jekel in Los Angeles, California. After working with Walt Disney Productions and other Hollywood animation studios in the 1930s, Jekel incorporated FilmFair because he wanted the freedom to create live action work as well. The studio was in Animation Alley, a stretch of Cahuenga Boulevard that runs through Studio City in northern Los Angeles. Jekel's company produced television advertisements—some animated, others live action—and was extremely successful; even Disney was a client. In the late 1960s, Jekel asked an English colleague, Graham Clutterbuck, to start a European office for FilmFair. Clutterbuck had been producing an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Swallows And Amazons
''Swallows and Amazons'' is a children's adventure novel by English author Arthur Ransome first published on 21 July 1930 by Jonathan Cape. Set in the summer of 1929 in the Lake District, the book introduces the main characters of John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker (Swallows); as well as their mother, Mary; and their baby sister, Bridget (nicknamed Vicky). We also meet Nancy and Peggy Blackett (Amazons); their uncle Jim (James Turner), commonly referred to as Captain Flint; and their widowed mother, Molly Blackett. It is the first book in the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series, followed by '' Swallowdale''. At the time, Ransome had been working as a journalist with the ''Manchester Guardian'', but decided to become a full-time author rather than go abroad as a foreign correspondent. He did continue to write part-time for the press, however. The book was inspired by a summer spent by Ransome teaching the children of his friends, the Altounyans, to sail. Three of the Altounya ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arthur Ransome
Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. The entire series remains in print, and ''Swallows and Amazons'' is the basis for a tourist industry around Windermere and Coniston Water, the two lakes Ransome adapted as his fictional North Country lake. He also wrote about the literary life of London, and about Russia before, during, and after the revolutions of 1917. His connection with the leaders of the Revolution led to him providing information to the Secret Intelligence Service, while he was also suspected by MI5 of being a Soviet spy. Early life Ransome was the son of Cyril Ransome (1851–1897) and his wife Edith Ransome (née Baker Boulton) (1862–1944). Arthur was the eldest of four children: he had two sisters, Ceci ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Swallows And Amazons (1974 Film)
''Swallows and Amazons'' is a 1974 British film adaption of the 1930 novel of the same name by Arthur Ransome. The film, which was directed by Claude Whatham and produced by Richard Pilbrow, starred Virginia McKenna and Ronald Fraser, with Zanna Hamilton. Its budget was provided by Nat Cohen of EMI Films who had funded the successful 1970 film '' The Railway Children''.Tim Devlin. "A day in the life of Swallows and Amazons." Times ondon, England20 June 1973: 12. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 14 July 2012. Plot During the school holidays, the Walker children (John, Susan, Titty and Roger; the ''Swallows'') are staying at a farm near a lake in the Lake District. They sail a borrowed dinghy named ''Swallow'', and camp on an island in the lake that they call ''Wild Cat Island''. They meet two local girls, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, who sail a dinghy named ''Amazon'' and live in ''Beckfoot'' a house up the nearby ''Amazon River''. The ''Amazons'' (the Blackett girls; they ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Screenplay
A screenplay, or script, is a written work produced for a film, television show (also known as a '' teleplay''), or video game by screenwriters (cf. ''stage play''). Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. A screenplay is a form of narration in which the movements, actions, expressions and dialogue of the characters are described in a certain format. Visual or cinematographic cues may be given, as well as scene descriptions and scene changes. History In the early silent era, before the turn of the 20th century, "scripts" for films in the United States were usually a synopsis of a film of around one paragraph and sometimes as short as one sentence.Andrew Kenneth Gay"History of scripting and the screenplay"at Screenplayology: An Online Center for Screenplay Studies. Retrieved 15 December 2021. Shortly thereafter, as films grew in length and complexity, film scenarios (also called "treatments" or "synopses"Steven Maras. ''Screenwri ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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By Jeeves
''By Jeeves'', originally ''Jeeves'', is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and lyrics and book by Alan Ayckbourn. It is based on the series of novels and short stories by P. G. Wodehouse that centre around the character of Bertie Wooster and his loyal valet, Jeeves. Premiering on April 22, 1975, at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, the show flopped initially, running for only a month. After an extensive rewrite, the show was produced in 1996 in both London and America, and premiered on Broadway in 2001. 1975: ''Jeeves'' Background and production Tim Rice conceived the idea of turning P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories into a musical. Originally, he was to work with his then-partner, Andrew Lloyd Webber, but Rice backed out of the project.Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works – Walsh, Michael (1989, revised and expanded, 1997),P.82, Abrams: New York Eventually Lloyd Webber teamed up with famed British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, and the two of them began work with ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn (born 12 April 1939) is a prolific British playwright and director. As of 2025, he has written and produced 90 full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit '' Relatively Speaking'' opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967. Major successes include '' Absurd Person Singular'' (1972), '' The Norman Conquests'' trilogy (1973), '' Absent Friends'' (1974), ''Bedroom Farce'' (1975), ''Just Between Ourselves'' (1976), '' A Chorus of Disapproval'' (1984), '' Woman in Mind'' (1985), '' A Small Family Business'' (1987), '' Man of the Moment'' (1988), ''House'' & ''Garden'' (1999) and '' Private Fears in Public Places'' (2004). His plays have won numer ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End theatre, West End and on Broadway theatre, Broadway. He has composed 21 musicals, a song cycle, a set of Variation (music), variations, two film scores, and Requiem (Lloyd Webber), a Latin Requiem Mass. Several of Lloyd Webber's songs have been widely recorded and widely successful outside their parent musicals, such as "Memory (Cats song), Memory" from ''Cats (musical), Cats'', "The Music of the Night" and "All I Ask of You" from ''The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical), The Phantom of the Opera'', "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from ''Jesus Christ Superstar'', "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from ''Evita (musical), Evita'', and "Any Dream Will Do (song), Any Dream Will Do" from ''Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat''. In 2001, ''The New York Times'' referred to him as "the most ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aces High (film)
''Aces High'' is a 1976 war film directed by Jack Gold, starring Malcolm McDowell, Peter Firth, Christopher Plummer and Simon Ward. An Anglo-French production, the film is based on the 1928 play ''Journey's End'' by R. C. Sherriff, with additional material from fighter ace Cecil Arthur Lewis, Cecil Lewis's memoir, ''Sagittarius Rising''. The screenplay was written by Howard Barker. ''Aces High'' turns the First World War trench warfare of ''Journey's End'' into the aerial battles fought in 1917 by the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) above the Western Front (World War I), Western Front. The film covers a week of a squadron where the high death rate puts an enormous strain on the surviving pilots. Many characters and plot lines are loosely based on those of ''Journey's End'': the idealistic new officer who is killed at the end, and whose sister is the girlfriend of his tough but alcoholic commanding officer, the kindly middle-aged second-in-command (known as "Uncle" by the younger office ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was a British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for his 1968 film '' if....'', which won the ''Palme d'Or'' at Cannes Film Festival in 1969 and marked Malcolm McDowell's cinematic debut. He is also notable, though not a professional actor, for playing a minor role in the Academy Award-winning 1981 film ''Chariots of Fire''. McDowell produced a 2007 documentary about his experiences with Anderson, '' Never Apologize''. Early life Lindsay Gordon Anderson was born in Bangalore, South India, where his father was stationed with the Royal Engineers, on 17 April 1923. His father Captain (later Major General) Alexander Vass Anderson was a British Army officer who had come from Scotland. His mother Estelle Bell Gasson was born in Queenstown, South Africa, the daughter of a wool merchant. Linds ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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ITV (TV Network)
ITV, legally known as Channel 3, is a British free-to-air public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television network. It is branded as ITV1 in most of the UK except for central and northern Scotland, where it is branded as STV (TV channel), STV. It was launched in 1955 as Independent Television to provide competition to BBC Television (established in 1936). ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, it has been Legal name, legally known as Channel 3 to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time: BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4. ITV was, for decades, a network of separate companies that provided regional television services and also shared programmes among themselves to be shown on the entire network. Each franchise was originally owned by a different company. After several mergers, the fifteen regional franchises are now held by two companies: ITV plc, which runs ITV1, the ITV1 cha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |