Giles Cooper - Writing

Writing

Cooper was a pioneer in writing for the broadcast media, becoming prolific in both radio and television drama. His early successes included radio dramatisations of Dickens' Oliver Twist, William Golding's Lord of the Flies and John Wyndham's classic science fiction novel Day of the Triffids. Wyndham wrote him a congratulatory letter after the first broadcast. On television he adapted Simenon's Maigret detective novels from the French, which became the major hit of the day (1960–61) starring Rupert Davies as the pipe-smoking sleuth in over 24 episodes. For this he won the Script award in 1961 of the Guild of Television Producers, which subsequently became BAFTA. Cooper also adapted four Sherlock Holmes stories, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1965), Les Misérables, Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour (1967). He was also successful in the theatre, his first love, with his own plays. His first full-length play Never Get Out was staged at the Edinburgh Festival in 1950 and transferred to the Gate Theatre in London.

The first of his radio plays to make his reputation was Mathry Beacon (1956) about a small detachment of men and women still guarding a Top Secret "missile deflector" somewhere in Wales, years after the war has ended. (The first and only American production, starring Martyn Green, was syndicated to public stations in 1981 by the National Radio Theater of Chicago.) Also of note are Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1958) in which a young teacher finds his predecessor has been murdered by the boys in his class) and The Long House (1965). "Out of the Crocodile" ran at the Phoenix Theatre in 1963-64 starring Kenneth More, Celia Johnson and Cyril Raymond. "The Spies are Singing" was presented at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1966, starring the theatre's Artistic Director John Neville.

Many of his plays were later adapted for both stage and television. Unman, Wittering and Zigo, Seek Her Out (in which a woman (played by Toby Robins) witnesses an assassination on the London Underground and becomes the next would-be victim of the perpetrators) and The Long House formed a trilogy in broadcast on Theatre 625 on BBC2. He also wrote The Other Man a television drama starring Michael Caine, Siân Phillips and John Thaw and first broadcast on ITV in 1964.

Everything In The Garden was first performed by The Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962 at the Arts Theatre, London, an American adaptation by Edward Albee, dedicated to the memory of Giles Cooper, was first performed in 1967 at the Plymouth Theatre, New York.

His last play was Happy Family which was first presented at the Hampstead Theatre in 1966 starring Wendy Craig, it then transferred to the West End with Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray and Robert Flemyng. A revival in 1984 directed by Maria Aitken, opened at Windsor and transferred to the Duke of York's theatre in the West End, starring Ian Ogilvy, Angela Thorne, James Laurenson and Stephanie Beacham.