Norman Hudis - Life and Career

Life and Career

He started his writing career on a local newspaper, the Hampstead & Highgate Express. When World War II broke out Hudis joined the RAF and served in the Middle East writing for Air Force News. Like many other post-war writers his first foray into entertainment was writing for camp concerts.

After the war Hudis decided to become a playwright, unfortunately only one of his plays Here Is The News met with critical success. This small success was enough to get him noticed by Pinewood Studios, who offered him a job as trainee screenwriter. During the two years he spent there he failed to get any of his screenplays into production.

Hudis left Pinewood and became a freelance writer and was soon to become a prolific screenwriter of B movies during the 1950s. He was the writer for the biopic The Tommy Steele Story.

Hudis met the film producer Peter Rogers in 1957 who offered him the job of writing another screenplay for Tommy Steele (The Duke Wore Jeans), which was to be directed by Gerald Thomas. (Peter Rogers' film producer wife Betty Box, who produced the Doctor film series, mostly worked with Gerald's brother, the director Ralph Thomas).

The producer and director team of Peter and Gerald chose Hudis to rewrite the screenplay to R. F. Delderfield's The Bull Boys. He obliged and the screenplay became the first of the enormously successful Carry On... film series as Carry On Sergeant. Following the success of this Carry On début, Hudis wrote a further five Carry On's (Carry On Nurse; Carry On Teacher; Carry On Constable; Carry On Regardless and Carry On Cruising) the highpoint being his second, Carry On Nurse, which was the UK's top grossing film of 1959.

In 1966 Hudis decided to move permanently to the U.S. as he had received offers of work following the commercial success of Carry On Nurse over there. His US TV writing credits include, The Wild Wild West, The F.B.I., The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (The Karate Killers), Hawaii Five-O, Cannon and Baretta.

Norman Hudis continues to write for film, TV and theatre. He is the co-writer of the long-running play Seven Deadly Sins Four Deadly Sinners, which has played around the world since 2003 and he has also written the one-man play Jeffrey Archer's Prison Diaries by FF 8282, the authorised adaptation of Jeffrey Archer's intensely personal diaries which were written during his incarceration, both of which are produced by Marc Sinden Productions. He also wrote the semi-autobiographical play Dinner with Ribbentrop about his time working with the notoriously anti-Semetic actor Eric Portman.

His son, Stephen R. Hudis is a Hollywood director. He has a sister called Slyvia Holness . whom lives in England.

In 2008, Hudis wrote his autobiography No Laughing Matter: How I Carried On, published by Apex Publishing Ltd.