Full Name David Butler Role Writer Name David Butler | Children Two daughters Years active 1961–1992 | |
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Born November 12, 1927 ( 1927-11-12 ) Larkhall, Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom Occupation Director, producer, screenwriter, Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Writers Branch) Died May 27, 2006, London, United Kingdom Movies The Scarlet and the Black, Voyage of the Damned Spouse Mary McPhail (m. 1969–2006), Norma Ronald (m. 1959–1966) Books Edward the Seventh: Prince of hearts, Within These Walls Similar People Norma Ronald, Keith Miles, Gordon Thomas, Lee Grant, Olga Karlatos | ||
Education University of St Andrews | ||
David Dalrymple Butler (12 November 1927 – 27 May 2006) was a Scottish writer of numerous screenplays and teleplays who won a Primetime Emmy Award and was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
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He specialised in period-piece drama and is particularly remembered for a string of hit British television shows, including Within These Walls, Lillie, We'll Meet Again and Edward the Seventh, as well as for his acting, most specifically as Dr. Nick Williams on British television's first medical soap opera, Emergency - Ward 10 in 1960–62.
Early years
A native of the town of Larkhall in South Lanarkshire, Butler was born into a well-educated family, with his parents working as teachers. At the age of 18, as World War II came to an end, he enrolled at the University of St Andrews, but ultimately abandoned his studies before attaining a degree, upon becoming interested in acting with the university drama society. He subsequently trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began his performing career in West End revues. In 1956, at the age of 29, he played a prison officer in Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop production of Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow.
Career highlights
In 1959, he married actress Norma Ronald and, by the early 1960s, was supplementing his acting career with scriptwriting. Following a 1966 divorce, his 1969 marriage to Mary McPhail lasted for the remainder of his life and produced two daughters.
By 1971, he had mostly given up acting and began to devote all of his energies to turning out teleplays. One of his first successes in the historical genre was 1972's The Strauss Family followed by many other productions, including The Duchess of Duke Street in 1976–77, 1978's Disraeli, starring Ian McShane and his 1986 Primetime Emmy Award-winning Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy with Nicol Williamson in the title role.
Circumstances also permitted an occasional return to acting, as in his own teleplays of the 1974–78 prison television series Within These Walls, in some episodes of which he played the penal institution chaplain, Rev. Henry Prentice. During this time, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his historical screenplay of 1976's Voyage of the Damned, depicting the 1939 attempt by 937 Jews to escape the looming Holocaust via a ship traveling from Hitler's Germany to Havana, but denied permission to disembark in Cuba or in the United States.
Death
Butler died in London at the age of 78.
He is buried in the section of modern graves in the north-east quadrant of the eastern half of Highgate Cemetery in north London.