Gerald Savory

Gerald Douglas Savory (17 November 1909 – 9 February 1996) was an English playwright, novelist, television writer, and producer born in London, England. The son of Kenneth Douglas Savory and actress Grace Lane (1877–1956), he was educated at Bradfield College before working as a stockbroker's clerk. He subsequently joined the Hull Repertory Theatre Company, where he worked from 1931 to 1933, initially as an actor before transitioning to writing.

Savory's most celebrated stage work, George and Margaret, was written during a period when he was unemployed as an actor. The play ran for 377 performances across two West End venues — Wyndham's Theatre and the Piccadilly — before transferring to Broadway, where it achieved 86 performances. The production was later adapted as a film in 1940. His earliest film work predated that success: in 1937 he contributed dialogue to director Alfred Hitchcock's Young and Innocent. He also wrote the play Hand in Glove, co-authored with Charles K. Freeman and based on his own 1942 novel Hughie Roddis.

Savory's Broadway career spanned 1939 to 1951 and included appearances and writing credits across several productions, among them the comedy Sheppey, Springtime for Henry, Folies Bergère, and Hand in Glove. During the 1940s and 1950s he lived in the United States, writing for film and television, and became an American citizen. He returned to England in the mid-1950s, at which point he joined Granada Television as a writer, producer, and production manager. In that capacity he produced five episodes of ITV Play of the Week and adapted works by Saki, J.B. Priestley, Noël Coward, and Tennessee Williams for television.

He subsequently moved to BBC Television, serving first as Head of Serials and then as Head of Plays. Among his BBC productions was the series Churchill's People (1975–76). He later produced Love in a Cold Climate (1980) for Thames Television, as well as the television film Count Dracula (1977) and both series of Mapp and Lucia (1985–86). His published novels included Hughie Roddis (1942) and Behold This Dreamer (1943), and his stage plays included A Likely Tale (1957), A Month of Sundays (1957), So Many Children (1959), Cup and Saucer (1961), and Twinkling of an Eye (1965).

Savory was married four times and had no biological children, though he had a stepson through his fourth marriage. His first marriage, to writer Teo Dunbar, ended in divorce. In 1950 he married American actress Althea Murphy (1916–1952), who died of leukemia in 1952. His third wife, actress Annette Carell, whom he married in 1953, died by suicide in 1967. He married his fourth wife, actress Sheila Brennan, in 1970, and she survived him. Savory died in England on 9 February 1996.