Derek Marlowe

Derek Marlowe
Born	21 May 1938(1938-05-21) Perivale, Middlesex England
Died	14 November 1996(1996-11-14) (aged 58) Los Angeles
Occupation	Author & Screenwriter
Nationality	British
Period	1960–1996
Genres	Mystery, Recent history
Influences Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John le Carré

Derek William Mario Marlowe (21 May 1938–14 November 1996) was an English playwright, novelist, and screenwriter.

Life

Derek Marlowe was born in Perivale, Middlesex, and lived there and in Greenford as a child. His father was Frederick William Marlowe (an electrician) and his mother Helene Alexandroupolos. He had early education at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in Holland Park.

In 1959 Marlowe went to Queen Mary College of the University of London to study English literature. He never finished his degree course, but the college had a particularly fine theatre (the former People's Palace in Mile End Road) and Marlowe became part of a core theatre group there. In 1960 the college group formed a semi-professional theatre company, the 60 Theatre Group, and took their production of Tennessee Williams' play Summer and Smoke to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with Marlowe in the leading role opposite Audrey "Dickie" Gaskell.

He married Susan Rose "Suki" Phipps, stepdaughter of Sir Fitzroy Maclean, in 1968; together they had a son, Ben, to add to Suki's two sons and two daughters from a previous marriage. He divorced in 1975 and moved to Los Angeles.

While working there, he contracted leukaemia, and died of a brain hemorrhage after a liver transplant. He was cremated in California, but his ashes were brought back to England by his sister, Alda. At the time of his death he was planning to return to England and complete a tenth novel, Black and White.

Work

In 1960 he adapted a story, The Seven Who Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev, for the stage. The 60 Theatre Group first produced the play at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1961, and later took it to a student theatre festival in Zadar, Croatia (then Yugoslavia). It was produced in London as The Scarecrow in 1964, and won the Foyle award. In 1962 Marlowe adapted Maxim Gorki's book The Lower Depths for the London stage.

He was the author of nine novels, notably A Dandy in Aspic (1966), Echoes of Celandine (1970) (re-published as The Disappearance), Somebody's Sister (1974) and The Rich Boy from Chicago (1979).

His first work for the screen was as co-author with Larry Kramer of a semi-documentary about swinging London called Reflections on Love (1966) and featuring some of the Beatles.

In 1968 he wrote the screenplay of his own novel A Dandy in Aspic, directed by Anthony Mann and starring Laurence Harvey as the double agent ordered to assassinate his own alter ego.

He wrote two episodes of the BBC television series The Search for the Nile in 1971. Other screenplays included Jamaica Inn, Nancy Astor, A Married Man, The Two Mrs Grenvilles, and Grass Roots. His last work was a feature-length episode of Murder, She Wrote produced posthumously in 1997.

External links

• Derek Marlowe at the Internet Movie Database

Persondata
Name	Marlowe, Derek
Alternative names
Short description	English author, playwright, screenwriter
Date of birth	May 21, 1938
Place of birth	Perivale, Middlesex, England
Date of death	November 14, 1996
Place of death	Los Angeles