Charles Bennett

From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki

born: 02/Aug/1899 (Shoreham-By-Sea, England, UK)
died: 15/Jun/1995 (Los Angeles, California, USA)

[edit] Biography

Charles Bennett was a British playwright and screenwriter, probably best known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock.

Born in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, England, Bennett served in World War I and worked as an actor and writer, before finding success as a playwright in the 1920s. His play "Blackmail" was turned into a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1929, which is generally credited as the first British sound film.

His association with Hitchcock continued into the 1930s, with Bennett writing some of the latter's most famous British films - "The Man Who Knew Too Much", "The 39 Steps", "Secret Agent", "Sabotage" and "Young and Innocent". Bennett left England to work with Hitchcock on his first American film, "Foreign Correspondent" in 1940. He would stay in Hollywood, writing many screenplays and directing two films, "Madness of the Heart" in 1949 and "No Escape" in 1953.

He later worked in American television on such series as "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", "The Wild Wild West" and "Land of the Giants". However, the most famous of Bennett's later films was another British production, an adaptation of M.R. James's "Casting the Runes", entitled "Night of the Demon" and directed by Jacques Tourneur in 1957.

Bennett died in Los Angeles, California U.S.A. in 1995.

(Wikipedia)