Neil Paterson (writer)
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Neil Paterson (31 December 1916-19 April, 1995) was an Academy Award winning screenwriter.
Born James Edmund Neil Paterson in Greenock, Scotland, Neil Paterson's career started as a footballer, playing for the Scottish team Dundee United, who he became captain of, in the 1936-37 season. Despite his success in football he remained an amateur player, spurning the opportunity to go professional. [1]. After his football career finished he became a writer, initially as a sports journalist for D.C. Thomson and after the Second World war as an author penning a number of well received novels and short stories. In 1953 he adapted his own short story The Kidnappers for the cinema and subsequently wrote a number of screenplays including the Academy Award-winning script for Room at the Top in 1959, adapted from the novel by John Braine. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh, Paterson won the Atlantic Award for Literature in 1946. Later he served as a governor for the British Film Institute, National Film School and the Arts Council of Great Britain and as an executive for Grampian Television. He died in 1995 at Crieff, Scotland.
[edit] Selected Bibliography
- On my Faithless Arm (1946) (Under pseudonym John Kovack)
- The China Run:Being the biography of a great-grandmother (1948)
- Behold Thy Daughter (1950)
- The China Run:A book of short stories (1951)
- Man on the Tightrope (1952)
- Man on a Tightrope:The Short Novel (1953)
- The Kidnappers and other Stories (1957)
- Something like a poem (1986)
[edit] Selected Filmography
- The Kidnappers (1953)
- Man on a Tightrope (1953)
- Devil on Horseback (1954)
- The Woman for Joe (1955)
- High Tide at Noon (1957)
- The Shiralee (1957)
- Innocent Sinners (1958)
- Room at the Top (1959)
- The Spiral Road (1962)
- The Kidnappers (1990)
