62-64 Gower St, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 6ED, United Kingdom
John Chapman studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London but left before graduating after his instructors criticized his voice and other acting abilities.
62-64 Gower St, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 6ED, United Kingdom
John Chapman studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London but left before graduating after his instructors criticized his voice and other acting abilities.
Connections
Wife: Betty Impey
1961
English actress Betty Impey and her husband, playwright John Chapman with their baby son Guy at their home in Hampstead, London, 13th January 1961.
(Superb comedy from the masters of farce. Set in India, th...)
Superb comedy from the masters of farce. Set in India, this play revolves around the eccentric Lady Eppingham and the antics of her two nephews, who manage her tea estate.
John Roy Chapman was a British screenwriter, well known as the author of farcical plays, especially those produced at the Whitehall Theater that were collaborative efforts with Brian (later Lord) Rix. He is known for his work on Not Now Darling (1973), Satan in High Heels (1962) and Happy Ever After (1974).
Background
John Roy was born on the 27th of May, 1927 in London, United Kingdom. His mother, Barbara, had no connection with the theatre and neither did his father, Roy, a successful engineer. However, John's grandparents, on his father's side, were both lead singers with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, his uncle Edward was a well-known actor whose appearance as Jess Oakroyd in J.B. Priestley's Good Companions at His Majesty's in 1931 was one of the great successes of the West End 70 years ago. Furthermore, his aunt Connie was possibly the most successful theatrical agent just after the Second World War.
Education
John Chapman attended Magdalen College School, the Glasgow Academy and University College School, London. He also studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London but left before graduating after his instructors criticized his voice and other acting abilities.
While John Roy Chapman was still in his early twenties, acting and understudying in Rix's Whitehall company, playing two soldiers in Reluctant Heroes every night, as well as being ready to go on as any of the other men in the play and assisting at the same time as stage-manager, Chapman started to write.
During this time, Chapman wrote his first farcical play, Dry Rot in 1954, which was accepted by Rix and included Chapman in one of the roles. Dry Rot was extremely successful and ran for four years.
Having played in Reluctant Heroes for the first two years of its run, Chapman left - rather against his will, since in the days before subsidized theatre every actor dreamed of being in a long run, to learn not only to improve his acting by taking difficult roles in weekly rep but also how to develop his dramaturgy. At Folkestone and Weston-super-Mare, he went on to do 50 plays a year, rehearsing a new one every week. On his spare Sundays, he finished Dry Rot, which he took back to Rix at the Whitehall. Rix said he would stage it if Chapman wrote in a part for him. While he was about it, Chapman wrote a part for himself. After its success, he gave up acting to write Simple Spymen, that came out in 1958.
After Dry Rot and Simple Spymen had helped in the 1950s to establish the Whitehall Theatre under the actor-manager, Brian Rix, as the home of British farce, each play ran for four years.
Chapman also wrote a clutch of light West End comedies including The Brides of March in 1960, This is My Wife, Mr. Stanniforth in 1963, Diplomatic Baggage in 1964, in which he also acted. With Ray Cooney, he wrote Not Now Darling and My Giddy Aunt in 1968, Move Over Mrs. Markham in 1971 and There Goes The Bride in 1974, and with Anthony Marriott, Shut Your Eyes and Think of England in 1977.
Chapman later ventured into television, writing programs such as The Night We Dropped a Clanger in 1959, Nothing Barred in 1961, Hugh and I in 1962-67, Happy Ever After, also known as Terry and June, and Fresh Fields.
John Roy Chapman’s last plays include Business Affairs in 2000, which he co-wrote with Jeremy Lloyd, and Deadlier than the Male, which was scheduled to be performed in 2002.
Achievements
John Chapman is particularly known as one of the most skilled, popular and steadily successful exponents of post-war West End farce. His versatility made him one of the most valued sit-com writers of his generation.
It was at the Whitehall in its heyday that Chapman's art achieved its peak because it was not only addressed to the common man but was part of a trend which for the first time in recent stage history brought the common man forward in leading roles to suffer the slings and arrows of farcical fortune.
Key for Two, which Chapman wrote with Dave Freeman, was voted Comedy of the Year at the Society of West End Theatre Awards in 1982. Fresh Fields won an Emmy Award in 1984.
Quotations:
"After forty years of writing farce, it's pleasing to think that probably the two most famous plays throughout the entire world are Hamlet and Charley's Aunt".
Connections
John Chapman was married to Betty Impey. They had four children, Mark, Adam, Justin, and Guy.
Father:
Roy Chapman
Mother:
Barbara Chapman
Wife:
Betty Impey
Betty Impey was born on the 5th of December, 1930 in Marylebone, London, United Kingdom as Betty Eleyn Impey. She is a British actress, known for Reluctant Heroes, Quatermass 2 and The Romantic Age.
Uncle:
Edward Chapman
Edward Chapman was born on the 13th of October, 1901 in Harrogate, Yorkshire (now North Yorkshire), United Kingdom and died on the 9th of August, 1977 in Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom. He was a British actor and writer.
Formerly worked as a bank clerk. Indeed, his perpetually serious, usually bespectacled countenance and often pompous or reproving manner, made for ideal casting as stuffy bank managers, politicians, and apoplectic businessmen, both in straight drama or as a comic foil to the likes of Norman Wisdom. Started out on-screen after being cast by Alfred Hitchcock in three of his early films, beginning with Juno and the Paycock, as well as The Skin Game and A Stitch in Time. Noted for his turn as Major Grigsby in The Man Who Could Work Miracles.
Brother:
Paul Chapman
Paul Chapman was born in 1939, United Kingdom as Paul Roch Chapman. After attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art he graduated in the early 1960s and made his television debut in 1964 in the series, Curtain of Fear. Several regular slots in television shows followed, including as an inmate of Colditz, Sir Harwell Mincing in the children's period drama, Return of the Antelope, the pompous, but cuckolded, father of the bride in A Bit of a Do, and in two episodes of Midsomer Murders. He is best known for playing the hen-pecked brother-in-law in the long-running sitcom, As Time Goes By.
