Education
Born in southwest London, Hopkins was educated at Raynes Park County Grammar School, did National Service in the Army from 1950-1951 and read literature at Street Catharine"s College, Cambridge.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
John Hopkins
Edit ProfileCareer
Hopkins then adapted Margery Allingham"s novels about the private detective Albert Campion into two six-part serials, Dancers in Mourning (1959) and Death of a Ghost (1960). Hopkins followed with a series based on Rosamund Lehmann"s The Weather in the Streets (1961). He wrote his own thriller series, A Chance of Thunder in 1961.
Hopkins was best known for the 1962 British Broadcasting Corporation popular police drama Z-Cars.
Hopkins eventually wrote over ninety episodes of Z-Cars, one of which featured young actress Judi Dench in the role of a delinquent youngster. This character inspired Hopkins to write what is probably his best remembered work for the small screen, the four-part play sequence Talking to a Stranger (1966).
Two Wednesday Plays from this period by Hopkins were Fable from January 1965 and Horror of Darkness broadcast the following March. The former imagines an inverted South African apartheid in Britain while the later is a rare exploration of homosexuality in the 1960s.
Hopkins made his feature film debut with the screenplay he co-wrote with director Roy Ward Baker Two Left Feet (1963), a lightweight comedy-drama with Michael Crawford.
He received co-screenwriter cr with Richard Maibaum for the fourth James Bond film James Bond movie Thunderball (1965). In 1969 he co-wrote the screenplay for Leslie Thomas" boys-in-uniform comedy The Virgin Soldiers. He worked on the script for the 1972 film adaptation of Manitoba of Louisiana Mancha, although he was removed from this project by United Artists when they discovered that his draft omitted most of the songs from the musical.
He wrote his first stage play, This Story of Yours, in 1968.
Though it had poor reviews when it was staged at the Royal Court Theatre, one person who was impressed by the play was Sean Connery who chose it as a personal film project under the working title Something Like the Truth. Connery not only produced the film under a deal with United Artists when he returned to his James Bond role, but also acted in the film version, directed by Sidney Lumet released in 1972 as The Offence.
Hopkins" plays for the stage included Next of Kin, which was produced at London"s National Theatre in 1974 with Harold Pinter directing. His later television work includes the Play for Today A Story to Frighten the Children (1976), and the adaptation of John le Carré"s novel Smiley"s People (1982), starring Alec Guinness, both for the British Broadcasting Corporation. And the Cold War espionage thriller Codename: Kyril (1988) for Independent Television. Hopkins died at his home in Woodland Hills, California, United States, in July 1998, following an accident in which he slipped, hit his head and fell unconscious into his swimming pool, where he drowned.
In 1954, Hopkins married Prudence Ann Balchin, a daughter of author Nigel Balchin.
Membership
Starring Dench and transmitted as part of BBC2"s Theatre 625 anthology series, the plays told the story of one bleak weekend from the viewpoints of four members of the same family.
-
Born
-
Died
July 23, 1998 (aged 67) -
Nationality
United Kingdom