Willis Hall Biography

British dramatist, born and educated in Leeds; he made his name with The Long and the Short and the Tall (1958), a realistic play about a group of soldiers in the Malayan jungle during the Second World War. That was followed by other works for the theatre, film, and television. Several of these have been written in collaboration with Keith Waterhouse, among them the screenplays of Whistle down the Wind (1961) and A Kind of Loving (1961); stage and screen versions of Waterhouse's novel Billy Liar (1960), the story of a Yorkshire Walter Mitty unable to escape a dull family, job, and environment except through fantasy; The Card (1973), a musical version of Arnold Bennett's novel of the same name; Lost Empires (1985; with Keith Waterhouse andnd music by Denis King), a play based on J. B. Priestley's study of repertory theatres; and adaptations of plays by Eduardo de Filippo, Saturday, Sunday, Monday (1973) and Filumena (1977).