David Butler (screenwriter)
David Dalrymple Butler ( born November 12, 1927 in Larkhall, South Lanarkshire, † 27 May, 2006 London ) was a British screenwriter and theater actor.
Life
David Butler, whose parents were teachers by profession, attended from the age of 18, the University of St Andrews, where he studied drama and theater studies. First, he wanted to be an actor, and then received the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art First experience in his field, he gathered in London's theater district of West End. However, a career as an actor in the film remained Butler always denied.
Shortly after the wedding to actress Norma Ronald, in 1959, Butler began writing screenplays. At the beginning there were still British, International hardly successful television series, including 1972, partly filmed in Austria miniseries The Strauss Family, but even in the same year he wrote the first of a total of 14 screenplays for successful television series Black Beauty. In 1974 he received the prestigious Bach Prize of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London.
In 1976, he wrote in collaboration with the American Steve Shagan the book Voyage of the Damned, the thematically deals with the persecution of Jews in the time of National Socialism. It was his most successful work, as it was in 1977 nominated for both the Golden Globe Award but also for an Oscar.
Butler has rapidly become an author of historical miniseries. After he had contributed in 1977 additional dialogs to Franco Zeffirelli film version of the Bible, Jesus of Nazareth in the year, he wrote a year later with Disraeli: Portrait of a Romantic the screenplay to the film biography of Benjamin Disraeli. In 1982, he also wrote the screenplay for the successful miniseries Marco Polo.
After the divorce of Norma Ronald, in 1966, married in 1969 Mary McPhail Butler, with whom he had two daughters. The marriage lasted up to Butler's death.
1992, after he had written the script of the French adventure film Blood and Dust to Butler withdrew into private life.
He died in May 2006, at the age of 78 years, in London.