Diana Morgan

Diana Morgan was a Welsh playwright and screenwriter, mostly associated with her work for Ealing Studios. She was married to fellow screenwriter Robert MacDermot. She studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She began her career in show business as an actress and chorus girl and was on stage in 1931. After meeting Robert MacDermot, who would become Head of BBC TV Drama in 1948, they began writing as a partnership. Their early work was for the London stage and included a full revue in 1938 at the London Hippodrome, BLACK AND BLUE, starring Frances Day, Vic Oliver, and Max Wall. Impressed with their witty and satirical scripts, Morgan and MacDermot were later hired by stage director Norman Marshall to write a stage show for Hermione Gingold. Although slow to begin, the show was a great success, selling out its eight-week run. Morgan and MacDermot would go on to write the stage shows, LETS FACE IT! (1939) and SWINGING IN THE GATE (1940), as well as many revues for the West End and the outlying club theatres. In the 1940s Morgan wrote several plays, including A HOUSE IN THE SQUARE (1940) and RAIN BEFORE SEVEN (1949). During the decade Morgan made significant script contributions to several Ealing screenplays, for which she is now best known. A contract writer, her film work included “Went the Day Well?” (1942) and additional dialogue for “A Run for Your Money” (1949). In 1960 she scripted Philip Leacock's film “Hand in Hand” about a Roman Catholic child and his Jewish friend, for which she won several international awards. Her television work included “Emergency - Ward 10” and its spin-off, “Call Oxbridge 2000”; she also made contributions to radio and wrote two novels.