Charlotte Hastings

Born in 1909, Charlotte Hastings described herself as having written plays at the time when it was necessary to have a beginning, a middle and an end; an end that had to resolve itself into a conclusion. Bonaventure was not her first play but it was her first West End success (in 1949), followed later by Uncertain Joy, The Captives, and her only full-length comedy Dolphins Rampant. Bonaventure was made into a major Hollywood film, entitled Thunder on the Hill, directed by Douglas Sirk, which starred Claudette Colbert and Gladys Cooper. The Enquiry, an all-female play set in a women’s prison, was written in 1973. This was later broadcast as a Saturday Night Theatre Production with Dame Flora Robson in the lead. Dame Flora was to feature in several of Charlotte Hastings’ plays for radio, including Bonaventure, when she played the part of Sister Bonaventure. Mrs Hastings did some television work in the early days of the media, and several film scripts, but always preferred to work in, or for, the live theatre. For many years Mrs Hastings lived in a fifteenth century cottage in Suffolk, set in the middle of cornfields, and which had been bought with the proceeds of the West End run and sale of film rights for Bonaventure. Later, ill-health forced her to retire to a nursing home. She died in 2003.