John Hastings Turner

Turner married the Scottish silent film actress, Laura Cowie, on 20 June 1918. They later settled in Blue Tiles Farm near Fakenham, Norfolk.[1]

During the First World War Turner wrote three plays: Nothing New, Peace Time Prophecies or Stories Gone Wrong and Tails Up.[2] An early published novel of his from 1919, Simple Souls,[3] was made into a movie in 1920 with a scenario by Fred Myton, directed by the American Robert Thornby.[4] In 1926, Turner's play The Scarlet Lady,[5] a comedy, opened at the Criterion Theatre in London, starring Marie Tempest, a friend and the driving force behind the establishment of the actors' union Equity. Supporting Tempest was an ingénue, Fabia Drake, who became Tempest's firm confidante and then Turner's sister-in-law through marriage to his barrister brother, Maxwell Turner.[6] His comedy, The Spot on the Sun, played in Australia in 1931.[7]

Thereafter, in addition to his solo work, Turner collaborated with other writers, notably Roland Pertwee, with whom he wrote plays, scenarios or dialogues for a number of productions in the early 1930s, including a series of movies directed by John Daumery and William C. McGann, and Irving Asher's now-lost 1935 U.K. production Murder at Monte Carlo directed by Michael Barringer and starring Errol Flynn in his first major role.[8][9] Turner's work was performed by other leading actors including Margot Grahame (A Letter of Warning, 1932[10]), Nora Swinburne (A Voice Said Goodnight, 1932,[11][12] Cedric Hardwicke, Boris Karloff and Ralph Richardson (The Ghoul, 1933[13]), and Jane Baxter (The Night of the Party, 1935, directed by Michael Powell.[14]

From the late 1930s, Turner did some writing - and Cowie occasional acting - for productions by The Rank Organisation, which had bought film studios like Gaumont-British that Turner had previously worked for.[1]

Turner died at home in Norfolk in 1956, at the age of 63.[1]