Editing Emlyn Williams (section)

==Professional career==
Aged 22, Williams performed with OUDS in his first full-length play, ''Full Moon'', at the original [[Oxford Playhouse]] in 1927. Later that year he joined a London-based repertory company and began his stage career. By age 25 (1930), he had expanded his writing with works such as ''[[A Murder Has Been Arranged]]'' and ''[[The Late Christopher Bean]]''. The same year he appeared in [[Edgar Wallace]]'s hit thriller ''[[On the Spot (play)|On the Spot]]'' in the West End.

Over the next few years, Williams took on roles on stage and on film, including the first film celluloid version of the Edgar Wallace mystery, ''[[The Frightened Lady (1932 film)|The Frightened Lady]]''. At age 30, he became an overnight star, however, with his thriller ''[[Night Must Fall]]'' (1935), in which he also played the lead role of a psychopathic murderer. The play was noted for its exploration of the killer's complex psychological state, a step forward for its genre.

His other highly successful play was very different: ''[[The Corn Is Green]]'', written in 1938 at age 33), was partly based on his own childhood in Wales. He starred as a Welsh schoolboy in the play's London premiere. The play came to Broadway in 1940 with [[Ethel Barrymore]] as the schoolteacher Miss Moffat. A 1950 Broadway revival starred Eva La Gallienne. The play was turned into a very successful film starring [[Bette Davis]], and again into a made-for-television film starring [[Katharine Hepburn]], under the direction of Williams's close friend [[George Cukor]]. An attempt to turn the play into a musical in the 1970s, with Davis again in the role of the schoolteacher with lyrics by Williams, failed. So did a Broadway revival in 1983 starring [[Cicely Tyson]] and [[Peter Gallagher]]. But a 1985 London revival at the [[Old Vic]] with [[Deborah Kerr]] was successful, as was a 2007 production at the [[Williamstown Theatre Festival]] in [[Massachusetts]]. That production starred [[Kate Burton (actress)|Kate Burton]]. Williams was a close friend of Kate's parents, [[Richard Burton]] and Burton's first wife, Sybil. In the [[Williamstown, Massachusetts|Williamstown]] production, the schoolboy – the role created by and modeled on Williams himself – was played by Kate Burton's son, Morgan Ritchie.<ref>Isherwood, Charles. [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/theater/reviews/07corn.html?_r=0 "Rescuing a Student From a Life in the Mines"], ''The New York Times'', 7 August 2007.</ref> ''The Corn is Green'' was revived at the [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]] in London in 2022 with [[Nicola Walker]] playing Miss Moffat.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Corn is Green |url=https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/the-corn-is-green |website=National Theatre - What's On|date=11 February 2020 }}</ref> Emlyn Williams included this story in his early autobiography ''George'' covering the years 1905-1927 and published in 1961.<ref>{{cite web |title=George: An Early Autobiography |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3961850-george |website=Goodreads }}</ref> A sequel, ''Emlyn'', covering the years 1927–1935, was published in 1973.

Emlyn Williams's autobiographical light comedy, ''The Druid's Rest'', was first performed at the [[St Martin's Theatre]], [[London]], in 1944. It saw the stage debut of [[Richard Burton]] whom Williams had spotted at an audition in [[Cardiff]]. The play has been revived at [[Clwyd Theatr Cymru]] in both 1976 and 2005, and received its first [[London]] revival in sixty years at London's [[Finborough Theatre]] in 2009.<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.theatermania.com/london-theater/news/08-2009/emlyn-williams-the-druids-rest-revived-at-finborou_20747.html | title=Emlyn Williams' the Druid's Rest Revived at Finborough Theatre &#124; TheaterMania}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.londonwelsh.org/word_docs/pressthedruidsrest.doc | title=The Druid's Rest}}{{dead link|date=February 2024|bot=medic}}</ref>

In addition to stage plays, Emlyn Williams wrote a number of film screenplays, working with [[Alfred Hitchcock]] (on ''The Man Who Knew Too Much''), [[Carol Reed]] and other directors. He acted in and contributed dialogue to various films based on the novels of [[A. J. Cronin]], including ''[[The Citadel (1938 film)|The Citadel]]'' (1938), ''[[The Stars Look Down (film)|The Stars Look Down]]'' (1939), ''[[Hatter's Castle (film)|Hatter's Castle]]'' (1942) and ''[[Web of Evidence]]'' (1959).{{citation needed|date=July 2017}} He played the mad Roman emperor [[Caligula]] in an uncompleted 1937 film version of Robert Graves's novel ''[[I, Claudius]]'' (with Charles Laughton);<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000271/19651218/076/0004|title=The epic that never was|last=Barker|first=Felix|date=18 December 1965|work=[[Liverpool Echo]]|access-date=26 January 2019|issue=26755|page=4|url-access=subscription |via=[[British Newspaper Archive]]}}</ref> a kindly veterinarian who accidentally causes the death of a murderess (played by [[Bette Davis]]) in the 1952 suspense drama ''[[Another Man's Poison]]''; and the fool Wamba in the 1952 ''Ivanhoe'' (with [[Robert Taylor (American actor)|Robert Taylor]] and [[Elizabeth Taylor]]).{{citation needed|date=July 2017}}

Other screen credits include Hitchcock's adaptation of [[Daphne du Maurier]]'s ''[[Jamaica Inn (novel)|Jamaica Inn]]'' (with [[Charles Laughton]]), Gabriel Pascal's film version of [[George Bernard Shaw]]'s ''[[Major Barbara (film)|Major Barbara]]'' (with [[Wendy Hiller]] and [[Rex Harrison]]), [[José Ferrer]]'s ''I Accuse!'' (playing Émile Zola), ''The Wreck of the Mary Deare'' (with Gary Cooper), ''[[The L-Shaped Room]]'' (with [[Leslie Caron]]), and a made-for-TV adaptation of [[Charles Dickens]]'s ''David Copperfield'' (with an all-star cast including [[Laurence Olivier]], [[Michael Redgrave]], [[Ralph Richardson]] and [[Edith Evans]]). In 1941 Williams starred in the film ''You Will Remember'', directed by Jack Raymond and written by [[Sewell Stokes]] and Lydia Hayward. The film is based on the life of the popular late Victorian songwriter [[Leslie Stuart]], played here by [[Robert Morley]], with Williams as Stuart's best friend. Also in 1941, he had a principal supporting part (as Snobby Price) in [[Gabriel Pascal]]'s filming of [[George Bernard Shaw]]'s ''[[Major Barbara]]''.{{citation needed|date=July 2017}}

Williams's only film as a director, ''[[The Last Days of Dolwyn]]'' (1949), which he also wrote and starred in, marked the screen debut of his fellow Welshman, Richard Burton. Williams often appeared in his own plays, and was famous for his one-man shows, with which he toured the world, playing [[Charles Dickens]] in an evening of excerpts from [[Charles Dickens#Novels|Dickens's novels]]. This "one man show" was the start of a whole new theatrical genre. He followed up his Dickens performance with one man shows based on the works of [[Dylan Thomas]], ''Dylan Thomas Growing Up'', and H. H. Munro better known under his pseudonym [[Saki]]. His post-war acting credits included ''[[The Winslow Boy]]'' by [[Terence Rattigan]] and ''[[The Deputy]]'' aka ''The Representative'' by [[Rolf Hochhuth]] on Broadway. He also was the "voice" of [[Lloyd George]] in the seminal [[BBC]] documentary ''[[The Great War (documentary)|The Great War]]'' (1964).{{citation needed|date=July 2017}}

Among Williams's other books was the best seller ''[[Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and its Detection]]'' (1968), a semi-fictionalised account of the [[Moors murders|Moors murderers]], [[Ian Brady]] and [[Myra Hindley]]. His 1980 novel ''[[Headlong (Williams novel)|Headlong]]'', the fictional story of the unexpected death of the entire British royal family in a freak accident in 1930, and the ascent of a most unlikely heir to the British throne as a result, was the loose basis of the 1991 motion picture ''[[King Ralph]]''.<ref>{{Citation|last=Ward|first=David S.|title=King Ralph|date=1991-02-15|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102216/|others=John Goodman, Peter O'Toole, John Hurt|access-date=2017-11-13}}</ref>

On Monday 17 February 1975, Williams was [[Roy Plomley]]'s guest on ''[[Desert Island Discs]]'' on [[BBC Radio 4]]. The author's book choice was a dictionary with a typewriter, pen and paper combined as his luxury.<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009n6xj | title=BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Emlyn Williams}}</ref>