Harwood, Ronald 1934–

(Ronald Horwitz)

PERSONAL: Born Ronald Horwitz, November 9, 1934, in Cape Town, South Africa; son of Isaac and Isobel (Pepper) Horwitz; married Natasha Riehle, March 8, 1959; children: Anthony, Deborah, Alexandra. Education: Attended Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, 1952. Hobbies and other interests: Cricket, tennis.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Judy Daish Associates Lt., 2 St. Charles Pl., London W10 6EG, England; fax: 020-8964-8966.

CAREER: Novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and editor. Professional actor, 1953–60; The Donald Wolfit Shakespeare Company, personal dresser of Sir Donald Wolfit, 1953–58; Arts Council of Great Britain, member of working party on obscenity laws, 1968, member of literature panel, 1972; British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC), Kaleidoscope, radio program, presenter, 1973, Read All about It television series, presenter, 1978–79, and All the World's a Stage, television series, 1984; Cheltenham Festival of Literature, artistic director, 1975; Balliol College, Oxford, England, visitor in theatre, 1986.

MEMBER: International PEN (president, 1993), English PEN (president, 1989–93), Writers' Guild of Great Britain (chair, 1969), Royal Society of Literature (chair, 2001–04), Royal Literary Fund (president, 2005–), Garrick Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Winifred Holtby Prize, Royal Society of Literature, for Articles of Faith; Critic's Award for best play, Evening Standard and Drama Critics Circle, 1980, for The Dresser; Antoinette Perry Award Nomination for best play, 1982, for The Dresser; Academy Award nomination, 1983, for film version of The Dresser; Academy Award for best writing, screenplay based on material previously produced or published, 2003, for The Pianist; Jewish Quarterly Prize for Fiction, 1994; Chevalier National Order of Arts and Letters, France, 1996; Founders Award, Zaki Gordon Institute for Independent Filmmaking, 2003.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

George Washington September, Sir!, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1961 published as All the Same Shadows, J. Cape (London, England), 1961.

The Guilt Merchants, J. Cape (London, England), 1963, Holt (New York, NY), 1969.

The Girl in Melanie Klein, Holt (New York, NY), 1969.

Articles of Faith, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1973, Holt (New York, NY), 1974.

The Genoa Ferry, Mason/Charter, 1977.

Cesar and Augusta (biographical novel), Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1978.

One.Interior.Day: Adventures in the Film Trade (short stories), Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1978.

Home, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1993.

PLAYS

March Hares, produced in Liverpool, England, 1964.

Country Matters, produced in Manchester, England, 1969.

(Author of libretto) The Good Companions (based on the novel by J.B. Priestley), produced in London, England, 1974.

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh), produced in Manchester, England, 1977; produced in London, England, 1979.

A Family (produced in London, England, 1978), Heinemann (London, England), 1978.

The Dresser (produced in London, 1980; produced on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 1981), Amber Lane Press (Oxford, England), 1980.

After the Lions (produced in Manchester, England, 1982), Amber Lane Press (Oxford, England), 1983.

Tramway Road (produced in London, England, 1984), Amber Lane Press (Oxford, England), 1984.

Interpreters, produced at the Queen's Theater in London, England, 1985.

J.J. Farr, produced in Bath, England, 1987.

Ivanov, Amber Lane Press (Oxford, England), 1989.

Another Time (produced in Bath, England, 1989), Amber Lane Press (Oxford, England), 1989.

Reflected Glory (produced at the Darlington in Durham, England, 1992), Faber & Faber (London, England), 1992.

Poison Pen, produced at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, England, 1993.

The Collected Plays of Ronald Harwood, Faber (New York, NY), 1994.

Ronald Harwood Plays: Two (contains Taking Sides, Poison Pen, Tramway Road, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, After the Lions, and The Guests), Faber (New York, NY), 1995.

Taking Sides (produced at the Minerva in Chichester, England, 1995, produced on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 1996), Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY) 1997.

The Handyman (produced in Chichester, England, 1996), Faber & Faber (London, England), 1997.

Quartet, produced at the Albery in London, England, 1999.

Goodbye Kiss, produced at the Orange Tree in London, England, 2000.

Mahler's Conversion (produced at the Aldwych theater in London, England, 2001), Faber & Faber (New York, NY), 2001.

See You Next Tuesday, produced at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, 2002.

SCREENPLAYS

The Barber of Stamford Hill, British Lion Film, 1962.

Private Potter (based on his play of same title), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), 1962.

(With Stanley Mann and Dennis Cannan) A High Wind in Jamaica (based on the novel by Richard Hughes), Twentieth Century-Fox, 1965.

(With Ken Hughes) Drop Dead Darling, Seven Arts, 1966.

Eyewitness (based on the novel by Mark Hebden), Irving Allen Associate British Production, 1970; released as Sudden Terror, National General Pictures, 1971.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' (adaptation of novel), Sphere (London, England), 1971.

Operation Daybreak (based on the novel by Alan Burgess), American Allied, 1975.

(And producer) The Dresser (based on play of the same title), Columbia Pictures, 1983.

The Doctor and the Devils, 20th Century-Fox, 1985.

Tchin-Tchin, Silvio Berlusconi Communications, 1991.

The Browning Version (based on the play by Terrence Rattigan), 1994.

Cry the Beloved Country, Miramax, 1995.

The Pianist (based on the book by Wladyslaw Szpilman; see below), Interscope Communications, 2002.

The Pianist & Taking Sides, Faber and Faber (London, England), 2002.

Taking Sides (based on play of the same title; see above), New Yorker Films, 2003.

The Statement (based on novel by Brian Moore), Sony Pictures Classics, 2003.

Oliver Twist, 2004.

Being Julia (based on W. Somerset Maugham's Theatre), Sony Pictures Classics, 2004.

Also author of screenplays The Long Lease of Summer and A Fine Romance.

TELEVISION PLAYS

(With Casper Wrede) Private Potter, ITA, 1961.

Take a Fellow like Me, ITA, 1961.

The Lads, 1963.

Convalescence, 1964.

Guests of Honor, 1965.

The Paris Trip, 1966.

The New Assistant, ATV, 1967.

The Guests, ATV, 1972.

(With John Selwyn) A Sense of Loss (documentary), BBC, 1978.

Evita Peron, National Broadcasting Corp. (NBC), 1981.

Mandela, 1987.

OTHER

Sir Donald Wolfit, C.B.E.: His Life and Work in the Unfashionable Theatre (biography), St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1971.

(Editor, with Francis King) New Stories 3: An Arts Council Anthology, Hutchinson (London, England), 1978.

(Editor) A Night at the Theatre, Methuen (London, England), 1982.

(Editor) The Ages of Gielgud: An Actor at Eighty (collection of essays), Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 1984.

All the World's a Stage (theatrical history), Secker & Warburg, 1984.

Mandela (biography), Boxtree Limited (London, England), 1987.

Editor of Dear Alec: Guinness at 75, 1991.

Also author of adaptations of Roald Dahl's short stories for the television series Tales of the Unexpected.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Screenplay adaptations of Mark Twain Remembers, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Love in the Time of Cholera.

SIDELIGHTS: South African author Ronald Harwood has written novels, plays, screenplays, and nonfiction works in a career spanning over forty years. Although he has worked in a variety of genres, Harwood often addresses themes of racism and political repression. His work also draws upon his own experiences as a South African, a writer, and a former actor. Among Harwood's most successful works are the novel Articles of Faith, concerned with South Africa's laws against racial intermarriage, and One.Interior.Day: Adventures in the Film Trade, a collection of semi-autobiographical stories. He may be best known for the play and screenplay versions of The Dresser, the story of an aged British actor performing during the Second World War, the screenplay adaptation of Cry the Beloved Country, an exploration of racism in the lives of two South African families, and the screenplay adaptation of World War II drama The Pianist.

In an interview with Albert-Reiner Glaap, posted on the Web site of his German publisher Hartmann und Stauffacher Verlag, Harwood addressed his prolific output in a variety of genres. "My energy is too much for me," Harwood explained. "I can't contain it." The author added: "I hoped as I got older I'd get calmer, but I can't stop writing. I'm an obsessive writer and you know, if you write a play and that finishes, you have to find something else, or something compels you to find something else; it may be a novel, it may be a non-fiction."

Harwood began his career as a novelist. Inspired by events in his native South Africa, Harwood's 1961 novel George Washington September, Sir! (published in England as All the Same Shadows) concerns the exploitation of George, a black houseboy, by whites. Harwood returns to a South African setting for his 1973 novel Articles of Faith, an historical narrative that chronicles nearly 200 years of racial prejudice in South Africa. A twentieth-century descendant of eighteenth-century colonists has been arrested for the crime of miscegenation. While researching family documents and Cape Town history, he determines that white settlers have been mixing with the black natives for generations and that the nation's apartheid laws against such intermingling are hypocritical and futile.

In his New Statesman review of Articles of Faith, Peter Prince noted that it is natural for South African authors to want to comment on the racial divisions in their country, but he cautions: "There is a danger here, however, as in any literary tradition … where authors feel duty-bound to reflect their society's overwhelming interest in a particular political or cultural concern." Prince added: "It's only too easy for a writer to slacken in his attention to such mundane matters as strong and individual characterization, intelligent plotting, credible dialogue, and all the other nuts and bolts that help distinguish a novel from a political polemic. Happily, Articles of Faith almost never drifts into that trap." In 1974 Articles of Faith won the Winifred Holtby Prize.

South Africa provided Harwood with some of the background for his collection of interlinked satirical short stories about the film industry, One.Interior.Day. Edward Lands, the hero of the story series and perhaps a surrogate for the author, begins as a theatre-loving lad in Cape Town and grew up, like Harwood, to be a respected writer. Lands travels the globe working on television and film projects while nursing along serious plays and novels at home. John Bowen, writing for the Times Literary Supplement, found the autobiographical element to be troublesome at times. "That is the book's strength, and also its weakness," Bowen wrote. Contemporary Review contributor Rosalind Wade commented that Harwood's experiences provided an interesting background for the stories. "This does not inhibit progress as severely as might have been anticipated," Wade wrote. "The strange no-man's land between reportage and creativity produces a curiously tantalising world of semi-make believe." Writing in the Spectator, Mary Hope noted that in One.Interior.Day, Harwood's "touch is absolutely assured and true." Hope added: "This is the real thing."

Harwood's unflagging interest in the politics of his homeland eventually led him to write the screenplay for a new adaptation of Alan Paton's 1948 novel Cry the Beloved Country, an exploration of racism through the experiences of two fathers—one, Rev. Stephen Kumalo, a black Zulu pastor; the other, James Jarvis, a wealthy white landowner. Kumalo arrives in Johannesburg in search of his family—a sister, brother, and son who have all been lured away from the rural provinces to the big city. He finds his sister, Gertrude, has become a prostitute, his brother, John, has turned his back on religion and taken up the cause of black rights, and his son, Absalom, has become a petty criminal. Worse, Absalom stands accused of murdering Jarvis' son, who is ironically an anti-apartheid liberal.

While the repressive political system that prompted Paton to write the original novel has since been dismantled, many critics felt the new film version (a previous film was made starring Sidney Poitier in 1951) was still effective and, in fact, significant. Writing in the Christian Century, James Wall suggested that "this picture goes beyond documentation of a period. It portrays a man of deep religious faith whose encounter with personal pain leads him not to fight for social change—for he does not see that as his task—but to trust more deeply in the God who sustains the believer in times of intense suffering." Tom Green, reviewing the film in USA Today, found Cry the Beloved Country to be "especially heart-rending thanks to superb performances by James Earl Jones and Richard Harris. Each man endures tragic pain, but is changed for the better. And their story is told with little preachiness."

Harwood left South Africa for England in 1951 to become an actor. He spent five years touring the small villages and larger cities of Britain with Donald Wolfit's theatrical company. His career as an actor led in 1971 to Harwood writing the biography Sir Donald Wolfit, C.B.E.: His Life and Work in the Unfashionable Theatre, chronicling the life of his theatrical mentor. The book was an unflinching examination of one of England's great knighted actor-managers, as well as a fascinating account of the life of touring actors. In one passage Harwood describes the poor reputation of Wolfit's company: "And so the Donald Wolfit Shakespeare Company came into being. Its principal player would be the recipient of high praise; the company would become the butt of West End wags, of second-rate revues and third-rate comedians; actors, good or bad, would heap the company with scorn; even drama students would smirk in a superior way at the thought of them."

Along with the painful candor, however, critics found a good deal of humor and humanity in Harwood's depiction of the great Wolfit. Charles Lewsen noted in the Listener that "Mr. Harwood lovingly, and with complete honesty, captures the magnificence, the absurdity, the generosity, the meanness, the pomposity, the paranoia and the dedication of Wolfit." A reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement reported that "Harwood, though he writes with personal affection, does not spare [Wolfit's] failings. His comment is candid, generous and shrewd." The reviewer added: "The result is a lively and satisfying portrait of an actor who challenged greatness, and more than occasionally achieved it."

Wolfit's theatrical career is fictionalized in Harwood's play The Dresser, the story of the complex relation-ship between Sir, the aging actor-manager of a touring theatre company, and Norman, his longtime dresser. The action takes place in wartime Britain; bombs fall outside the provincial theatres where Sir's company performs King Lear, Othello, and Richard III. The battle raging outside, however, pales compared to the battles being waged backstage. Sir is on the brink of madness, like so many of the characters he portrays, and he has begun to blur the distinction between Shakespeare's chaotic universe and the chaos of his own Britain. The situation is even more desperate for Norman, who sometimes seems to live vicariously through the performers he supports. For him the show must go on. He prods his crazed, violent master ceaselessly, even when Sir cannot remember from moment to moment what play he is performing that evening. Harwood's Academy Award-nominated film adaptation of The Dresser made the part of Sir larger than it had been in the stage version. In the play, "Sir's performances were observed and discussed by the other characters but never seen by the audience," Richard Schickel explained in Time. In Harwood's film script, however, the audience is allowed to see Sir perform King Lear. "This redeems Sir," Schickel believed, "from the bombastic egocentricity of his dressing-room self, placing a humanizing glaze on his hamminess." "In many ways," wrote David Anson in Newsweek, "The Dresser works better on film than it did on Broadway." Stanley Kauffmann, in his review of the film for New Republic, called The Dresser "a theatrical tour de force about the theater with more tour than force." Kauffmann found that "a star's sufferings move me just about as much as a President's complaints about overwork after years of campaigning to get the job." In New York magazine, David Denby praised the script: "Grandiloquent and funny, The Dresser, for all its decrepitude, is Churchillian in spirit—a rousing testament to tattered old England." Denby noted that "The Dresser is noisy, overwrought, and thunderingly obvious, but everything in it is fully felt. It's one of the few emotionally satisfying entertainments of the year."

Harwood's play Another Time tells the story of an invalid father, his teenage son who is a piano prodigy, and his grandson. "The bittersweet play … concerns family ghosts and the emotional inheritance from one generation to another," wrote Jonathan Abarbanel in Back Stage. Abarbanel went on to note: "A fine vehicle and a good evening out for the playgoer."

In the play Taking Sides, the author builds his story around the Wilhelm Furtwäneler, a famous German conductor who associated with the Nazis instead of fleeing Germany when Hitler came into power. As a result, the conductor faces interrogation after the war about the questionable relationship. "Using these facts as his premise, Harwood has worked an ethical debate into dramatic form," wrote Celia Wren in Commonweal. Polly Warfield, writing in Back Stage West, called the play "a microcosm of the global conflict and of an eternal human dilemma." Michael Rechtshaffen, writing a review of the author's film adaptation of his play in the Hollywood Reporter, noted that "as intellectual exercises go, 'Sides' provides ample food for thought."

Harwood has also received widespread recognition for his screenwriting abilities. He won an Academy Award for his screen adaptation of The Pianist based on the memoir by Wladyslaw Szpilman. The story focuses on Szpilman's terrifying and nearly fatal experiences as a Jew during the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland. Writing in Variety, Todd McCarthy called the film "a solid, respectable work." Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, commented that the film is "an understatement" and noted that it "refuses to turn Szpilman's survival into a triumph and records it primarily as the story of a witness who was there, saw, and remembers."

Harwood adapted a Brian Moore novel into the film The Statement, which is based loosely on the real-life story of a Nazi collaborator. Following the war, the collaborator Brossard goes into virtual hiding, living in a small abbey after a new law passed fifty years after the war's end makes him eligible for prosecution once again. The story focuses on Brossard as he is hunted by a Paris magistrate and a military colonel. Writing about the main character of Brossard, Variety contributor Scott Foundas noted that the viewers are "left wanting to know much more about this man who can seem by turns childlike in his panic, menacing in his indignation and, oddly, passionately repentant for sins he does not … [fully] believe he has even committed."

Harwood adapted the Somerset Maugham novel Theatre for the film Being Julia. The story focuses on London stage actor Julia Lambert, who is in her mid forties and fears that her star is on the decline. To bolster her self-image, she embarks on an affair with a younger man the same age as her son. Writing in Take One, Maurie Alioff noted that the movie "fits into the long tradition of backstage pictures."

Speaking to Albert-Ranier Glaap on the Hartman und Stauffacher Verlag Web site, Harwood described the process behind his prolific writing schedule. "I never go back," he explained. "I never look at a play or book I've done before. I've no interest in what I've done before. I only want to know what I'm going to do tomorrow or maybe this afternoon." Harwood added: "There are a lot of things unfinished up there, a lot of things that I think could be wonderful."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 32, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 13: British Dramatists since World War II, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1982.

Harwood, Ronald, Sir Donald Wolfit, C.B.E.: His Life and Work in the Unfashionable Theatre, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1971.

PERIODICALS

Back Stage, May 31, 1991, Jonathan Abarbanel, review of Another Time, p. 13.

Back Stage West, July 27, 2000, Polly Warfield, review of Taking Sides, p. 17.

Booklist, June 15, 1969, review of The Girl in Melanie Klein, p. 1164; April 15, 1974, review of Articles of Faith, p. 907.

Books and Bookmen, January, 1974, review of Articles of Faith, p. 94; August, 1978, review of Cesar and Augusta, pp. 40-41.

Book World, May 25, 1969, review of The Girl in Melanie Klein, p. 16.

British Book News, May, 1984, review of All the World's a Stage, p. 301; July, 1984, review of The Ages of Gielgud: An Actor at Eighty, p. 423.

Chicago Sun-Times, January 3, 2003, Robert Ebert, review of The Pianist.

Christian Century, January 3-10, 1996, James Wall, review of Cry the Beloved Country, p. 3.

Christian Science Monitor, May 29, 1974, Terrance Edwards, review of Articles of Faith, p. F5.

Commonweal, January 17, 1997, Celia Wren, review of Taking Sides, p. 14.

Contemporary Review, July, 1978, Rosalind Wade, review of One.Interior.Day: Adventures in the Film Trade, p. 45.

Daily Variety, July 15, 2002, review of Quartet, p. 5; March 24, 2003, David McNary, "Golden Guy High on 'Chi': Big Night for 'Pianist' and Polanski," p. 1; June 18, 2003, Michael Fleming, "Harwood on 'Twain' Train," p. 1.

Guardian (London, England), July 25, 2003, review of The Pianist.

Hollywood Reporter, September 18, 2001, Michael Rechtshaffen, review of Taking Sides, p. 15; February 11, 2003, "Institute to Honor Soderbergh, Harwood," p. 8.

Listener, December 9, 1971, Charles Lewsen, review of Sir Donald Wolfit, C.B.E.: His Life and Work in the Unfashionable Theatre, pp. 814-816; March 30, 1978, review of One.Interior.Day, p. 419.

Modern Drama, spring, 2000, Victoria Stewart, review of Taking Sides and The Handyman, p. 1.

Nation, June 2, 1969, review of The Girl in Melanie Klein, p. 708.

New Republic, December 12, 1983, Stanley Kauffmann, review of The Dresser, pp. 26-27.

New Statesman, November 5, 1971, review of Sir Donald Wolfit, p. 624; November 16, 1973, Peter Prince, review of Articles of Faith, p. 744.

Newsweek, July 21, 1980, Walter Clemons, review of Cesar and Augusta, pp. 72-76; December 5, 1983, David Anson, review of The Dresser, p. 125.

New York, December 12, 1983, David Denby, review of The Dresser, pp. 88-90.

New Yorker, January 13, 2003, David Denby, review of The Pianist, p. 90.

New York Times, November 10, 1981, p. C7; December 9, 1983, p. C10.

New York Times Book Review, November 20, 1977, p. 36; October 14, 1984, Paul Gardner, review of The Ages of Gielgud, p. 26.

Publishers Weekly, January 13, 1969, review of The Girl in Melanie Klein, p. 85; July 14, 1969, review of The Guilt Merchants, p. 164; August 29, 1994, review of Home, p. 62.

Punch, June 27, 1984, review of The Ages of Gielgud, p. 62.

Saturday Review, April 26, 1969, review of The Girl in Melanie Klein, p. 58.

Spectator, April 18, 1969, review of The Girl in Melanie Klein, pp. 514-515; April 1, 1978, Mary Hope, review of One.Interior.Day, p. 26.

Take One, September-December, 2004, Maurie Alioff, review of Bing Julia, p. 10.

Time, December 12, 1983, Richard Schickel, review of The Dresser, p. 106.

Times Educational Supplement, August 10, 1984, review of The Ages of Gielgud, p. 18.

Times Literary Supplement, April 24, 1969, review of The Girl in Melanie Klein, p. 448; October 15, 1971, review of Sir Donald Wolfit, p. 1253; November 16, 1973, review of Articles of Faith, p. 1407; April 7, 1978, John Bowen, review of One.Interior.Day, p. 369; May 5, 1978, review of Cesar and Augusta, p. 493.

USA Today, December 15, 1995, Tom Green, review of Cry the Beloved Country.

Variety, June 3, 2002, Todd McCarthy, review of The Pianist, p. 20; July 29, 2002, Markland Taylor, review of Quartet, p. 30; November 17, 2003, Scott Foundas, review of The Statement, p. 37.

ONLINE

DVD Review, http://www.dvdreview.net/ (September 6, 2003), "An Interview with Ronald Harwood."

Filmcritic.com, http://www.filmcritic.com/ (September 6, 2003), review of The Pianist.

Hartman und Stauffacher Verlag Web site, http://www.on-gmbh.de/hsverlag/Harwoodinterviews.html (August 26, 1994), Albert-Reiner Glaap, interview with author.

Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ (December 15, 2003), information on author's work.