Alun Owen (24 November 1925 – 6 December 1994) was a British screenwriter, predominantly active in television, but best remembered by a wider audience for writing the screenplay of The Beatles' debut feature film A Hard Day's Night (1964).Owen was born in Menai Bridge, Wales, but grew up in the English city of Liverpool, where his family moved when he was eight years old. After a short career with the Merchant Navy, for two years Owen worked down a coal mine as a 'Bevin Boy', before moving into repertory theatre as an assistant stage manager. From there he moved into acting, first with the Birmingham Repertory Company and then various other companies, appearing in small roles in films and to a greater degree in the newer medium of television during the 1950s.By the late 1950s, however, Owen was beginning to realise that his real ambitions lay in writing rather than performing, and he began to submit scripts to BBC Radio. His first full-length play, Progress to the Park, was produced by the Theatre Royal, Stratford East following its radio debut, and later in the West End. A second play, titled The Rough and Ready Lot, was adapted for television by the BBC in September 1959.His next play was his first to be written directly for television. Titled No Trams to Lime Street (1959), the Liverpool-set piece was presented in ABC Television's Armchair Theatre anthology strand, for which Owen continued to write plays into the 1960s. He also made his feature film scriptwriting debut in 1960, penning The Criminal from a storyline originally by Jimmy Sangster.In 1964, when director Richard Lester was hired to direct The Beatles' first film, he remembered Owen from their previous work together on Lester's ITV television programme The Dick Lester Show in 1955. The Beatles were also keen on Owen, having been impressed with his depiction of Liverpool in No Trams to Lime Street, and Owen spent some time associating with the four band members to gain an ear for their characters and manners of speech. His resulting script for A Hard Day's Night earned him a nomination for the 1965 Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay. In the same year, Owen contributed the libretto for a West End musical, composer Lionel Bart's Maggie May. The show ran for a respectable 501 performances at London's Adelphi Theatre.Television continued to be his main medium, however, and he concentrated on single plays in anthology series such as BBC2's Theatre 625. An episode of ITV's Saturday Night Theatre, three linked plays under the title "The Male of the Species" (1969) featured Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Paul Scofield, and Laurence Olivier as the narrator. His 1974 play Lucky was a rare television representation of Britain's new multicultural reality and described a young black man's (Paul Barber), search for identity. He carried on writing for television through the 1970s and 80s, with his final produced work being an adaptation of R. F. Delderfield's novel Come Ho
Related to Scot Williams who portrayed Pete Best in both Backbeat & In His Life: The John Lennon Story. Only after starring as Pete Best in the Beatles Biog movie Backbeat, did Scot discover that he was related to Alun Owen, the 1965 Oscar- Nominated writer of A Hard Day's Night. They were able to contact one another for the first time just weeks before Alun's death in 1994.
Writer
Title
Year
Status
Character
Come Home Charlie and Face Them
1990
TV Mini-Series writer - 3 episodes
The Play on One
1989
TV Series screenplay - 1 episode
Kisch Kisch
1983
TV Movie
Lovers of the Lake
1983
TV Movie adapted for television by
Do You Remember?
1978
TV Series 1 episode
The Look
1978
TV Movie writer
Forget Me Not
1976
TV Series script - 6 episodes
ITV Sunday Night Drama
1972-1976
TV Series writer - 2 episodes
ITV Playhouse
1971-1974
TV Series writer - 3 episodes
Once Upon a Time
1973
TV Series writer - 1 episode
ITV Saturday Night Theatre
TV Series writer - 6 episodes, 1969 - 1972 script - 1 episode, 1971
Joy
1972
TV Movie
Joan
1972
TV Movie play
Play for Today
1971
TV Series writer - 1 episode
The Ten Commandments
1971
TV Series screenplay - 1 episode
Vinderen
1970
TV Short play
The Wednesday Play
TV Series play - 1 episode, 1970 writer - 1 episode, 1968
Plays of Today
1969
TV Series writer - 2 episodes
Hark at Barker
1969
TV Series creator
Male of the Species
1969
TV Movie
The Company of Five
1968
TV Series writer - 1 episode
For Amusement Only
1968
TV Series writer - 1 episode
Half Hour Story
1967-1968
TV Series writer - 4 episodes
The Ronnie Barker Playhouse
TV Series writer - 2 episodes, 1968 script - 1 episode, 1968
Geen tram meer naar het Zuidstation
1967
TV Movie
Thirty-Minute Theatre
1966-1967
TV Series writer - 2 episodes
Theatre 625
1965-1967
TV Series writer - 6 episodes
BBC Play of the Month
1966
TV Series 1 episode
A Local Boy
1964
TV Movie
A Hard Day's Night
1964
original screenplay
Playdate
TV Series 2 episodes, 1962 - 1964 writer - 1 episode, 1963
First Night
1963
TV Series writer - 2 episodes
Corrigan Blake
1962-1963
TV Series writer - 7 episodes
Ruusutili
1963
TV Movie play "The Rose Affair"
The Stag
1963
TV Movie
You Can't Win 'Em All
1962
TV Movie
Armchair Theatre
TV Series writer - 4 episodes, 1960 - 1962 written by - 1 episode, 1960 play - 1 episode, 1959