Norman Hudis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Norman Hudis (born 1923 in Stepney, England) is a writer for film and TV, he started his writing career on a local newspaper, the Hampstead & Highgate Express. When World War II broke out he joined the RAF and served in the Middle East writing for Air Force News. Like a lot of other post-war writers his first foray into entertainment was writing for camp concerts.
After the war Hudis decided to become a playwright, unfortunately only one of his plays "Here Is The News" met with critical success. This small success was enough to get him noticed by Pinewood Studios, who offered him a job as trainee screenwriter. During the two years he spent there he failed to get any of his screenplays into production.
Hudis left Pinewood and became a freelance writer, he was soon to become a prolific screenwriter of B movies during the 1950s, he was the writer for the biopic The Tommy Steele Story. Peter Rogers met Hudis in 1957 and offered him the job of writing another screenplay for Tommy Steele (The Duke Wore Jeans), this was directed by Gerald Thomas.
Hudis, now being acquainted with the Carry On producer and director was chosen by them to rewrite the screenplay to R. F. Delderfield's The Bull Boys, he obliged and the screenplay for what was to become the first Carry On (Carry On Sergeant) was born.
Following the success of this Carry On debut, Hudis went on to write a further five Carry Ons, the highpoint being his second one Carry On Nurse which was the top grossing film of 1959.
In 1966 Hudis decided to move permanently to the USA as he'd received lots of offers of work following the commercial success of Carry On Nurse over there. His US TV writing credits include, The Wild Wild West, The F.B.I., The Man From U.N.C.L.E.(The Karate killers), Hawaii Five-O and Cannon.
Norman Hudis continues to write for TV and film.