Ronald Gow
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ronald Gow | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 1, 1897 Stockport, England |
| Died | April 27, 1993 (aged 95) Beaconsfield, England |
| Occupation | Dramatist |
| Nationality | British |
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Ronald Gow (November 1, 1897 – April 27, 1993) was an English dramatist, best known for Love on the Dole (1934).
Born in Heaton Moor, Stockport, the son of a bank manager, Gow attended Altrincham County High School. After training as a chemist, he returned to his old school as a teacher. In the late 1920s he made several educational silent films with his pupils: The People of the Axe (1926) and The People of the Lake (1928) recreated life in ancient Britain, the latter produced 'with the approval of' Sir William Boyd Dawkins; The Man Who Changed His Mind (1928) was a Boy Scout adventure with a cameo from Robert Baden-Powell; The Glittering Sword (1929) was a medieval parable about disarmament.
Writing occupied his spare time during his years as a schoolmaster, and he wrote several plays for the BBC. At the age of 35 he had his first professional production, in London, with Gallow's Glorious (1933), a play about the American slavery abolitionist John Brown.
In 1934 he wrote Love on the Dole, based on Walter Greenwood's novel about unemployment in Salford during the Great Depression – the play was a huge success. In 1937 Gow married Wendy Hiller, the leading lady, with whom he had two children. He continued writing plays into his eighties, providing material for his wife in adaptations of Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1946), which was a great success while Ann Veronica (1949) quickly proved a commercial failure. His other adaptations include Vita Sackville-West's The Edwardians and A Boston Story (1966), based on Henry James' Watch and Ward.
