Jack Rosenthal
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Jack Rosenthal, CBE (8 September 1931 - 29 May 2004) , was an English playwright, who wrote several early episodes of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street and a number of successful plays and films.
He was born in Cheetham Manchester, and after studying English Literature at Sheffield University and National Service in the Royal Navy he worked in advertising before becoming a regular writer for Coronation Street in the 1960s. He also wrote material for That Was The Week That Was. At Granada Television he wrote a spin off series from Coronation Street for the character, Leonard Swindley, played by Arthur Lowe called Pardon the Expression and created the comedy series The Dustbinmen and The Lovers (TV series).
Rosenthal won three BAFTA awards for Bar Mitzvah Boy (about a Jewish boy's Bar Mitzvah), The Evacuees (based in his own war-time evacuation) and Spend, Spend, Spend (about a football pools winner, Viv Nicholson). He also wrote the film about cabbies in training, The Knowledge. He created London's Burning as a one-off drama in 1986, and this later developed into a long-running TV drama of the soap operalike type disdained by him.
In 1983 Rosenthal co-wrote the film Yentl with Barbra Streisand. He also did uncredited work on the screenplay of Chicken Run.
Rosenthal also wrote the book for the musical version of 'Bar Mitzvah Boy, with music by Jule Styne
He married comedy actress Maureen Lipman in 1974, and they have two children, Amy and Adam.
Rosenthal was awarded the CBE in 1994.
He died on 29 May 2004, following a long battle against multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.
Recently a dramatisation of events from his life has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 starring Maureen Lipman as herself and Stephen Mangan as Jack Rosenthal.
