Alan Sharp

Alan Sharp (12 January 1934 – 8

February 2013) was a Scottish novelist
and screenwriter. He published two
novels in the 1960s, and subsequently
wrote the screenplays for about twenty
films, mostly produced in the United
States.[1]
 Alan Sharp
Born 12 January 1934
Alyth, Scotland
Died 8 February 2013
(aged 79)
Los Angeles,
California, United
States
Occupation Novelist, screenwriter

Life and career

Sharp was raised in Greenock, Scotland,
the son of a single mother, and he was
adopted at the age of six weeks by
Margaret and Joseph Sharp, a shipyard
worker. His adoptive parents belonged to
a Salvation Army church. Alan left school
at 14 to apprentice in the yards, the first
of a long series of odd jobs he held prior
to his national military service and
marriage. Eventually he married four
times.[2] He ultimately relocated to
London with the intention of becoming a
writer.[3] One of his screenplays was
broadcast on British television in 1963,
and his play A Knight in Tarnished Armour
was broadcast in 1965. His first novel, A
Green Tree in Gedde, was published in
1965 to acclaim and won the 1967
Scottish Arts Council Award.[3][4] It was
the first part of a proposed trilogy, and
Sharp published the second novel, The
Wind Shifts, in 1967. The third novel,
which had the working title The Apple
Pickers,[4][5] was left incomplete when
Sharp emigrated to Hollywood and
focused on screenwriting.

In the 1970s, six of Sharp's screenplays

became high-profile Hollywood feature
films, most of them dealing with
quintessentially American themes and
characters. Walter Chaw writes of
Sharp's screenplays from this period, "On
the strength of his scripts for The Hired
Hand, Ulzana's Raid, and Night Moves,
Scottish novelist Alan Sharp seems well
at home with the better-known, more
highly regarded writers and directors of
the New American Cinema. Sharp's
screenplays are marked by a narrative
complexity and situations gravid with
implication and doom."[6] Trevor
Johnston had written recently, "There's
an argument to suggest that a certain
seventysomething Scot could well be
Britain's greatest living screenwriter.
Much is made of pre-Star Wars '70s
Hollywood as a kind of celluloid golden
age, and Alan Sharp was there in the
thick of it, working with the very best,
generating the sort of track record few
British screenwriters are likely to
match."[7]

David N. Meyer has incorporated an

appreciation of Sharp's writing in his
review of Night Moves (directed by Arthur
Penn-1975). Following a description of
an important seduction scene from the
film, Meyer adds: "These delicious,
poisonous moments – these cookies full
of arsenic – come courtesy of Alan
Sharp's venomous, entrapping, perfectly
circular screenplay. It's hard not to regard
him – rather than Penn – as the engine
of Night Moves' enduring power. Sharp
had an unbroken forty year career writing
features and television."[8]

From the 1980s, most of Sharp's

screenplays were for American television
productions. His 1993 television
screenplay (with Walter Klenhard) for The
Last Hit was nominated for the Edgar
Allan Poe Award (best TV feature or
miniseries).[9] His feature film projects
included The Osterman Weekend (Sam
Peckinpah's swan song-1982), Rob Roy
(1995), and Dean Spanley (2008). Quentin
Curtis called the screenplay for Rob Roy
"one of the best screenplays in the last
decade".[10]

The actress Rudi Davies is the daughter

of Sharp and novelist Beryl Bainbridge,
who used Sharp as the inspiration for the
main character in the novel Sweet William
(1975). Sharp was also the inspiration for
a character in one of Brian Pendreigh's
short stories.[11]
A second daughter, Rachel Minnie Sharp,
also briefly an actress, was married to
Luke Perry.[12] Sharp was survived by his
fourth wife, Harriet Sharp, and a total of
six children, two stepsons and 14
grandchildren, though Harriet Sharp and
Sharp's daughter Nola both died very
shortly after him.[2]

Bibliography
A Green Tree in Gedde (New Edition).
Richard Drew. 1985. ISBN 978-0-
86267-129-7. OCLC 59871279 . Re-
issue of Sharp's 1965 novel.
The Wind Shifts. London: Michael
Joseph. 1967. ISBN 978-0-450-00362-
 2. OCLC 758296950 .
The Hired Hand. Bantam Books. 1971.
ISBN 978-0-552-08772-8.
OCLC 252406292 .
Night Moves. Warner Paperback
Library. 1975. ISBN 978-0-446-76626-
5. OCLC 466207452 .
Lord Dunsany (2008). Dean Spanley:
The Novel. Harper. ISBN 978-0-00-
729045-1. OCLC 606056670 . Film tie-
in incorporating the original 1936
novella and Sharp's screenplay.

References
1. Barnes, Mike (11 February 2013). " 'Rob
Roy' Screenwriter Alan Sharp Dies at 79" .
The Hollywood Reporter.
2. Vitello, Paul (13 February 2013). "Alan
Sharp, Writer of Dark Screenplays, Dies at
79" . The New York Times. Retrieved
14 February 2013.
3. Pendreigh, Brian (18 September 2002).
"Sharp Shooter" . iofilm. Archived from
the original on 10 November 2010.
Retrieved 19 October 2010.
4. Nichols, Lewis (28 April 1968).
"American Notebook" . The New York
Times. “Alan Sharp, the young British
writer who began a trilogy with the well-
received "Green Tree in Gedde" and
continued with the recently published but
less well-received "The Wind Shifts," is
halfway through the final volume, to be
called "The Apple Pickers."” No free online
access.
5. "Alan Sharp, screnwriter of 'Rob Roy,'
'Night Moves,' dies" . Variety. 11 February
2013. This obituary claims that Sharp's
unfinished novel was titled "Don't Cry, It's
Only a Picture Show.
6. Chaw, Walter (14 April 2010). "Night
Moves" . Film Freak Central. Archived
from the original on 18 December 2010.
7. Johnston, Trevor (13 January 2009).
"Dean Spanley" . The Script Factory.
Archived from the original on 13 August
2010. Retrieved 21 October 2010. Trevor
Johnston is a film critic for Time Out
London. His article is a detailed
appreciation of Sharp's adaptation of Lord
Dunsany's 1936 novella, My Talks with
Dean Spanley, for the film Dean Spanley
(2008).
8. Meyer, David N. (3 May 2009). "Any
Kennedy: The Merciless, Blinding
Sunshine of Night Moves" . Film Noir of
the Week. Archived from the original on
25 August 2010.
9. Search at "The Edgar Awards
Database" .
10. Curtis, Quentin (21 May 1995).
"Cinema / Och aye, such noble derring-
do!" . The Independent. “The first point to
make about Alan Sharp's script is that it
travesties history, bearing only the
flimsiest resemblance to the facts of
Rob's life, and importing a great deal of
sensationalism (such as the rape of Rob's
wife by Cunningham). The second point is
that it's one of the best screenplays of the
last decade. Sharp, who is returning to his
roots, after scripting Hollywood classics
such as Ulzana's Raid and Night Moves,
has married the narrative complexity of
the classic Western and film noir, to an
earthy Scottish naturalism. The result is
not so much like Walter Scott (whose
novel Rob Roy barely dealt with the hero)
as James Boswell, when in tumultuous
mood, with the whoring rage upon him.”
11. Pendreigh, Brian (15 February 2013).
"Obituary: Alan Sharp, writer" . The
Scotsman. “Alan Sharp was one of the
greatest Scottish writers of the 20th
century, even though many people have
never heard of him.”
12. "Luke Perry (I)-Biography" . IMDB.com.
Retrieved 14 February 2013.
Further reading
Bergan, Ronald (14 February 2013).
"Alan Sharp obituary: Swashbuckling
screenwriter behind Rob Roy, Ulzana's
Raid and Night Moves" . The Guardian.
Bergan considers Ulzana's Raid and
Night Moves as Sharp's finest
screenplays, and claims that Ulzana's
Raid was Sharp's own favourite among
them.
Bissell, Jane (24 February 2009). "In
Conversation with Alan Sharp" . Script
to Screen. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
Sharp's views on his own career and
his advice to young writers.
 Herdman, John (1972). "Alan Sharp's
Journey" . Scottish International
Review. 5: 20. Feature story from a
now defunct literary journal.
Schoene, Berthold (1995). "Angry
Young Masculinity and the Rhetoric of
Homophobia and Misogyny in the
Scottish Novels of Alan Sharp". In
Whyte, Christopher. Gendering the
Nation: Studies in Modern Scottish
Literature. Edinburgh University Press.
p. 85.

External links
Alan Sharp on IMDb
Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Alan_Sharp&oldid=818429214"

Last edited 5 months ago by Ser A…

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