Alan Seymour

Alan Seymour (6 June 192723 March 2015) was an Australian playwright and author. He is best known for the play The One Day of the Year (1958). His international reputation rests not only on this early play, but also on his many screenplays, television scripts and adaptations of novels for film and television. Career Seymour was born in Fremantle, Western Australia. His father was killed in a wharf accident when Alan was nine, and his mother, a Cockney from London, died a few months later. After that he was brought up by his sister May and her husband, Alfred Chester Cruthers. He was educated at Perth Modern School, leaving at 15 after failing to complete the Junior Certificate. He found work as a radio announcer in a commercial radio station 6PM. During his two years there he wrote a number of short radio plays that were broadcast live. In 1945 he moved to Sydney, New South Wales, where he worked as an advertising copy-writer with 2UE. He returned to Perth after the war where he worked as a free-lance writer for ABC Radio. Seymour became ABC Radio's film critic. He joined a commercial radio station 6KY as an announcer and copy-writer and after six months was offered an announcing post at the ABC. In 1949 he met Ron Baddeley, a RAAF veteran, and they were to become life partners. In November 1949, Seymour returned to Sydney where he became an educational and freelance drama writer for ABC Radio and later television. From 1953 to 1957 he was theatrical director for the Sydney Opera Group. His first play, Swamp Creatures, premièred by the Canberra Repertory Society, was a finalist in the London Observer play competition in 1957.