William Templeton (screenwriter)

William Pettigrew Templeton (7 June 1913 – 23 October 1973) was a Scottish playwright and screenwriter who contributed a string of episodic dramas for American prime time television during the Golden Age of Television in the 1950s and 1960s.

At 20 Templeton wrote the one-act play The King's Spaniel, which ran at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

In 1937, his first three-act play Circus Murder, was picked up and produced by Jevan Brandon Thomas at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, then exported to London by the producer Esme Church for a run at the West End's Noël Coward Theatre (1938) under the title The Painted Smile.

Theatre critic W.A. Darlington of The Daily Telegraph called it a "cleverly created illusion." After being decommissioned from the RAF after World War II, Templeton wrote several West End plays in succession including:

Sunday Times theatre critic James Agate wrote that Exercise Bowler "has an immense amount to say, is inventive, brilliantly theatrical and magnificently laid out for actors."

Templeton wrote the largely anti-war play under the pseudonym 'T. Atkinson,' a generic slang name for a British soldier at the time.

In the late 1940s, Templeton started to move away from theatre and began writing for film and television.

In 1948, he contributed dialogue to Graham Greene's script for The Fallen Idol directed by Carol Reed based on the short story by Greene.

The film won the 1949 BAFTA award for best British film.

In 1950, Templeton's screenplay adaptation of the book All On A Summer’s Day by HLV Fletcher became the British crime thriller Double Confession directed by Ken Annakin, starring Peter Lorre.

Templeton married the Hungarian actress Elizabeth Getrude Esterházy on 22 September 1953 in Westport, Connecticut.

Samuel Goldwyn Jr.. was his best man.

In television, Templeton contributed to several prime time series of the period, including: The Alcoa Hour (1954–57); The Untouchables (1960); the original Adventures of Robin Hood (1957) with Richard Greene; and the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse anthology series broadcast by CBS from 1948 to 1958 and produced by Desi Arnez.

In 1954, New York Times television critic Jack Gould wrote that Templeton's adaptation of George Orwell's dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, "was a masterly adaptation that depicted with power and poignancy and terrifying beauty the end result of thought control."

They were divorced in 1961.

They had one child, Christopher.

On 23 October 1973, Templeton died of cirrhosis at the age of 60 in Glasgow.