Alan Hyman

Who was Alan Hyman?

Alan Maurice Hyman was an English author, journalist and film writer.

Hyman was the son of A Hyman, and was educated at St Cyprian's School, Repton School and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He became a journalist and worked on the staff of the Daily Sketch and Sunday Graphic from 1929 to 1932. Then he became a screenwriter and spent much of his life in the film industry. At Gaumont, he worked for Michael Balcon and collaborated on the scripts of Sunshine Suzie and Falling in Love. Subsequently he worked with Herbert Wilcox on The Three Maxims and Victoria the Great and then with Thorold Dickinson as co-author of the script for the film The Arsenal Stadium Mystery in 1939. Later he collaborated with Sydney Box on I met a murderer. During World War II, he worked for the Royal Navy as a screenwriter.

Hyman wrote scripts for BBC radio including the programme Spotlight on a Tunesmith compered by Ben Lyon and Pioneers of Jazz among other musical series. He joined Shell International in 1952, writing and producing scripts for their Visual Aids Unit. From 1954 to 1958 he was a member of the Council of the Screenwriters' Association, and was on the Film Panel that selected the best British film scripts each year. He continued in journalism and became an expert on Sullivan's light operas and on Victorian burlesque theatre. He described this in The Gaiety Years a book about Gaiety Girls. He also wrote an important work on Horatio Bottomley, the swindler.