William James Royce | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Playwright/Director Screenwriter Novelist |
| Genre | Comedy, Mystery |
 | |
| Author | William James Royce |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Humor |
Publication date | 2012 |
| Pages | 140 |
| ISBN | 978-1-46999-737-7 |
William James Royce is an American playwright/director, screenwriter, and novelist.
Television
William Royce began his television career writing for the NBC television series In the Heat of the Night , starring Emmy Award winning actor Carroll O'Connor as Chief William O. Gillespie and Academy Award nominee Howard Rollins as Detective Virgil Tibbs. Royce wrote 22 episodes while serving as Executive Story Editor, a position he inherited from writer Matt Harris (Carroll O'Connor). [1] [2] In 1991, Royce wrote the screenplay, as well as the music and lyrics, for the award winning episode entitled, Sweet, Sweet Blues , inspired by the real life saga of Medgar Evers. [3] [4] That season In the Heat of the Night won its first NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Dramatic Series. [5] In 1994, after the seventh season, Royce left the show to write for Dick Van Dyke on the mystery series Diagnosis: Murder , and later for the Emmy Award winning mystery series Murder, She Wrote starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. [6] [7]
Theatre
William Royce's first full-length play as writer/director was the romantic comedy A Fine Romance which had its world premiere in Los Angeles at the Actor's Theatre in 1984. [8] In her critique, Polly Warfield of Back Stage West wrote, "Well, just go ahead and revel... Glamour, airy sophistication, elan, romance: If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you like. What more does anyone need?" [9]
Royce's most recent production was his adaptation of the classic Pierre Beaumarchais comedy The Marriage of Figaro entitled, One Mad Day! which premiered at the Norton Clapp Theatre in 2008. [10] The adaptation saw numerous changes to the original five-act play, altering its structure to three acts, updating the dialogue and presenting the new production as a "screwball comedy." In classic screwball comedy tradition, Suzanne has been made the central character. [11] Although Figaro is still in the employ of the Count, he has been promoted from valet to Jester. Perhaps the biggest change comes in the third act when Figaro's Gypsy family arrive for "Figgie's" wedding! [12] [13]
Literature
William Royce’s first collection of humorous essays, short stories, sketches and cartoons entitled, I Know Why the Caged Pig Oinks ~ And Other Love Stories was published by Chanticleer Publishing in May 2012. The book is dedicated to the memory of Royce’s childhood friend, James Whearty. As stated on the dust-jacket: When the author learned that his childhood friend had ALS, he offered to do anything he could to help. “Write,” Jim replied. “Make me laugh.” This book, representing the comic side of Tuesdays with Morrie , is the author’s attempt to repay his friend for a lifetime of laughter. [14]
Royce's first novel, The Immaculate Deception, A Tom Sullivan Mystery, was published in September 2011. This neo-noir mystery series features ex-cop turned private investigator Tom Sullivan and his cat, Stella. The story begins in the confessional booth of a church in Southern California as Tom Sullivan makes what appears to be his final confession. Quickly losing blood from a bullet in his side, Sullivan tells his story, confessing to the murder he has just committed and revealing the identity of the person who may have murdered him. The mystery Sullivan unravels takes him from the beaches of Malibu to the grand estates in San Marino to a dimly-lit jazz club in Santa Monica to a ritzy fertility clinic in Beverly Hills, ultimately exposing what is perhaps the first case of "embryo-napping." [15]
Plays
Novels
Non-Fiction
Screwball comedy is a subgenre of the romantic comedy genre that became popular during the Great Depression, originating in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1940s. It satirized the traditional love story. Many secondary characteristics of this genre are similar to film noir, but it distinguishes itself for being characterized by a female that dominates the relationship with the male central character, whose masculinity is challenged. The two engage in a humorous battle of the sexes, which was a new theme for Hollywood and audiences at the time.
The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's French comedy Le Barbier de Séville (1775). The première of Rossini's opera took place on 20 February 1816 at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, with designs by Angelo Toselli.
The Thin Man is a 1934 American pre-Code comedy-mystery directed by W. S. Van Dyke and based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. The film stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, a leisure-class couple who enjoy copious drinking and flirtatious banter. Nick is a retired private detective who left his very successful career when he married Nora, a wealthy heiress accustomed to high society. Their wire-haired fox terrier Asta was played by canine actor Skippy. In 1997, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a French polymath. At various times in his life, he was a watchmaker, inventor, playwright, musician, diplomat, spy, publisher, horticulturist, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary.
Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury is a British-Irish-American actress and singer who has played many film, theatre and television roles. Her career has spanned almost eight decades, much of it in the United States. Her work has received much international attention and she is recognised as the earliest surviving Academy Award nominee and one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Murder, She Wrote is an American crime drama television series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for 12 seasons with 264 episodes from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network. It was followed by four TV films. Among the most successful and longest-running television shows in history, it averaged more than 30 million viewers per week in its prime, and was a staple of the CBS Sunday night lineup for a decade. In syndication, the series is still highly successful throughout the world.
Patrick Francis McManus was an American humor writer, who primarily wrote about the outdoors. A humor columnist for Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, and other magazines, his columns and stories have been collected in several books, beginning with A Fine and Pleasant Misery (1978) up through The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories (2012).
Married to the Mob is a 1988 American crime comedy film directed by Jonathan Demme, and starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Modine, Dean Stockwell, Mercedes Ruehl, and Alec Baldwin. Pfeiffer plays Angela de Marco, a gangster's widow from Brooklyn, opposite Modine as the undercover FBI agent assigned the task of investigating her mafia connections.
Marianne Raigipcien Jean-Baptiste is an English actress. She is known for her role in the 1996 comedy-drama film Secrets & Lies, for which she received acclaim and earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award in the same category. Baptiste is also known for her role as Vivian Johnson on the television series Without a Trace from 2002 to 2009, and has since starred in television shows such as Blindspot (2015–2016) and Homecoming.
William Windom was an American actor. He played a wide variety of roles in both film and television during a near 60-year career, but is perhaps best known for his role as cartoonist John Monroe in the short-lived comedy My World and Welcome to It (1969–1970) winning him a Primetime Emmy Award, and his recurring role as Dr. Seth Hazlitt starring alongside Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996).
The Ghosts of Versailles is an opera in two acts, with music by John Corigliano to an English libretto by William M. Hoffman. The Metropolitan Opera had commissioned the work from Corigliano in 1980 in celebration of its 100th anniversary, with the premiere scheduled for 1983. Corigliano and Hoffman took as the starting point for the opera the 1792 play La Mère coupable by Pierre Beaumarchais. They took seven years to complete the opera, past the initial deadline. The opera received its premiere on December 19, 1991, at the Metropolitan Opera, with the production directed by Colin Graham. The premiere run of seven performances was sold out. The original cast included Teresa Stratas, Håkan Hagegård, Renée Fleming, Graham Clark, Gino Quilico, and Marilyn Horne. The Metropolitan Opera revived the opera in the 1994/1995 season.
The Marriage of Figaro is a comedy in five acts, written in 1778 by Pierre Beaumarchais. This play is the second in the Figaro trilogy, preceded by The Barber of Seville and followed by The Guilty Mother.
The Guilty Mother, subtitled The Other Tartuffe, is the third play of the Figaro trilogy by Pierre Beaumarchais; its predecessors were The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. This was the author's last play. It is rarely revived. Like the earlier plays of the trilogy it has been turned into operatic form, but it has not entered the general opera repertoire.
Ken Ludwig is an American playwright and theatre director whose work has been performed in more than 30 countries in over 20 languages.
William Theodore Link was an American film and television screenwriter and producer who often worked in collaboration with Richard Levinson.
Richard Leighton Levinson was an American screenwriter and producer who often worked in collaboration with William Link.
Craig Rice was an American author of mystery novels and short stories, sometimes described as "the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction."
Coral Magnolia Lansbury was an Australian-born feminist writer and academic. Working in the United States from 1969 until her death, she became Distinguished Professor of English and Dean of Graduate Studies at Rutgers University.
James Redding Ware was a British writer, novelist and playwright, creator of one of the first female detectives in fiction.
"Sweet, Sweet Blues" is an episode of the NBC drama series In the Heat of the Night, starring Carroll O'Connor as Chief Bill Gillespie and Howard Rollins as Detective Virgil Tibbs.In the Heat of the Night was based on the 1965 novel by John Ball, which was also the basis for the Academy Award winning film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, directed by Norman Jewison.