The Powell & Pressburger Pages Dedicated to the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and all the other people, both actors and technicians who helped them make those wonderful films. A lot of the documents have been sent to me or have come from other web sites. The name of the web site is given where known. If I have unintentionally included an image or document that is copyrighted or that I shouldn't have done then please email me and I'll remove it. I make no money from this site, it's purely for the love of the films. [Any comments are by me (Steve Crook) and other members of the email list]

Submitted by Roger Mellor Rodney Ackland
(18 May 1908 - 6 December 1991)

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Actor and playwright Rodney Ackland as a young dramatist was sometimes referred to as the English Chekhov. Born Norman Ackland Bernstein, the son of a music-hall singer, he began acting professionally as a teenager before studying at London's Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art. As an actor he worked steadily in regional repertory companies and on tour, notably in the title role of John van Druten's first successful play Young Woodley (1929). As a playwright Ackland enjoyed London productions of such plays as Improper People (1929), Strange Orchestra (1932), Birthday (1934), and The Dark River (1943) which he also directed. Better known still were his stage adaptations of novels such as Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (1938), Dostoyesky's Crime and Punishment (1946), and Ostrovsky's Diary of a Scoundrel (1949). But although Ackland's psychological and social realism prefigured the new British dramatists that appeared after 1955, his plays were generally swept aside by critical enthusiasm for those "angry young men" such as Osborne, Wesker and Pinter. In the 1980s several of Ackland's plays received London revivals, notably Absolute Hell, a retitled version The Pink Room (1952), which appeared on the Royal National Theatre's list of the top 100 plays of the twentieth century.

British Films include (as screenwriter, unless stated) :
The Queen of Spades (1949)
Bond Street (1947)
Temptation Harbour (1947)
Wanted for Murder (1946)
Hundred Pound Window, The (1944) (additional dialogue)
Love Story (1944) (additional dialogue)
Thursday's Child (1942) (+dir.)
Uncensored (1942)
Hatter's Castle (1941) (screenplay)
49th Parallel (1941) (dialogue)
Dangerous Moonlight (1941)
George and Margaret (1940)
Under Your Hat (1940)
Englishman's Home, An (1939) (additional dialogue)
Silent Battle, The (1939)
Young Man's Fancy (1939) (additional dialogue)
Keep Smiling (1939) (dialogue)
Yellow Sands (1938)
Bank Holiday (1938)
Number Seventeen (1932)
Shadows (1931)

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