Jack Whittingham

British screenwriter Jack Whittingham got his film career off to a good start with the tongue-in-cheek espionager Q Planes (1939). In the late '40s, Whittingham switched from action films to emotional "problem dramas." Two of his best films in this vein were Crash of Silence (1952), the story of a deaf child, and The Divided Heart (1952), a tale of a hotly contested adoption. He briefly turned to producing with 1957's The Birthday Present. One of Jack Whittingham's last screen assignments was the James Bond opus Thunderball (1965), which enabled the writer to receive a story credit on the 1983 remake Never Say Never Again, even though he'd passed away 11 years earlier. - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide