Jay presson allen biography

The Times (06/May/)

• keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, Evan Hunter, J.M. Barrie, Janet Leigh, Jay Presson Allen, Marnie (), Mary Rose, Paramount Pictures, Sean Connery, The Birds (), Tippi Hedren

Jay Presson Allen -- Screenwriter with a gift for adapting novels and plays for film who specialised in memorable female characters

Jay Presson Allen helped to create some of the most memorable female characters in the cinema of the s and s, including the opinionated Edinburgh schoolteacher Jean Brodie, Sally Bowles in Cabaret () and the disturbed heroine in Marnie (), one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most controversial films.

Hitchcock hired her to bring a female perspective to the drama, after sacking Evan Hunter, aka Ed McBain, who had scripted Hitchcock’s The Birds. Presson Allen was in her forties and her credits were limited to an out-of-print novel, a few television shows, one unproduced play and another that was still to open.

But her career was about t