DAVID SHERWIN

(24 February 1942 - 8 January 2018)

The screenwriter, actor and producer David Sherwin, who has died from sepsis aged 75, did not have a great output, but what he wrote for the cinema was sheer class. He made his mark on three Lindsay Anderson films, namely if…. (1968), O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982). His first screenplay was actually called Crusaders but had a title change suggested by a secretary at the production company. If…. dealt with rebellion at a public school and introduced Malcolm McDowell in his first film, playing Mick Travis. O Lucky Man! followed him in his career as a coffee salesman, and Britannia Hospital saw him in a satire on the NHS. Sherwin tried writing other films but they came to nothing, including a version of the Camille story for Zeffirelli and Robin Hood for Jon Voight. The film of his own memoir, Going Mad in Hollywood, never got made, although he did rewrite some of Penelope Gilliatt’s screenplay for John Schlesinger’s Sunday Bloody Sunday (uncredited, of course). He appeared as himself in Lindsay Anderson’s biographical documentary Is That All There Is? (1992) and in a TV series Cast and Crew (2002) in which filmmakers revisited former locations. His last screenplay was for Wet Gold (1984), a TV movie with Brooke Shields and Burgess Meredith. David Sherwin was married twice and had a son and a daughter.

MICHAEL DARVELL