Gilliatt, Penelope Ann Douglass

▪ 1994

      British-born writer and critic (b. March 25, 1932, London, England—d. May 9, 1993, London), was for many years a film critic for The New Yorker; she also produced fiction that was noted for its sensitive, sometimes wry look at modern life. She briefly attended colleges in London and Vermont and then worked for a short time in New York City. When she won an award from the British Vogue for a short story, she returned to London to work for the magazine, later becoming its features editor. In 1961 she began working as a film and drama critic for The Observer, sharing duties with Kenneth Tynan, and in 1968 she began alternating with Pauline Kael as film critic for The New Yorker. During the following decade the magazine also published several of her short stories and profiles. She left The New Yorker in 1979 after Graham Greene complained about inaccuracies in her profile of him and another writer on Greene accused her of plagiarism. Gilliatt was perhaps best known for her screenplay for the 1971 film Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Based on her novel One by One (1965), the screenplay won awards from the British Film Writers' Guild, the National Society of Film Critics, and the New York Film Critics Circle, and it was nominated for an Academy Award. In all, she published five novels and a number of collections of stories and other short writings, as well as book-length studies of the French director Jean Renoir and actor Jacques Tati. Her second, brief marriage was to the British playwright John Osborne.

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