Bill MacIlwraith
screenwriter
William Pirie MacIlwraith (13 April 1928 – 9 May 2016) was a British dramatist and screenwriter.
Biography
Born in London, to Scottish parents, Macllwraith trained as an actor at RADA and worked in repertory during the 1950s, performing around the country. With Tyrone Power in a production of George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple which ran for a season in London. MacIlwraith eventually concentrated on his writing career. By the early 1960s, he had begun to develop a career as a screenwriter with the short film Linda (1960), featuring Carol White, and 8 episodes of the television series, The Human Jungle (1963–64), with Herbert Lom as a Harley Street psychiatrist, among his credits.
MacIlwraith is best known for the stage play The Anniversary (1966). After first being performed at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, the play had a long run at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End with Mona Washbourne in the lead role as the domineering mother of three sons. It was adapted into a film version released in 1968, now with Bette Davis in the central role. The Anniversary received a West End revival in 2005 with Sheila Hancock now in the lead role.
His situation comedy Two's Company (1975–79), about an American writer and her English butler, starred Elaine Strich and Donald Sinden.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4909989. VIAF identifies the subject as 59638951. The Library of Congress control number is no2008026196. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2016, 1960 and 1963.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bill MacIlwraith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.