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Jack Rosenthal

British playwright (1931-2004)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ1677193 ↗
Source-derived summary

Jack Morris Rosenthal (8 September 1931 – 29 May 2004) was an English playwright. He wrote 129 early episodes of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street and over 150 screenplays, including original television plays, feature films, and adaptations.

Early life

Jack Morris Rosenthal was born into a Jewish family on 8 September 1931 in Cheetham, Manchester. He was the younger of two sons to father Sam, a raincoat factory worker, and mother Leah (née Miller) Rosenthal. His parents were married in 1927 in Manchester, and were children of Russian Jewish immigrants.

Rosenthal attended the Manchester Jews School in Derby Street, Cheetham. During the Second World War, he was evacuated to Blackpool, Lancashire with an inhospitable family who censored his letters and confiscated his food parcels. His family subsequently moved to Colne, Lancashire, and Rosenthal attended Colne Grammar School. In 1953, after studying English Literature at Sheffield University, he carried out his national service in the Royal Navy as a Russian translator.

Career

Rosenthal worked briefly in advertising before joining Granada Television in 1956.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Jack Rosenthal” as british playwright (1931-2004). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1931, 2004, 1927, 1953—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1931-09-08. The account is most persuasive where Jack, Rosenthal and British can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as british playwright (1931-2004). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1677193. VIAF identifies the subject as 113626670. The Library of Congress control number is n80011245. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 2004, 1927 and 1953.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Jack Rosenthal” 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.