Alec Coppel

Alec Coppel (17 September 1907 – 22 January 1972) was an Australian-born screenwriter, novelist and playwright. He spent the majority of his career in London and Hollywood, specialising in light thrillers, mysteries and sex comedies. He is best known for the films Vertigo (1958), The Captain's Paradise (1953), Mr Denning Drives North (1951) and Obsession (1949), and the plays I Killed the Count and The Gazebo.

Coppel was born in Melbourne and attended Wesley College. He moved to England in the 1920s to study medicine at Cambridge University, but dropped out before graduating and went to work in advertising, writing in his spare time. Coppel's first big success was his play I Killed the Count, which saw him receive screenwriting offers.

He returned to Australia during the early days of World War II, where he co-founded and worked as a director for Whitehall Productions, operating out of the Minvera Theatre in Kings Cross. He also wrote for radio and contributed to the script of Smithy (1946), one of the few feature films made in Australia during this time.

Coppel moved back to London towards the end of the war, and continued to alternate between novels, plays and screenplays. He became the first Australian to receive an Academy Award nomination for screenwriting with The Captain's Paradise, which was nominated for Best Story in 1953. Many of his British screenplays featured American characters in sympathetic roles (e.g. Obsession, Mr Denning Drives North, Hell Below Zero).

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