Lawrence Edward Watkin

Lawrence Edward Watkin (December 9, 1901 – December 16, 1981) was an American writer and film producer. He has become known especially as a scriptwriter for a series of 1950s Walt Disney films.

Watkin was born in New York City in 1901. He died in 1981, a few days after his 80th birthday, in San Joaquin County, California.

Lawrence Edward Watkin was at first an English professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. His first novel On Borrowed Time, published in 1937, remains his best known work. It won the National Book Award as Bookseller Discovery of 1937, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. It was dramatized in 1938 by Paul Osborn for a successful run on Broadway. A Hollywood film version with Lionel Barrymore and Sir Cedric Hardwicke followed in 1939.

His next novel, Geese in the Forum (1940), was an allegory about university structures.

In 1947 Walt Disney hired Watkin to adapt the stories of Herminie Templeton Kavanagh featuring Darby O'Gill. The project was finally realized in 1959 as Darby O'Gill and the Little People. By that time, Watkin had written numerous other screenplays for Disney. The first of his Disney screenplays was Treasure Island (1950), adapted from the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. Three screenplays followed, which were produced by Disney in Great Britain. The popular Disney television serials Spin and Marty (1955–1957) were adapted by Jackson Gillis from Watkin's 1942 book Marty Markham. Watkin was producer of Disney's 1956 Adventure film, The Great Locomotive Chase.

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