Born William Melville Caverhill in
Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, England, he was educated in his home town and then a boarder at the
Edinburgh Academy. Leaving school at 17, he started work in the family timber merchants as an apprentice joiner. At the age of 22, he entered an essay competition in ''John O'Leary's Weekly
with an essay entitled My Perfect Holiday
and won the first prize; a return trip to Canada (1934). Soon afterwards he sent the BBC North Region six short stories called The Adventures of the Pink Knight
(1934), which were accepted and used on Children's Hour. He was required to read the stories himself, his first professional engagement. He continued to write from the timber yard, his short stories, poems, manuscripts sometimes being accepted by various publishers. He wrote his first novel, a whodunit called Weekend at Thrackley, which was accepted and published and later made into a film called Hot Ice''. Melville left the timber yard and struggled on his own for a while until he met a composer called George McNeill. Together they turned out number after number, Melville writing the lyrics. In 1936 the BBC offered him a job as a scriptwriter in the variety department in London under
Eric Maschwitz at £250 per year. After a three-month training course, he was sent to the
Aberdeen radio station as features and drama producer. In the early part of
World War II, he compiled daily instalments of the
Robinson Family serial about an ordinary family in London on the BBC's North American Service. In 1941 he enlisted in the
RAF where he reached the rank of
Wing Commander. He worked as a war correspondent sending regular dispatches to the BBC. His experience enabled him to write
First Tide. He was with the
Allied Invasion force of 1944 and took part in the
Normandy landings, sending back reports to the BBC; then onto Brussels and in Germany for the surrender. He was sent back to London on embarkation leave, after which he should have gone to the Far East but was kept for an RAF pageant in the
Royal Albert Hall, which he scripted and
Ralph Reader directed with 1,500 RAF personnel. During the war years he wrote revues,
Sweet and Low,
Sweeter and Lower and
Sweetest and Lowest, which ran in all for five years at the
Ambassadors Theatre. After its success, he was signed up on a five-year contract for
London Films by
Alexander Korda. Melville's collaboration with composer
Charles Zwar began when they wrote "Which Witch?" for
Sky High in 1942; they continued to work together for some of the numbers in
Sweeter and Lower and for all of
Sweetest and Lowest. After the war he wrote plays including
Castle in the Air (1949; filmed in 1952),
Full Circle (1952, previously
Dear Charles and adapted from ''Les Enfants d'Edouard
by Marc-Gilbert Sauvajon and Frederick J. Jackson), Simon and Laura 1954, which was later made into a film in 1955, and the book and lyrics for the musical Gay's the Word'' (1950, music by
Ivor Novello). The musical premiered at the
Palace Theatre, Manchester in 1950 and transferred to the
Saville Theatre in London in 1951, where it ran for 504 performances and starred
Cicely Courtneidge,
Lizbeth Webb and
Thorley Walters. In 1951, Melville wrote the musical
Bet Your Life, with music by Kenneth Leslie Smith and Charles Zwar and starring
Arthur Askey and
Julie Wilson. A few years later he wrote the musical
Marigold based on the play by
Francis R. Pryor and
Lizzie Allen Harker; the score was composed by Charles Zwar and it starred
Jean Kent,
Sally Smith,
Sophie Stewart and
Jeremy Brett. Alan Melville became one of Britain's first television stars. He became chairman of
The Brains Trust and a panelist in ''
What's My Line? He wrote and appeared in many television programmes, among them A to Z'', which ran for two years (1957–58) and played host to more than 400 guests including
Bob Hope,
Phil Silvers,
John Dankworth and
Dame Edith Evans.
Merely Melville, one of his television programmes, he used as a title for his autobiography. He took the leading role from
Ian Carmichael in the play
Gazebo at the
Savoy Theatre.
Moira Lister was his co-star. He moved to
Brighton in 1951 and died at the age of 73 in December 1983 at the
Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, where he had been a patient since November. He was cremated in the
Downs Crematorium, Brighton, on 12 January 1984. ==Works==