Ernest Dudley (Vivian Ernest Coltman Allen) writer and broadcaster, born February 7 1908; died February 1 2006
W Ernest Dudley, who has died aged 97, was an actor, a novelist with three books filmed, a radio and television scriptwriter and presenter, a journalist, a screenwriter, playwright, jazz critic, dancer, songwriter, artist and one of the world's oldest marathon runners.
His real name was Vivian Allen and he was born in Dudley near Wolverhampton. He grew up in Cookham, Berkshire where his father owned a public house and the artist Stanley Spencer, lived next door . Spencer's friend Jack Buchanan and the latter steered the boy toward acting - Ernest later wrote a stage show for him.
Ernest spent several miserable years at Taplow School, which was run by nuns. Perhaps the depression which haunted him all his life began then. At 17 he ran away to become an actor, joining a company performing Shakespeare in tiny Irish towns. in 1930 he married Jane Grahame, who for several years played one of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan. Jane's connections propelled Ernest to the West End, where his good looks secured him juvenile roles: he shared stages with Charles Laughton, Madeleine Carroll and Fay Compton. Jane and Ernest took the leads in the first British touring production of Noel Coward's Private Lives unhampered by the birth of their only child.Ernest in the 1930s gravitated towards journalism. As "Charles Ton", a Daily Mail showbusiness gossip columnist, he frequented the Embassy and the Café de Paris, got to know the spivs, swells and showgirls of Soho and met Fred Astaire when they were both buying shirts in Burlington Arcade. They worked out a routine on the darkened stage at the Palace Theatre where Astaire was starring in The Gay Divorcee. His passion for watching boxing led him to cover that sport for the People. His first novel Mr Walker Wants to Know (1939), was a spin-off from a radio series he scripted. He also wrote scripts for Twentieth Century Fox and British International Pictures, but by the outbreak of war he and Jane were working fulltime on live weekly shows for BBC Light Entertainment..
Not considered fit enough for active service he and Jane followed BBC Light Entertainment, first to Bristol and later north Wales. In 1942 Ernest's famous creation, the sinister and sarcastic Dr Morelle debuted on the magazine-cum-anthology show Monday Night at Eight. Conceived in a Bristol cellar during an air raid, he was based on film actor and director Erich von Stroheim, whom Ernest had met briefly in Paris in the 1930s. With his secretary Miss Frayle - a part written specially for Jane - Dr Morelle featured in novels, short stories, a film -- The Case of the Missing Heiress (1949), a play and three radio serials.
In 1942 Ernest also got his own hugely popular Armchair Detective series, reviewing and dramatising chapters of detective novels. The Daily Express ran an Armchair Detective weekly column - illustrated by the cartoonist Giles - and in 1952 came a film of Armchair Detective, featuring Ernest. Ernest crossed easily to television and in the late 1950s came Judge for Yourself - trials where the audience was the jury.: Special Agent (1957), featuring the exploits of Jack Evans; The Gilded Lillie (1958), a biography of Lillie Langtry; and Monsters of the Purple Twilight, (1960) a history of the Zeppelin. Then he started on true stories of assorted animals.
In his late 60s, in the mid-1970s Ernest took up marathon running, which, he claimed, helped with his depression. He ran four in London, two in New York. Run for Your Life (1985) described these experiences and his training methods. He was a lifetime member of Equity, and the Crime Writers Association, of which he was a founder in the 1950s.
