Jack Rosenthal (8 September 1931 - 29 May 2004) CBE, was a playwright, who wrote several early episodes of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street and a number of successful plays and films.

He was born in Manchester, and after National Service in the Royal Navy he worked in advertising before becoming a regular writer for Coronation Street in the 1960s.

Rosenthal won three BAFTA awards for Bar Mitzvah Boy (about a Jewish boy's Bar Mitzvah), The Evacuees (based in his own war-time evacuation) and Spend, Spend, Spend (about a football pools winner, Viv Nicholson). He created London's Burning as a one-off drama in 1986, and this later developed into a long-running TV drama of the soap opera- like type disdained by him. He also wrote the film about cabbies in training, The Knowledge.

In 1983 Rosenthal co-wrote the film Yentl with Barbara Streisand.

He married comedy actress Maureen Lipman in 1974, and they have two children, Amy and Adam.

Rosenthal was awarded the CBE in 1994.

He died on 29 May 2004, following a long battle against multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.

External links

• A biographical summary