Noel Langley
Noel Langley (25 December 1911 – 4 November 1980) was a South African (later naturalised American) novelist, playwright, screenwriter and director. He wrote the screenplay which formed the basis for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and is one of the three credited screenwriters for the film. His finished script for the film was revised by Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, the other credited screenwriters. Langley objected to their changes and lamented the final cut upon first seeing it, but later revised his opinion. He attempted to write a sequel based on The Marvelous Land of Oz using many of the concepts he had added to its predecessor, but this was never realised.
Life and career
Born on Christmas Day in Durban, South Africa, Noel Langley was the son of Durban High School headmaster Aubrey Samuel Langley and Dora Agnes Allison. Noel Langley attended his father's school (Durban High School- KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) until 1930. Noel's relationship with his headmaster father was a strained one as he did meet his father's expectations. His father, Aubrey Samuel 'Madevu' (the isiZulu word for mustache), was a queer mix of sensitive artist, strict disciplinarian and rugby football enthusiast valued boys who were physically active. It seems that Langley senior rejected his son who was artistically inclined and physically week (he was barred from sport and cadet drill by his doctor, Dr George Campbell). Their relationship was so poor that Noel bragged to Jack Cope (a fellow Natalian, poet and novelist) after his father's death that he had helped kill his father by sending him money for drink.
