Biography

Frederick Knott was born on August 28, 1916 in Hankow, China. He was a writer, known for Dial M for Murder (1954), Wait Until Dark (1967) and A Perfect Murder (1998). He was married to Ann Hillary. He died on December 17, 2002 in New York City, New York, USA.

Frederick Knott was a writer who didn't like to write. He wrote only a handful of stage plays, but two of them - "Dial M For Murder" and "Wait Until Dark" - were so enduringly successful that he lived a very comfortable existence throughout his adult life.

He was the son of missionaries, but was also descended from a wealthy mill-owning Lancashire family. He married Ann Hillary in 1953 and remained married to her until his death; they had one son.

He was educated at Oundle, a well-known British public school, and at Cambridge University. In the 1930s, he was regarded as an exceptional tennis player (just like the central character in his play "Dial M For Murder") and hoped to play at Wimbledon; but World War II intervened.

He was, for a time, script editor for Hammer Films. This was in the years following World War II, when Hammer was a very small outfit making cheap B-movies, and some years before it achieved eminence through the making of horror films.