Alec Coppel

Biography: This Australian-born playwright achieved fame with his play "I Killed The Count", in which an inspector's investigations are hampered by the fact that many different people all want to confess to a murder. This reversal of the usual police-procedural formula was typical of Coppel, whose ingenuities were usually laced with faintly gruesome wit. It was adapted for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" on TV, the only story to take up more than one episode of the series (it was done in three parts), and several other segments of this classic show were derived from Coppel storylines. Hitchcock also hired Coppel to write the screenplay of his 1958 film "Vertigo", but there was a falling-out and Coppel's script was extensively rewritten. However, Coppel used Hitchcock as an (off-stage) character in his other big theatrical hit, "The Gazebo", in which a screenwriter telephones the Master of Suspense for advice after he's (seemingly) committed a murder. Coppel's other film scripts notablyThis Australian-born playwright achieved fame with his play "I Killed The Count", in which an inspector's investigations are hampered by the fact that many different people all want to confess to a murder. This reversal of the usual police-procedural formula was typical of Coppel, whose ingenuities were usually laced with faintly gruesome wit. It was adapted for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" on TV, the only story to take up more than one episode of the series (it was done in three parts), and several other segments of this classic show were derived from Coppel storylines. Hitchcock also hired Coppel to write the screenplay of his 1958 film "Vertigo", but there was a falling-out and Coppel's script was extensively rewritten. However, Coppel used Hitchcock as an (off-stage) character in his other big theatrical hit, "The Gazebo", in which a screenwriter telephones the Master of Suspense for advice after he's (seemingly) committed a murder. Coppel's other film scripts notably include "The Captain's Paradise", with Alec Guinness as a cheerful bigamist.… Expand