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Welsh novelist and playwright Richard Llewellyn was born Richard David Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd in Pembrokeshire, Wales. He attended school in Cardiff and London, and when he was 16 he spent two years in Italy learning hotel management. While there he got work with an Italian film company, learning the basics of filmmaking. Returning to the UK, he joined the army and served for five years, leaving in 1931. Jobless, he got work as an extra in several films. To supplement his meager income, he got a job as a reporter on a newspaper covering the film industry, and it was then that he decided to become a writer. He stayed in the film business, however, working his way up to assistant director, writer, production manager and, finally, director. However, a downturn in the industry caused him to turn to playwriting. His first play, "Poison Pen", was eventually produced on the London stage and was quite successful.
His most famous work, the novel "How Green Was My Valley" about a family of Welsh coal miners, was begun while he was serving with the army in India. He worked on it continuously over the years, and while in London he was introduced to a book publisher, who consented to read his final manuscript. Liking what he read, he agreed to publish it, and in October of 1939 it hit the book stores in Great Britain. It sold more than 50,000 copies in just four months; when it was published in the US the next year, it sold well over 100,000 copies. Its success did not go unnoticed by Hollywood, and the next year famed director John Ford brought it to the screen. How Green Was My Valley (1941) became one of the most popular and critically acclaimed films in Hollywood history, and is regarded by many critics as the finest work of America's finest director; it took home an Academy Award for Best Picture, among other honors.
Llewellyn wrote three sequels to "How Green Was My Valley", but none of them approached the popularity of the original and none were turned into films.
Richard Llewellyn died of a heart attack in Dublin, Ireland, on November 30, 1983.
