A.J. Cronin

Birth : 1896-07-19, Cardross, Dunbartonshire, Scotland

Death : 1981-01-06

History

Archibald Joseph Cronin, MB, ChB, MD, DPH, MRCP (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981) was a Scottish novelist and physician. His best-known works are Hatter's Castle, The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years, all of which were adapted to film. He also created the Dr. Finlay character, the hero of a series of stories that served as the basis for the popular BBC television and radio series entitled Dr. Finlay's Casebook.

Movies

Faraway Tomorrow
Novel
The Citadel
Novel
The good doctor is on trial before the British Medical Association Council, if he is found guilty, he will no longer be allowed to practice medicine. The story unfolds through flashbacks which depict his career and his subsequent downfall.
Beyond This Place
Novel
A World War II evacuee (Van Johnson) returns years later to England and finds his father in prison framed for murder.
The Spanish Gardener
Novel
British diplomat Harrington Brande takes up his new lowly post in Spain accompanied by his son Nicholas. That his wife had left him seems to have affected his career. Nicholas sees it all as something of an adventure and soon becomes friends with the new gardener, Jose. As Nicholas begins to spend more time with Jose, his father takes offense and is concerned at the boy's loss of affection for him. It leads him to bar Nicholas from even speaking to the gardener. And soon tensions mount.
Ich suche Dich
Theatre Play
The young, religious Dr. Francoise Maurer comes from Alsace in "Good Hope" Sanatorium and plans after a short time to leave the sanatorium and go to Indochina to help out in a hospital for the poorest ones.
Sabar Uparey
Novel
Shankar was a young lawyer in pursuit of making it big in the professional world. However his world is turned upside down when he comes to know that his father, who knew went missing, was in real spending his lifetime in the jail as he was incorrectly accused of murdering a lady named Hemangini. His mother urges him to reinvestigate into the case and save his father. He goes to Kishnanagar in search of the people and the evidences which would help him to prove his father’s innocence. He meets Rita, an young and charming lady who assists him. They fall in love. Shankar faces a lot of roadblocks while trying to collect clues most of them which were imposed by the actual murderer. However he solves the mystery in the end and his father is thus, released from prison.
The Green Years
Writer
An orphaned young boy is guided by his great-grandfather and strives to go to university to become a doctor. However, the boy's harsh grandfather stands in his way.
The Keys of the Kingdom
Novel
A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed.
Hatter's Castle
Novel
The year is 1880. On the outskirts of the fictional small Scottish town of Levenford there stands a strange building, half cottage, half castle, embraced with thick stone walls. The townsfolk nickname the fortress "Hatter's Castle", for James Brodie, the man who built it. Brodie is a hatter who keeps the members of the family in fear and submission; he is brutal, arrogant, selfish and cruel. His wife, who has long been ailing, and his daughter Mary, are in awe of him. His son Angus, aged 15, alone dear to his heart, suffers under his love as the others suffer under his sternness.
Shining Victory
Theatre Play
In a Scottish sanitarium, a brilliant research psychiatrist works on a treatment for dementia praecox. He falls for his altruistic female lab assistant and they begin a passionate, tragic relationship.
Vigil in the Night
Novel
A good nurse ruins her career by covering up for her sister's careless mistake.
The Stars Look Down
Adaptation
The Stars Look Down is based on A. J. Cronin's 1935 novel of the same name, about injustices in a mining community in North East England. While the novel follows the development of three young men in the small mining town, the film focuses on just one of them; the smart David Fenwick who gets a scholarship to university, meets a girl who only marries him because her former boyfriend has abandoned her, and eventually returns to the mine town as a teacher and takes part in a futile rescue effort when the mine is flooded, trapping both his father and his younger brother.
The Stars Look Down
Novel
The Stars Look Down is based on A. J. Cronin's 1935 novel of the same name, about injustices in a mining community in North East England. While the novel follows the development of three young men in the small mining town, the film focuses on just one of them; the smart David Fenwick who gets a scholarship to university, meets a girl who only marries him because her former boyfriend has abandoned her, and eventually returns to the mine town as a teacher and takes part in a futile rescue effort when the mine is flooded, trapping both his father and his younger brother.
The Citadel
Novel
Andrew Manson, a young, idealistic, newly qualified Scottish doctor arrives in Wales takes his first job in a mining town, and begins to wonder at the persistent cough many of the miners have. When his attempts to prove its cause are thwarted, he moves to London. His new practice does badly. But when a friend shows him how to make a lucrative practice from rich hypochondriacs, it will take a great shock to show him what the truth of being a doctor really is.
Grand Canary
Writer
Based on an AJ Cronin novel, a disgraced doctor exiled to the Canary Islands, meets and falls in love with a married woman.
Once to Every Woman
Story
An able nurse clashes with a new doctor at her hospital.