Dave Wallis (27 November 1917 – 12 June 1990[citation needed]) was an English novelist, best known for his third novel Only Lovers Left Alive, which was optioned by The Rolling Stones in the mid 1960s as a potential vehicle for their collective film debut.
He grew up in an atmosphere of the theatre and comfortable bohemianism until the great slump of the early thirties when the family fell on hard times and returned to England.
It is the satirical story of two ambitious working-class people, Tom and Carole, whose affair is put to the test in post-war London's freed-up and booming world of make or break.
Philip Oakes in the Observer said that it was a "shrewd, funny and absorbing story of young lovers – both hauling themselves up the social ladder by way of big business – whose affair is mangled by a takeover bid.
The new fiction reviewer in The Times said that the "anti-social helmeted figures on the motorcycles, riding on their quests to plunder and attacking one another's strongholds, one of which is Windsor Castle, have a quality oddly like Malory's, and Mr. Wallis obviously enjoys drawing the parallel between his youngsters thrown on their own resources, learning how to live in the ruins of the sophisticated adult world, and the story of mankind settling down in the west after the barbarian invasions of the dark ages."
In 1966 it was announced that The Rolling Stones would make their film debuts in a motion picture of the novel to be directed by Nicholas Ray and produced by Allen Klein and Andrew Loog Oldham.
The main character, Celestine, escapes from a remand home at the age of sixteen, and contrives to get herself smuggled aboard a small freighter bound for a South American island by the lustful crew.