Frederick Major Paull Knott (28 August 1916 – 17 December 2002) was an English playwright and screenwriter known for complex crime-related plots.
He served in the British Army Artillery as a signals instructor from 1939 to 1946, rising to the rank of major, and eventually moved to the United States.
This production was followed in October by a successful run in New York City at the Plymouth Theater, where Reginald Denham directed Maurice Evans, Richard Derr.
Knott also wrote the screenplay for the 1954 Hollywood movie which Hitchcock filmed for Warner Brothers in 3D, starring Ray Milland and Grace Kelly, with Anthony Dawson and John Williams reprising their characters from the New York stage production, which had won Williams a Tony Award for his role as Inspector Hubbard.
The play was also made into a 1981 TV movie starring Christopher Plummer and Angie Dickinson, as the 1985 film Aitbaar in India, and as A Perfect Murder in 1998 with Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow.
[2] Based on the same plot, a Soviet TV film Tony Wendice's Mistake (ru:Ошибка Тони Вендиса) was released in 1981.