Willis Edward Hall (6 April 1929 – 7 March 2005) was an English playwright and radio, television and film writer who drew on his working-class roots in Leeds for much of his writing.

He wrote plays such as Billy Liar, The Long and the Short and the Tall, and Celebration; the screenplays for Whistle Down the Wind, A Kind of Loving and Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain; and television programmes including Budgie, Worzel Gummidge and Minder.

Hall's military experiences later inspired his first play, The Disciplines of War,[2] about British soldiers ambushed in the Malayan jungle, that premiered on the fringe of the Edinburgh International Festival in August 1957 and was shortly followed by a professional production at the Nottingham Playhouse.

After gaining interest from the producer Lindsay Anderson, the play was renamed The Long and the Short and the Tall, and premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre in 1959 starring Peter O'Toole and Robert Shaw.

After this success, in 1963 Hall's and Waterhouse's self-styled company, "Waterhall Productions", adapted the story for the big screen, where it was filmed by John Schlesinger, with Tom Courtenay in the lead role.

Hall continued this successful partnership with Waterhouse and, over the next 30 years, the two men produced more than 250 scripts for theatre, film, and television including the plays Celebration and All Things Bright and Beautiful, the TV series Worzel Gummidge, Budgie and Secret Army and the screenplays for Whistle Down the Wind and Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain.