He was also, however, on the advisory council of the Masses Stage and
Film Guild established by the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1929
to bring 'plays and films of an international character to working-class
audiences'; he was the author of a play on the Tolpuddle Martyrs supported
by the Trades Union Congress, and, simultaneously, he was one of Herbert
Wilcox's leading scriptwriters in the 1910s, with credits including
such hits as Nell Gwyn (1934) and Peg of Old Drury (1935), the patriotic
celebrations of monarchy, Victoria the Great (1937) and Sixty Glorious
Years (1938), and, for Alexander Korda,
The Thief of
Bagdad (1940), in which he also played the Sultan.
