John Lucarotti


John Vincent Lucarotti was a British screenwriter and author who became a Canadian citizen and who perhaps is best known for his work on The Avengers, The Troubleshooters and Doctor Who in the 1960s.

Biography

Born into an Army family in Aldershot in Hampshire in 1926 the son of Helen and Umberto Rimes Lucarotti, John Lucarotti inherited his Italian surname form his grandfather, who was a sculptor. Lucarotti spent 10 years in the Royal Navy during and after the Second World War before moving to Canada in 1950 to pursue his interest in writing. A naturalized Canadian citizen, he began his career at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, writing on over 200 various scripts for them as well as for Canadian television. In 1956-7, he wrote scripts for the Canadian television series Radisson and also wrote the lyrics to the theme song. He then worked for a period selling encyclopedias door-to-door until troubled by his conscience for selling things to people they didn't really want or need. He moved back to England where he had a prolific career. He created the television series Operation Patch, The Ravelled Thread, and The Panther's Leap. He wrote six episodes for The Avengers, thirty-two episodes for The Troubleshooters and contributed fifteen episodes to the BBC's Doctor Who in the 1960s, the three serials: Marco Polo, The Aztecs and The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve.
He subsequently novelised his scripts for Target Books. He contributed a script for what ultimately became the 1975 serial The Ark in Space, but it was rewritten by script editor Robert Holmes and Lucarotti received no on-screen credit. In 1950 he married a Miss Blanej in Gosport in Hampshire but the marriage was later dissolved. He later married Rose-marie Sandy in London in 1969.
John Lucarotti died in Paris on 20 November 1994 at age 68 of spinal cancer.