Phillip Rock

Phillip George Rock was born in Los Angeles on 30 July 1927. He grew up in Beverly Hills and England, returned to America in 1940, and served in the U.S. Navy towards the end of World War II.

His first on-screen credit was for Escape from Fort Bravo (1953), directed by John Sturges and starring William Holden and Eleanor Parker. Rock then concentrated on writing novels and, in 1967, published his first: The Extraordinary Seaman.

MGM adapted The Extraordinary Seaman to the big screen in 1969. The film was poorly received and Rock is said to have vowed never to have another of his books made into a movie. Instead, Rock reversed the process and wrote a number of film novelizations for Popular Library and Bantam before turning again to writing novels.

Rock wrote a trilogy of novels — The Passing Bells, Circles of Time, and A Future Arrived — which followed the lives of the Stanmores of Abbingdo, an English family whose history Rock charted from the days of World War I to the Jazz era. The first novel was a Book of the Month Club alternate selection.

Rock died in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California, on 3 April 2004, aged 76, of complications from cancer. He was survived by his son, Kevin, and two grandchildren.