Ronald Gow

Who was Ronald Gow?

Ronald Gow was an English dramatist, best known for Love on the Dole.

Born in Heaton Moor, Stockport, Cheshire, the son of a bank manager, Gow attended Altrincham County High School. After training as a chemist, he returned to his old school as a teacher. In the late 1920s he made several educational silent films with his pupils: The People of the Axe and The People of the Lake recreated life in ancient Britain, the latter produced 'with the approval of' Sir William Boyd Dawkins; The Man Who Changed His Mind was a Boy Scout adventure with a cameo from Robert Baden-Powell; The Glittering Sword was a medieval parable about disarmament.

Writing occupied his spare time during his years as a schoolmaster, and he wrote several plays for the BBC. At the age of 35 he had his first professional production, in London, with Gallow's Glorious, a play about the American slavery abolitionist John Brown.

In 1934 he wrote Love on the Dole, based on Walter Greenwood's novel about unemployment in Salford during the Great Depression – the play was a huge success. Wendy Hiller played the lead in the play, and also made her first film appearance in the Gow-scripted Lancashire Luck.