It was initially a magazine story, which Eunson later adapted as a novel, a television play starring Brandon DeWilde, and then the film. In The Star, the leading character was largely patterned on Joan Crawford, who had been a close friend of the Eunsons and the godmother of their daughter, the actress Joan Evans, who was named after her.John Dale Eunson was born in Neillsville, Wisconsin, in 1904, where his father was a sheep farmer and later became sheriff. After graduating from Fergus County High School, Eunson attended the University of Southern California for one year but dropped out due to lack of money. He worked as a screen publicist, then became secretary to the novelist and biographer Robert Hughes, who encouraged him to fine-tune his short stories and then helped him to sell them to New York magazines.Hughes also recommended Eunson in 1930 to Ray Long, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, who needed a secretary. In the next three years Eunson rose to be associate editor, then fiction editor, while also being a freelance contributor.

Eunson said later, "I guess I never was a really good secretary, so my bosses were always encouraging me, helping me to do something else." His novel Homestead, based on his childhood on the farm, was published in 1934.Eunson married Katherine Albert, a fan-magazine reporter, in 1931, and in 1934 their only child was born and named after one of the era's great stars. "We had both known Joan Crawford from the start of her career," said Eunson: I worked in publicity and Katherine wrote for Photoplay and Modern Screen. Katherine taught Joan how to handle the press – told her what to say and how to make friends of interviewers.Eunson's first Broadway hit was a collaboration with Hagar Wilde, Guest in the House (1942). It was later filmed with Anne Baxter as an outwardly demure young lady who sets out to wreck a happy household in which only a wise aunt (Aline MacMahon) sees through her fa?e.

With Albert, Eunson wrote the plays Public Relations (1944) and Loco (1946), and in 1952 they collaborated on an original screenplay, The Star, which told of a faded actress obsessed with her past career and legend.The similarities to Crawford included the star's use of the term "Bless you" to members of the set when she finished a scene Crawford was not pleased. Joan Evans, who was being groomed for stardom by producer Sam Goldwyn, had fallen in love with a car salesman and aspiring actor Kirby Weatherley, and the Eunsons asked Crawford to persuade their daughter that she was too young at 17 to contemplate marriage. Crawford invited the young couple to her home, where they were married in her living room. The marriage was successful, but Albert never spoke to Crawford again.Less notable screenplays by the Eunsons included On the Loose (1951), which starred their daughter, Sabre Jet (1953), and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963). They also wrote many scripts for television.Eunson's solo writing includes a children's book of reminiscences, Up on the Rim (1970), an acclaimed autobiographical novel, Philip's Chair (1989), about boyhood pals, and around 50 short stories.Tom Vallance. Colin Banks, graphic designer: born Ruislip, Middlesex 16 January 1932; partner, Banks & Miles 1958-96; Production Editor (with John Miles), Consumers' Association magazines 1964-93; President, Society of Typographic Designers 1988-93, 2000-02; married 1961 Caroline Grigson (one son, and one daughter deceased); died London 9 March 2002. The designer and typographer Colin Banks belonged to the literate and idealistic age of graphic design before the logo lout.

One of Britain's leading typographers, Banks loved letterforms and chose to design books, brochures and identity programmes because he regarded the designer as important in maintaining standards of literacy and culture.The quiet authority of his work reached its widest audience in the 1970s and early 1980s when, as one half of the well-known design partnership Banks & Miles, he was responsible for giving both British Telecom and the Royal Mail their distinctive and well-proportioned house styles. This was in the era directly before state privatisations, the glitzy designer boom and the havoc wreaked on typographic standards by the computer. The graphic designer back then was a decent, well-read chap in a cordoroy jacket with leather patches, a craftsman schooled in hot metal type, who upheld time-honoured principles about how things should look.In this world, Colin Banks was a giant. If the design trends of the past 20 years eventually swept over him in a torrent of facile branding, computerised styling and Armani suits, he needed only to point trenchantly to such mishaps as Consignia to explain how the design business had changed for the worst. And as he despaired of the quick-fix tactics of the British design scene, he found solace elsewhere – in India and continental Europe especially – where his more measured and socially responsible approach to designing earned him many significant commissions and awards. Indeed his very last job before his death was a complicated and beautiful work on early church music in Danish, to be produced shortly by a Copenhagen publisher.Banks was as tenacious as he was talented.