Shangri-La (musical) part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame, with several new songs, starring Richard Basehart, Claude Rains, Gene Nelson, Helen Gallagher, and Ghostley reprising her Broadway role. Shangri-La (musical) Shangri-La is a musical with a book and lyrics by James Hilton, Jerome Lawrence, and Robert E. Lee and music by Harry Warren. Based on Hilton's classic 1933 novel "Lost Horizon", it focuses on Hugh Conway, a veteran member of the British diplomatic service, who stumbles across a utopian lamasery high in the Himalayas in Tibet after surviving a plane crash in the mountainous terrain. When the dying High Lama asks him
James Hilton (novelist) his two most remembered books, "Lost Horizon" and "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" while living in a house on Oak Hill Gardens, in Woodford Green in north London. The house still stands, with a blue plaque marking Hilton's residence. By 1938 he had moved to California, and his work became more connected with the Hollywood film industry. While in California, Hilton was also host of one of radio's prestige drama anthologies, "Hallmark Playhouse", from 1948-1952. He married Alice Brown, a secretary at the BBC, just before they left for the United States in 1935, but they divorced in 1937. He then married