The love affair started in a Bloomsbury pub in the spring of 1936. A young Irish dancer called Caitlin Macnamara sat on a stool at the bar: blonde, blue-eyed and drinking gin. To the drunken Welsh poet who staggered towards her through the smokey fug of The Wheatsheaf, she appeared an angelic beauty. And when finally the poet reached her, eccentrically laying his head in her lap, he mumbled a proposal of marriage.
This unorthodox first encounter between Dylan Thomas and his wife is a central part of the Bohemian mythology that surrounds the memory of one of Britain's best loved creative talents - and is also at the centre of a race between two filmmakers to bring the story to the cinema screen first.
Rival films about this tempestuous relationship go into production in the next few months. Both concentrate on the charismatic and wayward personality of Caitlin: the first, simply called Caitlin, will star Miranda Richardson and former Bond girl Rosamund Pike as her younger self.
The second, with the working title The Best Time of Our Lives, is to star Lindsay Lohan, the 20-year-old Hollywood star, as Caitlin and British actress Keira Knightley, 21, as Vera Phillips, the poet's childhood sweetheart and the woman who went on to develop an intimate relationship with his wife.
Timing will be crucial for the success of either film. The box office is usually much kinder to the first film out on a real-life subject. The triumph of last year's Oscar-winning film Capote, about the life of the American writer Truman Capote, came at a great cost to the second film to be released about the writer's life. Infamous, starring British actor Toby Jones as Capote, yet to come out in Britain, has fared poorly despite good reviews in the United States.
Michael Ohoven, producer of Capote, acknowledged the part timing had to play in the battle between the two films: 'It's a sad phenomenom. Even if in our case the films were very different in tonality, it is easy to say that being the much smaller film, at approximately a third of the budget of Infamous, we would have never had the commercial success had we not been out of the gate first.'
Ohoven admits it 'truly was a race at the end... I estimate that we were probably only one or two weeks faster with delivering our movie. A movie can take years to prepare and ultimately produce, and yet a time frame of 14 days can determine your failure or success.'
The screenplay for The Best Time of Our Lives has been written by Knightley's mother, the playwright Sharman McDonald, and charts the complex emotional bond shared by Thomas, his wife, Vera and her eventual husband William Killick. At its dramatic heart is a violent attack on the poet's home by the Killicks. Vera Phillips and Thomas had met up again in London, where she was working as a singer and he was writing scripts for government propaganda films.
The former lovers were drawn to each other again, but Thomas was now married to Caitlin. Despite their difficult situation, the two women formed a strong connection which continued as Vera went on to marry Killick.
While her husband was posted abroad, a pregnant Vera returned to Wales with the Thomases.
The fabled attack, which involved a machine gun and the detonation of a hand grenade, took place when Killick returned, only to hear neighbourhood gossip about his wife's behaviour.
'The Best Time of Our Lives is to be shot in Wales in the spring,' said the film's publicist, Charles Macdonald. It will be directed by John Maybury and produced by Rebekah Gilbertson, who is the grandaughter of Killick himself. The executive producer is Sarah Radclyffe, who established her name with the British films Wish You Were Here and My Beautiful Laundrette
The part of Thomas is yet to be cast, but among the likely candidates might be Dougray Scott, who went to great lengths to study the role a couple of years ago when he was attached to a third, ill-fated film about the Thomas marriage. The Map of Love, named after a collection of Thomas short stories, was backed by Mick Jagger and was to have starred Emily Watson as Caitlin, but production plans folded two years ago.
In the second new film, Michael Sheen, who is currently playing David Frost on stage in Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon, is to play Thomas opposite Richardson. The young Thomas will be played by Kevin Zegers.
This version of the story is being financially backed by actor Pierce Brosnan, a devoted Thomas fan, who will also play the poet's agent. Caitlin is to be directed by Marc Evans and the screenplay has been written by Jeff Murphy.