Pam Gems (1 August 1925 - 13 May 2011 ) was an English playwright. She wrote a number of original plays in addition to adapting works by some of Europe's most prominent playwrights. Gems is likely to be best known for the 1978 musical play Piaf. This was adapted for TV in 1984. In the same years as Gems wrote Piaf, 1978, she attracted a certain amount of controversy with her television drama for ITV Playhouse 'We Never Do What They Want', starring then children's TV presenter Louise Hall-Taylor. Pam Gems only exposure as an actress came in a cameo role as a washerwoman in an adaptation of Orwell's novel '1984'. The film, made in that year, starred John Hurt and Cyril Cusack.