British Noir Directors
Directors of British Noirs , including Americans , Frenchmen et al
List activity
1.1K views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
198 people
- Director
- Writer
- Art Director
Marc Allégret was born on 22 December 1900 in Basel, Switzerland. He was a director and writer, known for The Curtain Rises (1938), Avec André Gide (1951) and Julietta (1953). He was married to Nadine Vogel. He died on 3 November 1973 in Paris, France.- Director
- Production Manager
- Producer
Born in England on Christmas Day, 1905, Lewis Allen first came on the show-biz scene when he was appointed executive in charge of West End and Broadway stage productions for famed impresario Gilbert Miller. Allen also co-directed some of the productions (including the celebrated "Victoria Regina" with Helen Hayes and Vincent Price) before he was lured to Hollywood by Paramount studio head Buddy G. DeSylva. The Uninvited (1944), based on Dorothy Macardle's best-selling novel, made for an auspicious directing debut; its success prompted an immediate follow-up, the suspense thriller The Unseen (1945) (with a script by Raymond Chandler). Otherwise, his filmography leans heavily toward "tough guy" movies of the Alan Ladd-George Raft-Edward G. Robinson school. Allen also directed much TV (Perry Mason (1957), The Big Valley (1965), Mission: Impossible (1966), Little House on the Prairie (1974), many more).- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Paul Almond's television and movie productions have won numerous awards, including: 12 Canadian Film Awards (Genies), 3 Ohio State Awards and other international awards
In 2001, Paul Almond was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada for having "demonstrated an outstanding level of talent and service to Canadians".
In 2007, the Director's Guild of Canada presented Paul Almond with their Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions to Canadian film and television.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Gerry Anderson was born on 14 April 1929 in West Hampstead, London, England, UK. He was a writer and producer, known for Joe 90 (1968), Invasion: UFO (1974) and UFO (1970). He was married to Mary Robins, Sylvia Anderson and Betty Wrightman. He died on 26 December 2012 in Henley-on-Thames, England, UK.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Actor
London-born Michael Anderson began his career in films as an office boy at Elstree studios. By 1938, he had progressed up the ladder to become assistant director for distinguished film makers Noël Coward, David Lean and Anthony Asquith. Shortly after, during wartime with the Royal Signals Corps (Army Kinematograph Service), Anderson made the acquaintance of Peter Ustinov. Upon demobilisation, the 24-year old up-and-coming director secured the release from the military of his 'favourite corporal' and mentor to work as first assistant on Secret Flight (1946) and Vice Versa (1948). For Ustinov's third venture, Private Angelo (1949), Anderson both co-directed and co-wrote the screenplay, but the picture that first put him on the map was to be the patriotic wartime drama The Dam Busters (1955), based on true events. Britain's most successful film of 1955, in turn, led to Anderson being hired by Mike Todd to direct the all-star blockbuster Around the World in 80 Days (1956). A hugely popular box-office hit and winner of five Academy Awards, it elevated Anderson into the realm of more ambitious international productions.
His strong visual style -- in no small way complemented by a fruitful and long-standing collaboration with the cinematographer Erwin Hillier -- became ideally suited for suspenseful thrillers and action subjects like Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958), the sub-Hitchcockian psychological whodunnit The Naked Edge (1961) or the underrated maritime drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) (based on a novel by Hammond Innes and originally intended for Alfred Hitchcock who went on to do North by Northwest (1959) instead). Another little gem is the intricately plotted spy thriller The Quiller Memorandum (1966), tautly directed and noteworthy for supremely well captured Berlin exteriors (a familiarity which stemmed from Anderson having spent some of his early childhood in Berlin and Hillier having worked at Ufa in the 20s before collaborating on Fritz Lang's classic thriller M (1931)). According to Hillier, Anderson also had a reputation for being "superb at handling actors". This is reflected in his films which have often featured big name stars like Gary Cooper, Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier or Alec Guinness.
Moving into science fiction, Anderson made style triumph over content with his (for the time) expensively made dystopian thriller Logan's Run (1976). Though not a big success with critics, the picture won at the box office and helped MGM out of its financial doldrums. Also in this genre, but with less distinction, Anderson directed Millennium (1989) and a miniseries, The Martian Chronicles (1980). A foray into the world of comic strip heroes, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), proved to be one of his rare failures. His more recent work of note has included the Gemini Award-winning TV movie Young Catherine (1991), based on the early life of Russia's Catherine the Great. Vanessa Redgrave, who played Empress Elizabeth, was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy in the Supporting Actress category.
In 1957, Anderson received the Silver Medallion for outstanding work from the Screen Director's Guild of America and was in 2012 also honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of Canada. A Canadian resident since the 1970s, Anderson passed away at his home on the Canadian Sunshine Coast in British Columbia on April 25 2018 at the age of 98.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
A former salesman and journalist, Ken Annakin got into the film industry making documentary shorts. His feature debut, Holiday Camp (1947), was a comedy about a Cockney family on vacation. It was made for the Rank Organization and was a modest success, spawning three sequels, all of which he directed. He worked steadily thereafter, mainly in light comedies. One of his more atypical films was the dark thriller Across the Bridge (1957), based on a Graham Greene story about a wealthy businessman who embezzles a million dollars from his company, kills a man who resembles him and steals his identity so he can escape to Mexico. It boasted an acclaimed performance by Rod Steiger as the villain and a distinct "noir" feel to it, unlike anything Annakin had done before (or, for that matter, since).
In the 1960s he was one of several British directors--e.g., Guy Green, John Guillermin--who specialized in turning out all-star, splashy, big-budget European/American co-productions, shot on the Continent. He was one of the directors of the epic World War II spectacle The Longest Day (1962) and went solo on Battle of the Bulge (1965), both of which were financial--if not exactly critical--successes. He also directed Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (1965), which was less successful. His final film was Genghis Khan: The Story of a Lifetime, a film that was started in 1992 under Annakin's direction but never completed. In 2009 it was restarted again and Annakin was hired to assemble the existing footage for release, but died before completing the job. Italian director Antonio Margheriti finished up and the film was released in 2010.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Former journalist and film critic Leslie Arliss began his film career as a screenwriter in the 1930s, mainly for Gainsborough Pictures. He continued as a writer for ten years, leaving Gainsborough in 1941 when he was offered a chance to direct at Associated British. It wasn't long before he returned to Gainsborough and brought with him a young actor named James Mason, and the films they made together there garnered both of them public recognition. Their first, The Man in Grey (1943), was quite popular with wartime audiences, who found Mason's villainy just what they needed to hiss at during the depths of the war. Their next two films together, A Lady Surrenders (1944) and The Wicked Lady (1945), were also wildly successful, especially the latter with star Margaret Lockwood gaining attention for her appearance in a succession of low-cut (for 1945) dresses. It became the #1 box-office film in Britain for 1946.
Arliss then left Gainsborough for London Films, producer Alexander Korda's company; unfortunately, his tenure there was anything but productive. He and Korda did not get along at all and fought constantly (he was taken off of Korda's Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948), which was completed by Anthony Kimmins--and even Korda himself--but to no avail; it was one of the major flops of 1948). Arliss left London Films under less-than-amicable conditions and it was three years before he made another film. His latter work was a considerable step down in quality from his earlier films, and he wound up his career directing television.- Director
- Writer
John Arnold is known for Comedy Lab (1998).- Director
- Writer
- Actor
British film director Anthony Asquith was born on November 9, 1902, to H.H. Asquith, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his second wife. A former home secretary and the future leader of the Liberal Party, H.H. Asquith served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1908-1916 and was subsequently elevated to the hereditary peerage. His youngest child, Anthony, was called Puffin by his family, a nickname given him by his mother, who thought he resembled one. Puffin was also the name his friends called him throughout his life.
Asquith was active in the British film industry from the late silent period until the mid-1960s. As a director he was highly respected by his contemporaries and had a long and successful career; by the 1960s he was one of only three British directors (the others being David Lean and Carol Reed) who were directing major international motion picture productions. However, Asquith's proclivity for adapting plays for the screen caused an erosion in his critical reputation as a filmmaker after his death. He was faulted for what was perceived as his failure to focus, like his contemporary Alfred Hitchcock, on the cinematic. Asquith was known as an actor's director, and solicited some of the finest film performances from Britain's greatest actors, including Edith Evans and Michael Redgrave.
Although Asquith's first love was music, he lacked musical talent. He channeled his artistic ambitions toward the nascent motion picture, and was instrumental in the formation of the London Film Society to promote artistic appreciation of film. Asquith traveled to Hollywood in the 1920s to observe American film production techniques, and after returning to England, he became a director.
Among his best-known films is Pygmalion (1938), an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's stage play, which he co-directed with its star, Leslie Howard. The film was a major critical success, even in the United States, winning multiple Academy Award nominations. Nobel Prize-winner Shaw, who had been a co-founder of the London Film Society along with Asquith, won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for the film. Asquith had a long professional association with playwright Terence Rattigan, and two of Asquith's most famous and successful pictures were based on Rattigan plays, The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Browning Version (1951). Asquith directed the screen version of Rattigan's first successful play, French Without Tears (1940), in 1940.
Asquith's most successful postwar film was, arguably, his adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest (1952). More than a half-century after it was made, Asquith's film remains the best adaptation of Wilde's work. Ironically, Asquith's father H.H., while serving as Home Secretary, ordered Wilde's arrest for his homosexual behavior. Wilde's arrest, for "indecent behavior", led to his incarceration in the Reading jail and destroyed the great playwright, personally. The Wilde incident stifled gay culture in Britain for the first two-thirds of the 20th century. Another irony of the situation is that H.H.'s youngest son, Anthony, himself was gay.
By the 1960s Asquith was directing Hollywood-style all-star productions, including the episodic The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), once again from a screenplay by Rattigan, and the Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor potboiler The V.I.P.s (1963), also with a screenplay by Rattigan. It is based in an incident in the life of Laurence Olivier, a frequent Asquith collaborator. In 1967 Asquith was tipped to direct the big-screen adaptation of the best-selling novel The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) set to co-star Olivier and Anthony Quinn, but he had to drop out of the production due to ill heath. He died on February 20, 1968, at the age of 65.
The British Academy Award for best music is named the Anthony Asquith Award in his honor.- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Writer
London-born Robert S. Baker served as an artilleryman in the British army during World War II, posted to North Africa (where he met future partner Monty Berman), and later joined the army's film and photography unit, becoming a combat cameraman in Europe. At war's end he and Berman formed Tempean Films to make movies, their first being a Terry-Thomas / Norman Wisdom comedy, Date with a Dream (1948). The company churned out a string of lower-budget "B" pictures, including comedies, mysteries and thrillers, many of them directed by Baker. In 1959 they made a somewhat edgier film than their usual fare, Jack the Ripper (1959), a fictionalized account of the notorious Whitechapel serial killer. The next year they came out with an even grittier crime thriller, The Siege of Sidney Street (1960), about a real-life 1911 shootout between police and a gang of Russian criminals in east London. They next turned out The Hellfire Club (1961), an anemic "adventure" film, which was followed by The Secret of Monte Cristo (1961), one of the lesser entries in the string of pictures based on the classic Alexandre Dumas novel.
Berman and Baker concentrated on television in the 1960s, their main project being as producers of The Saint (1962) series. Baker later joined Gideon C.I.D. (1964) as a producer. When that series ended Baker and "The Saint" star Roger Moore formed Bamore Productions, which produced a feature spin-off of that series, The Fiction-Makers (1968), and then the Moore / Tony Curtis "crimerighting playboys" series The Persuaders! (1971). Baker later produced the series Return of the Saint (1978) and Return to Treasure Island (1986).- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
Roy Ward Baker's first job in films was as a teaboy at the Gainsborough Studios in London, England, but within three years he was working as an assistant director. During World War II, he worked in the Army Kinematograph Unit under Eric Ambler, a writer and film producer, who, after the war, gave Baker his first opportunity to direct a film, The October Man (1947). He then went to Hollywood in 1952 and stayed for seven years, returning to Britain in 1958, when he directed one of his best films, A Night to Remember (1958). During the 1960s and 1970s, Baker directed a number of horror films for Hammer and Amicus. He also directed in British television, especially during the latter part of his career.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Editor
Laslo Benedek was brought to Hollywood from Hungary--where he had been a writer, editor and photographer--by MGM, and his first few films were undistinguished programmers. His third, however, was quite a bit better: Death of a Salesman (1951), the screen version of Arthur Miller's classic play. Although trashed by critics at the time for, among other things, its "staginess" (Benedek said that he wanted to keep the work's theatricality intact), overlooked is the fact that Benedek drew out convincing, evocative performances from Kevin McCarthy, Cameron Mitchell, Fredric March and Mildred Dunnock.
Benedek's next film, however, is the one he'll be remembered for: The Wild One (1953). This granddaddy of all biker flicks is amusingly tame--some might even say lame--by today's standards, but it caused quite a commotion in its day (it was banned in England and was railed against by conservative religious and social pressure groups in the US as yet one more example of how Hollywood was "corrupting the youth of America"). The film is actually not all that much, being rather slow-going and the "bikers" coming across more like bratty teenagers than dangerous rampaging hoods, but it struck a chord with young people and parents alike--for different reasons, of course--and was far and away the most successful film of Benedek's career.- Charles Bennett is known for Painted Pictures (1930).
- Writer
- Director
- Editor
Compton Bennett started out as a bandleader and then became a commercial artist. He turned out a few amateur films that caught the attention of producer Alexander Korda's London Films, and they hired him in 1932 as a film editor. During World War II he directed a few instructional films for the British military and some propaganda shorts for the general public. His feature debut as a director was The Seventh Veil (1945), which was a big success. MGM took note, and he was brought to Hollywood to make films for them. The films he made there weren't particularly well-received--his most successful, King Solomon's Mines (1950), was lauded mainly for its impressive action scenes, which were in fact directed not by Bennett but by Andrew Marton, who received co-director credit--and he returned to Britain a few years later. While there he divided his time between films and television, with an occasional foray into directing theatrical productions. In 1957 he turned out two well-received films, After the Ball (1957) and The Mailbag Robbery (1957). He made his last feature in 1960 and, apart from an occasional foray into television, retired. He died in London in 1974.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Thomas Bentley was born on 23 February 1884 in St George Hanover Square, London, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for After Office Hours (1932), Barnaby Rudge (1915) and The Lackey and the Lady (1919). He died on 23 December 1966 in Bournemouth, England, UK.- Director
- Editor
- Writer
Daniel Birt was born on 23 June 1907 in Mersham, England, UK. He was a director and editor, known for The Deadly Game (1954), Ett kungligt äventyr (1956) and The Interrupted Journey (1949). He died on 15 May 1955 in London, England, UK.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Terry Bishop was born on 21 October 1912 in Chiswick, England, UK. Terry was a director and writer, known for Model for Murder (1959), Cover Girl Killer (1959) and You're Only Young Twice (1952). Terry died on 30 October 1981.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
John Boulting was born on 21 December 1913 in Bray, Berkshire, England, UK. He was a producer and director, known for I'm All Right Jack (1959), Seven Days to Noon (1950) and Private's Progress (1956). He was married to Anne Josephine Flynn, Ann Marion Ware, Jacqueline Helen Duncan and Veronica Davide Davidson. He died on 17 June 1985 in Sunningdale, Berkshire, England, UK.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Roy Boulting was born on 21 December 1913 in Bray, Berkshire, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for Seven Days to Noon (1950), A French Mistress (1960) and The Family Way (1966). He was married to Sandra Payne, Hayley Mills, Enid Munnik, Jean Capon and Marian Angela Warnock. He died on 5 November 2001 in Eynsham, Oxfordshire, England, UK.- Writer
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Muriel Box was born on 22 September 1905 in New Malden, Surrey [now in Kingston upon Thames, London], England, UK. She was a writer and director, known for The Seventh Veil (1945), Mr. Lord Says No (1952) and A Novel Affair (1957). She was married to Gerald Gardiner and Sydney Box. She died on 18 May 1991 in London, England, UK.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
George P. Breakston was born on 20 January 1920 in Paris, France. He was a director and producer, known for Jungle Stampede (1950), Life Returns (1934) and Manster (1959). He died on 19 May 1973 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Alan Bridges was born on 28 September 1927 in Liverpool, England, UK. He was a director and producer, known for American Playhouse (1980), The Hireling (1973) and The Shooting Party (1984). He was married to Ann Castle. He died on 7 December 2013 in the UK.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Anthony Bushell was born on 19 May 1904 in Westerham, Kent, England, UK. He was an actor and producer, known for The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Five Star Final (1931) and A Night to Remember (1958). He was married to Anne Pearce-Serocold and Zelma O'Neal. He died on 2 April 1997 in Oxford, England, UK.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Almost universally considered one of the greatest cinematographers of all time, Jack Cardiff was also a notable director. He described his childhood as very happy and his parents as quite loving. They performed in music hall as comedians, so he grew up with the fun that came with their theatrical life in pantomime and vaudeville. His father once worked with Charles Chaplin. His parents did occasional film appearances, and young Jack appeared in some of their films, such as My Son, My Son (1918), at the age of four. He had the lead in Billy's Rose (1922) with his parents playing his character's parents in the film. Jack was a production runner, or what he would call a "general gopher", for The Informer (1929) in which his father appeared. For one scene he was asked by the first assistant cameraman to "follow focus", which he said was his first real brush with photography of any kind, but he claimed that it was the lure of travel that led to him joining a camera department making films in a studio. He had, however, become impressed with the use of light and color in paintings by the age of seven or eight, and described how he watched art directors in theaters painting backdrops setting lights. His friend Ted Moore was also a camera assistant in this period when both worked in a camera department run by Freddie Young, who would also become a legendary cinematographer. He worked for Alfred Hitchcock during the filming of The Skin Game (1931).
By 1936 Cardiff had risen to being a camera operator at Denham Studios when the Technicolor Company hired him on the basis of what he told them in interview about the use of light by master painters. This led to his operating camera for the first Technicolor film shot in Britain, Wings of the Morning (1937). He finally was offered the full position of director of photography by Michael Powell for A Matter of Life and Death (1946), ironically working in B&W for the first time in some sequences. His next assignment was on Black Narcissus (1947), where he acknowledged the influence of painters Vermeer and Caravaggio and their use of shadow. He won the Academy Award for best color cinematography for this film. Jack certainly got to travel when it was decided to shoot The African Queen (1951) on location in the Congo. Errol Flynn offered Jack the chance to direct The Story of William Tell (1953) that would star Flynn. It would have been the second film made in CinemaScope had it been completed, but the production ran out of money part way through filming in Switzerland.
It has been said that Marilyn Monroe requested that Jack photograph The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). Although he had already directed some small productions, he had a critical breakthrough with Sons and Lovers (1960). He continued directing other films through the 1960s, including the commercial hit Dark of the Sun (1968), but for the most part returned to working for other directors as a very sought-after cinematographer in the 1970s and beyond. He continued to work into the new century, almost until his death. He was made an OBE in 2000 and received a lifetime achievement award at the 73rd Academy Awards.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Michael Carreras was born on 21 December 1927 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK. He was a producer and director, known for Horror of Dracula (1958), The Lost Continent (1968) and What a Crazy World (1963). He died on 19 April 1994 in Chelsea, London, England, UK.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Writer-director John Paddy Carstairs was born Nelson Keys, the son of actor Nelson Keys and the brother of producer Anthony Nelson Keys, in London, England, in 1910. Beginning his career as an assistant cameraman, he worked his way up to screenwriter and made his directorial debut in 1933. While never at the front rank of British directors, he consistently turned out solid, well-crafted--and, more importantly, successful--films that kept him in the director's chair for the next 29 years. In 1953 he was put at the helm of a Norman Wisdom comedy, Trouble in Store (1953), although he wasn't particularly known as a comedy director. Nevertheless, the film was a huge hit in the UK--Wisdom, like most British comics, never caught on in the US--and Carstairs became known as the go-to director for new screen comedians. He made a string of Wisdom comedies, in addition to films for such up-and-comers as Tommy Steele, Frankie Howerd, Bob Monkhouse and Ronald Shiner. While they may not have achieved critical acclaim, audiences nevertheless liked them and, for the most part, they made a potful of money.
After making The Devil's Agent (1962), a spy thriller, Carstairs left the film industry to pursue his two main passions, writing and painting. He died in London, age 60, in 1970.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Henry Cass was born on 24 June 1903 in Hampstead, London, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for Mr. Brown Comes Down the Hill (1965), The Glass Mountain (1949) and Give a Dog a Bone (1965). He was married to Joan Hopkins and Nancy Hornsby. He died on 15 March 1989 in Hastings, Sussex, England, UK.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Born in Brazil in 1897, Alberto Cavalcanti began his film career in France in 1920, working as writer, art director and director. He directed the avant-garde documentary Nothing But Time (1926) ("Nothing but Time"), a portrait of the lives of Parisian workers in a single day. He moved to England in 1933 to join the GPO Film Unit under John Grierson, working as a sound engineer (Night Mail (1936)) then as a producer. He went to work for Ealing Studios during the war, initially as head of Michael Balcon's short film unit until 1946, again working as an art director, producer and director. His notable films as director include Champagne Charlie (1944), The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1947) and I Became a Criminal (1947). After the latter film he moved back to Brazil. There he made Song of the Sea (1953) ("The Song of the Sea") and A Real Woman (1954) ("Woman of Truth") with his own production company. However, his progressive political views caught the attention of the the right-wing Brazilian authorities, and Cavalcanti thought it prudent to return to Europe in 1954. He eventually settled in France, where he continued his work in television. He died in Paris in 1982.- Director
- Art Director
- Art Department
British director Don Chaffey began his career in the film industry in the art department at Gainsborough Pictures. He began directing in 1951, often working on films aimed at children. He branched out into television in the mid-'50s, turning out many of the best episodes of such classic series as Danger Man (1960), The Prisoner (1967) and The Avengers (1961). Although he worked in many film genres, his best work is generally acknowledged to be the crackerjack fantasy Jason and the Argonauts (1963). On the other hand, he was also responsible for the lugubrious, box-office disaster The Viking Queen (1967), one of the few productions from Hammer Films that lost money. In the late 1970s Chaffey traveled to the US and worked primarily there, often in made-for-TV movies.- Writer
- Director
Stephen Clarkson was born on 10 September 1912. He was a writer and director, known for Death Goes to School (1953), Armchair Theatre (1956) and Dual Alibi (1947). He died on 11 January 2004 in the UK.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
St. John Legh Clowes was born in 1907 in East London, South Africa. He was a writer and director, known for No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948), Grand Prix (1934) and Frozen Fate (1929). He died in 1951 in London, England, UK.- Director
- Producer
- Sound Department
Director Lance Comfort began his film career as a camera operator. He also worked as a sound recordist and animator, mostly in British documentaries and medical training films. His first feature was the big-budget but slow-moving Courageous Mr. Penn (1942), a biography of 18th-century political leader William Penn, starring Deborah Kerr, which was derided in some circles in the US for its many wild historical inaccuracies.
He did somewhat better with A.J. Cronin's Hatter's Castle (1942) with James Mason, which was quite successful. He went for lowbrow comedy with Old Mother Riley Detective (1943), one in the string of "drag" comedies with Arthur Lucan in his standard Old Mother Riley character. The series was successful in the UK, but was a complete bust in the US (you'd be hard-pressed to find any American film historians who have even heard of them, let alone seen them). In 1948 he produced and directed the somewhat noir-ish Gothic drama Daughter of Darkness (1948), but he blew it big-time with the disastrous reception to Portrait of Clare (1950). It lost so much money that Comfort's career never recovered from it, and the only work he could scrape up afterwards were quickie "B" pictures and episodic TV series. He made his last film in 1965 and died in Sussex, England, in 1966.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alan Cooke was born on 29 March 1926 in London, England, UK. He was a director and producer, known for Matinee Theatre (1955), The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1971) and Out of This World (1962). He died on 9 October 1994 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Production Manager
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Stany Cordier was born on 23 January 1913 in Metz, Moselle, France. He was a director and production manager, known for Paris Music Hall (1957) and Maigret dirige l'enquête (1956). He died on 24 September 1982 in Asnières-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Arthur Crabtree (1900-1975) was born in Shipley, Yorkshire where he gave up a safe job with a local firm of engineers to become a clapper boy at Elstree Studios. He had always been interested in photography and at the age of 29 he took a calculated risk, which paid off, when sound hit the British studios .From being a lowly clapper boy he rose to become an assistant to a young and up coming director called Alfred Hitchcock learning all he could. Ten years later he moved to Gainsborough Studios where he became a cameraman and then a lighting director working on such films as Kipps (1940) ,The Man in Grey (1943), and Fanny by Gaslight (1944). After that he was noticed by Maurice Ostrer who promoted him to director for Madonna of the Seven Moons' This milestone in British film history had a cast that included Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger and caused great queues at cinemas when it was screened in 1945, Subsequent films by Arthur included Lilli Marlene and Hindle Wakes. His last film was Horrors of the Black Museum in 1959 after which he retired- Director
- Editor
- Writer
Director Charles Crichton's film career began as an editor in 1935 with Alexander Korda's London Films, and in that capacity he worked on such productions as Sanders of the River (1935), Things to Come (1936) and Elephant Boy (1937) (which introduced Sabu to movie audiences). He soon left London Films for Ealing Studios, and rose quickly through the ranks, making his directorial debut with For Those in Peril (1944). Meticulous to the point of being referred to as a "perfectionist", Crichton came into his own at Ealing, a studio noted for its comedies, and among his best known are the quirky but charming The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) and the wildly popular The Lavender Hill Mob (1951). He tried his hand at drama--outside of Ealing--with The Stranger in Between (1952), starring Dirk Bogarde. When Ealing closed its doors in 1959, Crichton's film work petered off, and he turned more and more to television, becoming a prolific director of crime and adventure series. His occasional forays back into feature films were not particularly productive, and for the most part he remained in television, directing episodes of such popular shows as Secret Agent (1964), The Avengers (1961) and Space: 1999 (1975).
At the request of star John Cleese, Crichton agreed to direct Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline in the offbeat comedy A Fish Called Wanda (1988), which turned out to be a huge international hit. It was his biggest success, and also his last film. He died in London at 1999, at age 89.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Jules Dassin was an Academy Award-nominated director, screenwriter and actor best known for his films Rififi (1955), Never on Sunday (1960), and Topkapi (1964).
He was born Julius Samuel Dassin on 18 December 1911, in Middletown, Connecticut, USA. He was one of eight children of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Samuel Dassin and Berthe Vogel. Young Dassin grew up in Harlem, and he attended Morris High School in the Bronx, graduating in 1929. After taking acting classes in Europe, he returned to New York. In 1934, he became and actor with the ARTEF Players (Arbeter Teater Farband), and was a member of the troupe until 1939. Dassin played character roles in Yiddish, mainly in the plays by Sholom Aleichem. But upon discovering "that an actor I was not," he switched to directing and writing. At that time, he joined the Communist Party of the United States, but left the party in 1939, he said, disillusioned after the Soviet Union signed a pact with Adolf Hitler.
Dassin came to Hollywood in 1940, and was an apprentice to directors Alfred Hitchcock and Garson Kanin. In 1941, he made his directorial debut at MGM with adaptation of a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Dassin's best directorial works for Hollywood include such criminal dramas as Brute Force (1947) starring Burt Lancaster; The Naked City (1948), one of the first police dramas shot on the streets of New York; and Night and the City (1950) starring Richard Widmark as a hustler in London who is caught up in his own schemes. While he was assigned by producer Darryl F. Zanuck to make the film, Dassin was accused of affiliation with the Communist Party in his past. Zanuck advised Dassin to "shoot the expensive scenes first, to hook the studio" so the film was finished and released in 1951. Dassin was reported to HUAC in a 1951 testimony by directors Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle. That was enough to sink his career in Hollywood. Dassin was subpoenaed by HUAC in 1952 and eventually became blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
He left the United States for France in 1953 and struggled during his first years in Paris. He was not fluent in French, and his connections were limited. However, Dassin's low-budget film, Rififi (1955), famous for its long heist sequence that was free of dialog, won him the Best Director Award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. There, he met the Greek actress Melina Mercouri. Later, Dassin co-starred opposite Mercouri in his film Never on Sunday (1960), which won the Best Film Award at Cannes in 1960. At that time, the anti-Communist witch hunt in America was fading, and Dassin was accepted again. He received two Academy Award-nominations for directing and screen-writing for Topkapi (1964), starring Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, and Peter Ustinov. Dassin also served as member of jury at the Cannes and several other international film festivals.
Jules Dassin was married twice. He had three children with his first wife, violinist Beatrice Launer. His son, Joe Dassin, was a popular French singer in the 1960s and '70s, with such hits as "Bip Bip," "L'Eté Indien" and "Aux Champs-Èlysées." In 1966, Jules Dassin married Mercouri, an ardent anti-fascist who lost her Greek citizenship for opposing the junta, and the couple was living in Manhattan, remaining very active in their efforts to restore democracy in Greece during the dictatorship of the Colonels. After 1974, the couple returned to Greece, Mercouri became a member of the Greek Parliament, and Culture Minister of Greece. While living in Athens, Dassin was active in the effort to bring the 2500-year-old Elgin marbles of the Parthenon back to Athens from their current location at the British Museum in London. In this and other humanitarian causes, Dassin followed the last will of his late wife.
Jules Dassin died of complications caused by a flu, on April 1, 2008, at age 96, at Hygeia Hospital in Athens, Greece. He is survived by two daughters and grandchildren.- Director
- Producer
Theatre director. Allan George Davis was born in London in 1913 to Australian parents. Davis studied economics at the University of Sydney and joined the Independent Theatre of North Sydney. He made his professional debut with the film "The squatter's daughter" in 1933. In 1934 he moved to London where he furthered his acting career. Following his Army service, 1939-1946, Davis became director of Bexhill Repertory Company in 1946, and director of Bristol Old Vic, 1949-1950. In 1950 he undertook a lecture tour of American university theaters for the Rockefeller Foundation. Davis was a director and producer in London West End theaters from 1954 but returned to Australia in the 1960s to tour for J.C. Williamson's. He directed "No sex please, we're British" for 17 years, 1971-1987. Davis died in London in 2001.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Basil Dean first appeared as an actor on the British stage in 1906. He soon switched careers and began writing and directing plays. Turning to the film industry, he became a producer and director in 1928; many of the films he produced and directed were based on his own stage plays.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
A former stage director, Basil Dearden entered films as an assistant to director Basil Dean (he changed his name from Dear to avoid being confused with Dean). Dearden worked his way up the ladder and directed (with Will Hay) his first film in 1941; two years later he directed his first film on his own. He eventually became associated with writer/producer Michael Relph, and together the two made films on themes not often tackled in British films, such as homosexuality and race relations. In the '60s Dearden embarked on a new phase of his career by directing large-scale action pictures, the best of which was Khartoum (1966), which was a critical and financial success. Not long after completing The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), Dearden was killed in an automobile accident.- Writer
- Director
Only son of John Edward Dell and Gertrude Flowers of Shoreham-On-Sea. Trained as an articled clerk in his father's law firm Dell & Loader before signing up for the Royal Flying Corps in 1917. He was eventually invalided out of the service after a aeroplane crash in training.
Trained as a solicitor, and practiced in Shoreham until getting his break with "Payment Deferred" in 1932. He had married Brenda Maude Cullum in 1924, having one son Richard Flowers Dell (1926-2008). Jeffrey and Brenda divorced in 1933. Jeffrey re-married to Eileen Weatherstone in 1934, divorcing again soon after. He married for a third time to Jill Craigie in 1938, and introduced her to the film world. Jill Craigie later divorced Jeffrey and married Michael Foot. Jeffrey married for a fourth time to Barbara Poxon (who had been his secretary) in 1948, and they had two daughters in 1953 and 1957.
In addition to his film and stage work, Jeffrey wrote three novels: "Nobody Ordered Wolves", "News From Heaven" and "The Hoffman Factor".
Lived at Chase Farm, Haslemere, and later at Bridge Cottage, Liphook until his death in 1985. Buried at Haslemere.- Director
- Editor
- Writer
Born in Bristol, England, Thorold Dickinson began his film career during the silent era as a writer. He went to work for Ealing in the 1930s, first as an editor and then as a director. He directed or produced military training films during World War II, and after the war he turned out a string of unique and well-received films, such as The Queen of Spades (1949), about an elderly woman who strikes a deal with the devil that will enable her to always win at playing cards, and Secret People (1952) a story of resistance against an undemocratic regime which features two sisters in exile. A resister from their past draws the younger of the two into an act of violence which harms neutral civilians.
In 1955 Dickinson directed Hill 24 Doesn't Answer (1955), a drama about the 1947 war for independence in Israel, which was the first Israeli film to be distributed worldwide. The next year he went to work for the UN Department of Public Information as the head of its film division, producing several documentaries. He was appointed president of the International Federation of Film Societies, and in the early 1960s he was offered, and accepted, a position on the teaching staff of the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where he instituted a pioneering postgraduate course in the research and study of Film Form and Film History. He retired from London University in 1971 as its first Professor of Film, and was then awarded the CBE. He died in London in 1984.- Director
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Paul Dickson was born on 18 January 1920 in Cardiff, Wales, UK. He was a director and writer, known for The Undefeated (1951), The Avengers (1961) and Department S (1969). He died on 6 October 2011 in the UK.- Director
- Editor
- Editorial Department
Edward Dmytryk grew up in San Francisco, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. After his mother died when he was 6, his strict disciplinarian father beat the boy frequently, and the child began running away while in his early teens. Eventually, juvenile authorities allowed him to live alone at the age of 15 and helped him find part-time work as a film studio messenger. Dmytryk was an outstanding student in physics and mathematics and gained a scholarship to the California Institute of Technology. However, he dropped out after one year to return to movies, eventually working his way up from film editor to director. By the late 1940s, he was considered one of Hollywood's rising young directing talents, but his career was interrupted by the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a congressional committee that employed ruthless tactics aimed at rooting out and destroying what it saw as Communist influence in Hollywood. A lifelong political leftist who had been a Communist Party member briefly during World War II, Dmytryk was one of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" who refused to cooperate with HUAC and had their careers disrupted or ruined as a result. The committee threw him in prison for refusing to cooperate, and after having spent several months behind bars, Dmytryk decided to cooperate after all, and testified again before the committee, this time giving the names of people he said were Communists. He claimed to believe he had done the right thing, but many in the Hollywood community--even those who came along long after the committee was finally disbanded--never forgave him, and that action overshadowed his career the rest of his life. In the 1970s, as his directing career ground to a halt, Dmytryk recalled some advice once given him by Garson Kanin, and returned to academic life, this time as a teacher. From 1976 to 1981 he was a professor of film theory and production at the University of Texas at Austin, and in 1981, was appointed to a chair in filmmaking at the University of Southern California, a position he held until about two years before his death. During his teaching career, he also authored several books on various aspects of filmmaking, as well as two volumes of memoirs.- Director
- Editor
- Editorial Department
British director Clive Donner was born in West Hampstead, London, England. By age 18 he was already working in the film business, as an office clerk at Denham Studios. He eventually became an editor and then graduated to the director's chair. After making a series of TV commercials, he made his theatrical directorial debut with The Secret Place (1957). In the 1960s he went from smaller, harder-edged black-and-white films to more commercial, "now" films, such as Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968), What's New Pussycat (1965) and the disastrous flop Alfred the Great (1969). He worked only sporadically in features after that--two more bombs, The Nude Bomb (1980) and Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981) didn't help matters--and he returned, for the most part, to television. Among his best work there were a critically acclaimed filming of Frederic Raphael's thriller Rogue Male (1976) and a faithful and well-received adaptation of Charles Dickens' famous novel, A Christmas Carol (1984) with George C. Scott as Scrooge. Unfortunately, that was followed by the notorious Arthur the King (1983), a bizarre, convoluted and disjointed mess about which the less said, the better.- Producer
- Director
- Additional Crew
Patrick Dromgoole was born on 30 August 1930 in Iquique, Tarapacá, Chile. He is a producer and director, known for Robin Hood (1984), Pretenders (1972) and Suspense (1962). He has been married to June Morrow since 1991. He was previously married to Jennifer Davis.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Peter Duffell was born on 10 July 1922 in Canterbury, Kent, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for BBC2 Playhouse (1973), The Avengers (1961) and Man in a Suitcase (1967). He was married to Rosslyn Audrey Cliffe and ??. He died on 12 December 2017 in the UK.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
David Eady was born on 22 April 1924 in London, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for Play Safe (1978), Where's Johnny? (1974) and Faces in the Dark (1960). He died on 5 April 2009.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Maurice Elvey was born in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, England, the oldest son of William Clarence Folkard, an inspecting engineer, and Sarah Anna Seward Folkard (formerly Pearce). He never had a formal education, and was working on the streets of London by the age of nine after having run away from home. For a time he worked as a page boy in the Hyde Park Hotel, and a lucky encounter with a wealthy American set him on the road to a career in first the theatre and then in films. It was while in New York when working as a stage producer that he saw his first film, The Flying Dutchman (1923). This made such an impression on him that when he came back to England he was determined to produce and direct films; thus began a career spanning 44 years, during which time he made over 300 feature films and innumerable shorts. Amongst the "firsts" that Maurice Elvey can claim as a director are: Gaumont's first talking film (High Treason (1929)) and the first British colour film Sons of the Sea (1939)). Carol Reed and David Lean began their distinguished careers in film by working for him, and he directed Gracie Fields in her first movie, Sally in Our Alley (1931). Maurice Elvey was the older brother of Fred V. Merrick, and during the 1920s and 1930s they worked on a number of films together. In May 1996 the world premiere of a long-lost film about David Lloyd George, directed by Elvey, took place in Cardiff more than 70 years later than scheduled. The three-hour film was suppressed on the eve of its release under circumstances that have still not been fully explained. The film was acclaimed by cinema historians as a milestone in film making, and it is believed that had it been released in 1918, as originally planned, it may well have changed the course of British cinema.
Maurice Elvey was married three times. His first marriage took place on 31st December 1910 to Adeline Maud Charlton Preston (aka actress 'Philippa Preston'. This marriage ended in divorce. He then married Florence Hill Clarke (a sculptor) on 2nd February 1916. This marriage, too, ended in divorce. On 13th January 1923 he married Isabella Reed (aka actress Isobel Elsom), but this marriage also ended in divorce. As Elvey's niece and god-daughter I was privileged to unveil a plaque in April 1997 at the Green Dragon Museum, Stockton-on-Tees as part of the Centenary of Cinema Celebrations.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
The son of a struggling businessman, Cy Endfield--born Cyril Raker Endfield--worked hard to be admitted to Yale University in 1933. While completing his education he became enamored with progressive theatre and appeared in a New Haven production of a minor Russian play in 1934. He was also profoundly influenced by such friends as writer Paul Jarrico, who was in Hollywood and who advocated liberal and leftist views. For several years Endfield worked as a director and choreographer with avant-garde theatre companies in and around New York and Montreal. He led his own repertory company of amateur players in performances of musicals and satirical revue at resorts in the Catskills.
Endfield had another string to his bow, having established a not inconsiderable reputation as master of the art of micro magic, particularly card tricks. In a circuitous way this brought him to Hollywood in 1940. There have been conflicting stories as to how he came to the attention of Orson Welles, who was known to have a long-standing fascination with magic. Endfield first met Welles in a magic shop, but it was his producer and business manager Jack Moss, himself a magician, who hired Endfield for the Mercury Theatre as a "general factotum". Moss wanted to enhance his own skills in order to confound Welles, who had engaged him in the first place as a tutor for performing magic on stage. In return for his expertise, Endfield was permitted to sit in on the making of Journey Into Fear (1943) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), learning valuable lessons in the process. By 1942 he was ready with his first film, a 15-minute-long documentary about the danger of rampant capitalism, entitled Inflation (1943). The witty little piece was a subtle attack on corporate greed and corruption and featured well-known actor Edward Arnold as a devil in businessman garb. An outspoken social critic, who had flirted briefly with the Young Communist League back in his days at Yale, Endfield was from the outset on a collision course with the establishment. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce banned his film as "excessively anti-capitalist" and kept it from public view for half a century.
Following wartime service, Endfield wrote several scripts for radio and television. He directed a number of short documentaries for MGM in 1946, and followed this with his motion picture debut, Gentleman Joe Palooka (1946), based on a popular comic strip character, shot in eight days at "Poverty Row" studio Monogram Pictures. He also directed a B-mystery, The Argyle Secrets (1948), from his own earlier radio play, followed by one of the better entries in the "Tarzan" series, Tarzan's Savage Fury (1952). Unfortunately, the picture did poorly at the box office. The reason for this, producer, Sol Lesser suggested later, was because Lex Barker (as "Tarzan") had been given too many lines to speak and "nearly talked himself to death". It was not until Endfield's harrowing indictment of mob rule, The Sound of Fury (1950), that he "arrived" as a director of note. That same year he helmed another independently produced minor masterpiece (on a budget of $500,000), the stylish and moody film noir The Underworld Story (1950). In this scathing attack on unscrupulous journalism, with the lead character being inherently unsympathetic, Endfield elicited one of the finest performances of his career from Dan Duryea.
The ideas and sentiments expressed in these films were ill-timed, in that they drew the attention of HUAC--The House Un-American Activities Committee, which was tasked with rooting out Communists and other "subversives" in the entertainment industry--which particularly denounced "Sound of Fury" as being un-American. Though never a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, Endfield found himself "named" as a sympathizer. Preferring to leave the country rather than inform on others to the FBI, he settled his affairs and left for a new career in Britain in December 1951. To avoid problems with distribution in the US, for the first few years he worked under pseudonyms (such as "Hugh Raker") and on two occasions allowed a friend of his, director Charles de la Tour, to act as a 'front'. He used his own name again for the offbeat action film Hell Drivers (1957). This uncompromisingly tough working-class melodrama featured Stanley Baker, with whom Endfield formed a production company in the 1960s. Baker eventually starred in six of Endfield's films, including the routinely scripted drama Sea Fury (1958) about tugboat sailors and the rather over-the-top Sands of the Kalahari (1965). From the late 1950's, Endfield became also increasingly involved in turning out television commercials. He also worked in the theatre again, directing Neil Simon's play "Come Blow Your Horn" at the West End.
Certainly the most visually impressive and successful of Endfield's films is Zulu (1964), the epic story of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879 between a small contingent of British troops and a vastly superior force of Zulu tribesmen. The original story was penned by military writer John Prebble and Endfield had written the screenplay as early as 1959. After several abortive attempts, he was able to parlay his way into the offices of producer Joseph E. Levine in Rome and was finally given the go-ahead. Enhanced by John Barry's rousing score, "Zulu" is a supremely well-choreographed "battle ballet"--the battle scenes constitute well over half the screen time), with numerous lateral tracking shots of the main protagonists, which effectively draw the audience into the heart of the action. The social element is concerned with British imperialism and class structure, as two officers from different backgrounds are forced to pull together in order to stay alive. As the supercilious upper-crust Lt. Bromhead, Michael Caine, then relatively unknown, began on his path to fame with an excellent performance, alongside Stanley Baker. Historical incongruities apart, "Zulu" succeeded as pure spectacle, much in the same way as the big-budget Hollywood epics of the same period.
Endfield lost interest in filmmaking after shooting the anti-war movie Universal Soldier (1971). This was in part due to the fact that most of his films had failed to make much money. After the death of his friend Stanley Baker in 1976, Endfield devoted himself to his "technical period". He manufactured a gold-and-silver chess set as commemoration for a famous match between grand masters Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1972 (only 100 were ever produced). In 1980 he invented the first pocket word processing system, the "MicroWriter", which had re-chargeable batteries and a 14-character LCD display.
In 1955 Endfield had co-authored a very successful book, "Cy Endfield's Entertaining Card Magic" (with Lewis Ganson), which had been well-received by amateur and professional magicians alike. In fact, one of his admirers, and occasional collaborators, was the famous micro magician Dai Vernon. Many of the sleight-of-hand routines in the book were developed by Endfield himself and related to the reader in a manner befitting a consummate storyteller. Endfield's passion for performing magic remained with him to the end. The multi-talented polymath resided in Britain until his death in April 1995.- Director
- Editor
- Editorial Department
Terence Fisher was born in Maida Vale, England, in 1904. Raised by his grandmother in a strict Christian Scientist environment, Fisher left school while still in his teens to join the Merchant Marine. By his own account he soon discovered that a life at sea was not for him, so he left the service and tried his hand at a succession of jobs ashore. It was during this time that he discovered the cinema, entering the film industry as "the oldest clapper boy in the business." One day, almost as a lark, he applied to J. Arthur Rank Studios to become a film editor. To his astonishment, he was accepted. In 1947, at the age of 43, he made his directorial debut with a supernatural comedy called Colonel Bogey (1948)--a foreshadowing of things to come.
For the next few years he switched between "A"-film assignments (Noël Coward's _The Astonished Heart (1948)_, So Long at the Fair (1950) with Jean Simmons and Dirk Bogarde and Lost Daughter (1949) with Herbert Lom) and a succession of "B" films, which enabled him to support his wife and daughter. Typical of these programmers are Three Stops to Murder (1953) and Spaceways (1953), efficient but uninspired films that show little in the way of personality.
His break came in 1956 when, at the age of 52, he was asked to helm Hammer Studios' remake of Frankenstein (1931). The result, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), broke box-office records and enraged critics worldwide who were unaccustomed to its plethora of hearty bloodletting. The Eastmancolor shocker set a new standard for horror films and helped to make Fisher, Hammer and stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee into bankable commodities. With its emphasis on realistic character interplay over melodramatic conventions, the film established Fisher's personal approach to horror, which stood in direct defiance to the old Universal films--in fact, Fisher flatly refused to watch James Whale's 1931 version for fear that it might influence his vision.
More remakes followed. Fisher actively sought to remake Dracula (1931), and the results proved to be both aesthetically and commercially superior to "Curse of Frankenstein". Horror of Dracula (1958) proved to be universally popular and is commonly held as Fisher's--and Hammer's--finest work. It may or may not be, but it does remain the freshest and most vibrant big-screen reworking of the story; even Francis Ford Coppola in his remake failed to recapture its vigor and sense of urgency.
Fisher's subsequent films tended to place less emphasis on shock effects and more on complex emotional interplay. For example, the titular characters of The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) and The Phantom of the Opera (1962) are more sympathetic than the so-called "normal" characters, while Fisher's fascinating Freudian take on the Dr. Jekyll story--The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)--offers a homely old Dr. Jekyll who transforms into a virile man about town named Edward Hyde. Similarly, The Gorgon (1964) disappointed schlock fans by offering a haunting story of doomed love in place of the conventional Hammer-style shocker. Following the commercial failure of "Phantom"--Hammer's most expensive film to that point--Fisher was booted out for a brief period. During this time lesser talents like Freddie Francis were entrusted with the franchises that Fisher had helped to establish. Invariably the results were inferior. Despite his hatred for sci-fi, which stood in contrast to his confessed love for horror, Fisher made good work of The Devil Rides Out (1968) precursor The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) (with Dennis Price), while Night of the Big Heat (1967) (again with Lee and Cushing) benefited from his ability to suggest pent-up passion and paranoia.
Back at Hammer after this brief hiatus, Fisher resurrected Christopher Lee's count in the under-rated, poetic Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) before detailing the further adventures of Baron Frankenstein in Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and his last film, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974). All three films offer subtle variations on the character of the Baron, played by the impeccable Cushing, thus emphasizing Fisher's unique ability to lend complex, credible characterization to seemingly formula-bound material. "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed", an unusually bitter film which mirrors the nihilism of the late 1960s, remains Fisher's finest, most multi-layered work, despite its lack of popularity. At the center of Fisher's work is a fascinating moral dilemma: the seductive appeal of evil vs. the overzealous, frequently close-minded representatives of good. The consistency of theme in Fisher's work, coupled with a distinctive style achieved through precise framing and a dynamic editing style, refutes the idea that he was merely a hack for hire, while lending his films a recognizable signature.
Best films: "So Long at the Fair", Lost Daughter (1949), "Dracula", The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Mummy (1959), The Stranglers of Bombay (1959), "Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll", The Brides of Dracula (1960), "Curse of the Werewolf", The Phantom of the Opera (1962), "The Gorgon", "The Earth Dies Screaming", "Dracula--Prince of Darkness" and "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed".
Terence Fisher died in 1980 at the age of 76.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Richard firmly established his credentials with such epics as The Vikings (1958) , 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and Barabbas (1961) and also proved to be a master of intimate drama with Compulsion (1959) , which won Cannes Festival awards for the male stars. He won an Academy Award for one of his earliest films - a documentary Design for Death (1947) . In 1947 the rapidly rising director met Stanley Kramer and Carl Foreman who hired him for their first film together So This Is New York (1948) , One of his most memorable accomplishments 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) which grossed well over $25 million since it's release in 1953.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Gordon Flemyng was born on 7 March 1934 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He was a director and producer, known for The Avengers (1961), Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and The Split (1968). He died on 12 July 1995 in London, England, UK.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Bryan Forbes was born on July 22, 1926 in Stratford, London, England as John Theobald Clarke. He was an actor, writer, and director, known for The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Whisperers (1967) and Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964). He was married to Nanette Newman and Constance Smith. He died on May 8, 2013 in Virginia Water, Surrey, England.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
British director Walter Forde started his show-business career on the stage of the music halls of northern England. He entered the film business as a screenwriter but became an actor in 1920, in a series of two-reel comedies he wrote himself. He spent some time in Hollywood, but not much happened and he came back to Britain in 1925. He went to work for Gainsborough and began directing. The studio was impressed with the results, and began to hand him its "A"-list projects. Several of his films, such as The Ghost Train (1931) and The Gaunt Stranger (1931), were well received by critics. He worked in a variety of genres, mostly comedies, but he turned out the occasional thriller or mystery. His star began to wane during the war years, and his postwar films didn't live up to his pre-war ones. He made his last film in 1949.
He died in 1987 at age 84 in Los Angeles, California.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
During his last years at school he spent most of his time writing a thesis on 'the future of film' On leaving school he joined Gaumont British Studios at Lime Grove as an apprentice to a stills photographer for a year. He claimed this taught him more about the art of photography than any other form of training could. He then became a clapper boy at B.I.P. Studios at Elstree then moved to British Dominion where he became a a camera assistant. Next was a move to Pinewood and his call up for war duty much of which was spent as a one man film unit based at Aldershot where he learnt more about his craft than about soldering.. After the war he returned to Shepperton Studios to work for Alexander Korda and Powell and Pressburger. He also worked for John Huston on 'Moby Dick' for which he was responsible for all the second unit photography and special effects.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Charles Frank was born on 23 January 1910 in Belgium. He was a director and writer, known for Disobedient (1953), The Inheritance (1947) and Rheingold Theatre (1953). He died on 24 April 1997.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
On the stage since childhood, Thornton Freeland went to work for Vitagraph in 1918, rising in the ranks from assistant cameraman to director, and made his directorial debut, Three Live Ghosts (1929), just at the dawn of the sound era. A specialist in light romantic comedies and musicals, Freeland alternated between making films in the US and England in the 1930s and 1940s. He retired from the film business in 1949.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
London-born Harold French made his name on the stage, both as an actor and director. He crossed over to films, making his acting debut in 1920. He became a director shortly before the beginning of World War II, debuting with The Cavalier of the Streets (1937), and made a well-received adaptation of A.E.W. Mason's thriller, Secret Mission (1942). He didn't score again until 1948, with My Brother Jonathan (1948). Known more for his romantic dramas and comedies, French switched to a period action piece, Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue (1953). He directed his last film, The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955) in 1955 and went back to writing. Toward the end of his career he returned to directing in the theatre. While he may not have been classified among the top-ranked British directors, he nevertheless turned out many well-made, entertaining films over his 20-year-plus career.- Production Manager
- Additional Crew
- Director
Born in Detroit, Cambridge-educated Seymour Friedman entered films in 1937 as an assistant editor, eventually graduating to assistant director. After WW II service, he returned to the film industry as a director, mainly of routine, low-budget action films, many for Columbia Pictures, debuting with Trapped by Boston Blackie (1948). After his film career ended, Friedman, like many of his fellow B directors, went into the television industry. However, unlike them, it was as a production executive rather than as a director.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Toronto-born Sidney J. Furie has enjoyed an incredibly distinguished career that has spanned more than five decades. Having dabbled in every genre, Furie has directed films starring Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Robert Redford, Diana Ross, Michael Caine, Peter O'Toole, Rodney Dangerfield, Barbara Hershey, Gene Hackman, Donald Sutherland, 'Laurence Olivier' (qav) and countless others.
He directed the first two feature-length fiction films ever made in English Canada, A Dangerous Age (1957) and A Cool Sound from Hell (1959), both independently financed, before emigrating to London in 1960. In 1961 he directed five feature films in a single year, before finally scoring his first box-office success with Wonderful to Be Young! (1961), starring the "British Elvis Presley", Cliff Richard. The critical and commercial success of Furie's 1963 British New Wave film The Leather Boys (1964), a kitchen-sink drama starring Rita Tushingham and Dudley Sutton, delivered him to the attention of high-powered producer Harry Saltzman, who hired him to direct the groundbreaking film The Ipcress File (1965), which won the BAFTA award for Best Picture. Michael Caine became an overnight star because of the film's success. The film also screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Furie then emigrated to Hollywood to direct Marlon Brando in The Appaloosa (1966) and Frank Sinatra in The Naked Runner (1967) for Universal and Warner Brothers, respectively. Paramount Pictures, then under the aegis of the new Gulf+Western management regime, hired Furie in 1967. He would work as a Paramount filmmaker for the next eight years. Beginning in 1968, he directed five films for the studio. His box-office hit Lady Sings the Blues (1972) was nominated for five Academy Awards and was Paramount's second biggest money-maker that year, behind only The Godfather (1972).
In 1981 he directed The Entity (1982), a cult classic that was named by Martin Scorsese as the fourth best horror film ever made, ranking ahead of both The Shining (1980) and Psycho (1960). Furie was assigned to direct Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), but was challenged by substantial last-minute budget cuts and a script he could not change (engineered personally by Christopher Reeve).
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s he returned to his native Canada to helm a series of films, often direct-to-video pictures, ranging from the war drama Going Back (2001) to the Canadian-British co-production Rock My World (2002), a comedy starring Peter O'Toole and Joan Plowright. Other career highlights include The Boys in Company C (1978) (one of the first Vietnam War pictures about combat soldiers, later to provide the basis for Full Metal Jacket (1987)), the underrated action epic Hit! (1973), and the "Iron Eagle" series. He has also maintained dual citizenship between the U.S. and Canada. In 2010, he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Directors Guild of Canada.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alan Gibson was born on 28 April 1938 in London, Ontario, Canada. He was a director and producer, known for The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), Journey to the Unknown (1968) and 1990 (1977). He died on 5 July 1987 in London, England, UK.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Lewis Gilbert was a British film director, producer and screenwriter best known for Alfie (1966), as well as three James Bond films: You Only Live Twice (1967), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979).
He also directed Reach for the Sky (1956), Sink the Bismarck! (1960), Educating Rita (1983) and Shirley Valentine (1989).
For his work on Alfie, Gilbert was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and an Golden Globe for best director.
In 2001 he was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute, the highest accolade in the British film industry.
Gilbert was married to Hylda Tafler for 53 years, until her death in June 2005.
He died from natural causes on 23 February 2018 at the age of 97.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Sidney Gilliat, the English director, screenwriter, and producer, was born on February 15, 1908 in Edgely, Cheshire, England. He began his screen-writing career in the silent movie era, writing inter-titles, going uncredited for his contributions to Honeymoon Abroad (1928), Champagne (1928), and Week-End Wives (1929). He first entered into a working relationship with director Alfred Hitchcock on The Manxman (1929), for which he did uncredited research. Ten years later, he would help write the dialog for the director's Jamaica Inn (1939). He eventually became a credited screenwriter in the 1930s, with A Gentleman of Paris (1931).
He partnered with Frank Launder, whom he first worked with uncredited on The Greenwood Tree (1929), and together they wrote, directed and produced almost 40 movies between their first credited collaboration Facing the Music (1933) through The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery (1966), which they also co-directed. For Hitchcock, they co-wrote the classic The Lady Vanishes (1938). They also wrote Night Train to Munich (1940) for Carol Reed. Their collaboration is most famous for generating the St. Trinian's films, most notably The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954), which was directed by Launder and featured a tour de force performance by Alastair Sim. Sim was also the star of their The Green Man (1956), for which they received second straight Best British Screenplay nomination from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Sidney Gilliat died on May 31, 1994 in Wiltshire, England. He was 86 years old.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
John Gilling was born on 29 May 1912 in London, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for The Pirates of Blood River (1962), The Gamma People (1956) and Murder Will Out (1952). He died on 22 November 1984 in Madrid, Spain.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
One of Britain's foremost television producers, Gerard Glaister was responsible for a string of top rating hit series including Dr Finlay's Casebook, Secret Army, Colditz, The Expert and Howard's Way.
His biggest success was the road haulage family drama The Brothers (1972-76), which he both devised and produced. Starring Jean Anderson, Patrick O'Connell and Richard Easton, the boardroom and bedroom battles of this squabbling family became a firm Friday then Sunday, night favourite and was later sold to several countries.
Howard's Way (1985-90) was described as Britain's answer to Dynasty and was set on the River Hamble. Starring Maurice Colbourne and Jan Harvey, the plots usually involved dodgy business deals, gaudy lifestyles and flashy women.
Glaister was born in 1915, the son of a Royal Navy surgeon. He studied acting at RADA and made his West End acting debut in 1939 before serving in the RAF.
During the war he was the skipper of a Blenheim bomber and then became a photo reconnaisance pilot in the Western Desert, where he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
After being demobbed he worked in repertory before joining the BBC as a director in 1957.
He worked for nine years on BBC's Dr Finlay's Casebook, the Scottish medical drama which starred Bill Simpson and Andrew Cruickshank. In 1968 he produced the BBC2 detective series, The Xpert, which featured Marius Goring as a pathologist helping police with their investigations.
After the enormous success of The Brothers, Glaister co-devised with Brian Degas one of the BBC's biggest hits of the seventies, Colditz (1972-4), the true life drama series about prisoners of war attempting to escape from Colditz castle. The show revived the flagging career of Robert Wagner, who played Canadian airman Phil Carrington, and also featured a host of leading British character actors including Jack Hedley, Edward Hardwicke, Bernard Hepton, Geoffrey Tooone and Jeremy Kemp. The series was based on the book by Major Pat Reid, a survivor of Colditz, who also acted as technical advisor.
With Wilfred Greatorex, Glaister went on to create another wartime hit. Secret Army (1977-79) was a series about the activities of Lifeline, an underground resistance movement in Belgium during the Second World War.
Glaister produced more than 30 television series and in his later career he both produced and devised the air freight company series Buccaneer (1980) and Trainer (1991), a BBC weekly drama in which a young trainer tries to succeed in the competitive world of horse racing. Shortly after Trainer finished Glaister retired from television.- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Director
Bert Glazer was born on 4 December 1895 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an assistant director and director, known for Women Without Men (1956), Shack Out on 101 (1955) and Nancy Goes to Rio (1950). He was married to Eve F.. He died on 17 December 1966 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Australian-born Alf Goulding was a former vaudevillian who became a director specializing in comedy shorts. He directed Harold Lloyd comedies for Hal Roach, and in the early 1920s joined Mack Sennett, then turned out two-reelers at RKO and Columbia, sometimes featuring Edgar Kennedy. In England after World War II, he directed a slew of "quota quickies", low-budget films made to fulfill a government requirement that a certain percentage of films shown in England be produced in England. He was a close friend of Stan Laurel, and directed one of Laurel and Oliver Hardy's best features, A Chump at Oxford (1940).- Director
- Editor
- Producer
Victor M. Gover was born on 22 February 1908. Victor M. was a director and editor, known for Strangler's Morgue (1946), Murder at Scotland Yard (1952) and King of the Underworld (1952). Victor M. died on 21 June 1970 in London, England, UK.- Director
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Godfrey Grayson was born on 2 August 1913 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for Meet Simon Cherry (1949), Room to Let (1950) and To Have and to Hold (1951). He was married to Ida Nannestad Hassing. He died on 1 June 1998 in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, UK.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Guy Green is well known to film audiences. Formerly a cinematographer, he was the first British D.P. to receive an Academy Award for his black-and-white photography on David Lean's Great Expectations (1946). He founded the British Society of Cinematographers together with Freddie Young and Jack Cardiff.
Green worked with Lean on several films, and it was this close association that inspired him to give up cinematography at the height of his career to become a director. While directing two early pictures, Triple Deception (1956) and Desert Patrol (1958), Green became associated with actors Richard Attenborough and Michael Craig, and The Angry Silence (1960) was first conceived when the three were involved in filming "Sea Of Sand" in the 140-degree heat of the Libyan desert. The film became a landmark in the careers of all concerned, and brought Green international attention. It was Britain's first entry at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the International Critic's Award.
"The Angry Silence" was followed by The Mark (1961), which was critically applauded both in the US and Europe. Rod Steiger and Stuart Whitman give outstanding performances and Whitman was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor. The picture received the Samuel Goldwyn International Award and many other accolades.
Next came Light in the Piazza (1962), Green's first American production for MGM, followed by Diamond Head (1962) and the much acclaimed A Patch of Blue (1965). The screenplay for "Patch Of Blue," which was written by Green, was nominated for a Writer's Guild award and later received five Academy nominations, including Best Actress for newcomer Elizabeth Hartman. Shelley Winters received an Academy Award for her supporting performance as the mother.
Green then directed Luther (1974), the screen version of John Osborne's play, for the prestigious American Film Theater, with Stacy Keach in the leading role. Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough (1975) followed and subsequently he has directed a number of important made-for-television movies.
Born in the west of England, Green had a love of movies at a very young age. His first job was as a projectionist aboard the ocean liner The Majestic, which brought him to America for the first time. He also worked in London as a portrait photographer and as an assistant cameraman for an advertising agency. Eventually he managed to land a job as a camera assistant at Shepperton Studios in London and worked his way up from there.
He met his wife Josephine while they were both working on David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948)/ They have two children, Marilyn and Michael, who both work in the film industry.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Edmond T. Gréville was born on 20 June 1906 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. He was a director and writer, known for Veertig jaren (1938), Temptation (1959) and The Hands of Orlac (1960). He was married to Vanda Gréville. He died on 26 May 1966 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Richard M. Grey was born on 19 November 1916 in London, England, UK. Richard M. is a director and writer, known for Eyes That Kill (1947), A Gunman Has Escaped (1948) and Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Disappeared (1951).- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Val Guest began his career as an actor on the British stage and in early sound films. He ran the one-man London office of "The Hollywood Reporter" until an encounter with director Marcel Varnel led to a screen writing job at Gainsborough Studios. Guest's directing career began in the early 1940s with a Ministry of Information short about the perils of sneezing (!), an inauspicious start to a lengthy roster of films that includes the science-fiction classics The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), Quatermass 2 (1957), The Abominable Snowman (1957) and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961). He was married to the actress Yolande Donlan from 1954 until his death in 2006, aged 94.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
John Guillermin was born on 11 November 1925 in London, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for The Towering Inferno (1974), Death on the Nile (1978) and King Kong (1976). He was married to Maureen Connell and Mary Guillermin. He died on 27 September 2015 in Topanga Canyon, California, USA.- Editor
- Director
- Editorial Department
Gordon Hales was born in 1916 in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, UK. He was an editor and director, known for Village of the Damned (1960), Return to Sender (1963) and The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre (1959). He died in 1994 in London, England, UK.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Robert James Hamer was born in 1911 along with his twin sister Barbara, the son of Owen Dyke Hamer, a bank clerk, and his wife, Annie Grace Brickell. He was educated at Cambridge University where he wrote some poetry and was published in a collection 'Contemporaries and Their Maker', along with the spy Donald Maclean.
Hamer's cinematic career began as a clapper boy at London Films in 1934, and by 1938 he was on the editing staff. He worked as an editor on Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939) and worked briefly for the GPO Film Unit. He joined Ealing in 1941 as an editor, becoming an associate producer in 1943. He first made a name for himself as a director with the "The Haunted Mirror" segment in the 1945 omnibus film Dead of Night (1945).
At Ealing he directed one of the classic British comedies, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which Alec Guinness played eight roles. Hamer was nominated for the Golden Lion at the 1949 Venice Film Festival for his work on the film, as he was in 1954 for directing Guinness in The Detective (1954), which was based on G.K. Chesterton's short stories (Hamer also also directed Guinness in the 1955 romantic comedy To Paris with Love (1955) at Rank and the thriller The Scapegoat (1959), which was based on the Daphne Du Maurier novel, for Du Maurier-Guinness/MGM).
Hamer's last directorial effort was 1960's School for Scoundrels (1960) with Terry-Thomas and Alastair Sim. He died in London on December 4, 1963, and was buried at Llandegley.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
Typically British stiff-upper-lip war dramas and action adventure laced with moments of sophisticated comedy were Guy Hamilton's trademark. The son of a British diplomat, he spent most of his youth with his family in France, seemingly destined to be groomed for a career in the diplomatic service. Growing up, he became enthralled with French cinema (and, particularly, with the films of Jean Renoir). This instilled in him a burning ambition to become a director himself. In 1939 Hamilton got his first job as a clapper boy with Victorine Studios in Nice (now known as Studios Riviera). He worked his way up the hard way via the accounting department and as a producer's assistant. At the outbreak of World War II, British personnel were evacuated from France and Hamilton found work in the cutting room of British Paramount News which provided him with an excellent background in editing (albeit briefly--his career was soon interrupted by wartime duties in the Royal Navy with the 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla).
After the war, Hamilton got back into the movie business as a third assistant director (an experience he later described as amounting -- more or less -- to be a "gofer" and tea boy for the first assistant director). His big break eventually arrived courtesy of Carol Reed who took him under his wing as first assistant director for The Fallen Idol (1948). Reed became his mentor and a kind of father figure and exerted a profound influence on the budding filmmaker. Hamilton went on to work with Reed on The Third Man (1949) and Outcast of the Islands (1951)). For John Huston, he then served in the same capacity on The African Queen (1951) (one of his duties included building a pontoon made up of four or five pirogues to provide room for the cameras, as the "Queen" was too cramped to film on).
Hamilton's first film as director in his own right was The Ringer (1952), a minor thriller based on an Edgar Wallace story. He established himself properly with The Colditz Story (1955), a prisoner-of-war drama enlivened by deft humor and a pointedly "British" style. In the 1960s, his acquaintance with Albert R. Broccoli led to his directing four entries in the James Bond franchise (though he had turned down previous offers to helm the opener, Dr. No (1962)): Goldfinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973) and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). In a later interview, Hamilton recalled that he (and writer Tom Mankiewicz) particularly enjoyed putting Bond into the "snake-pit" in situations of mortal peril, then working out a way to extricate him within 50 seconds. Hamilton's "intellectual" interpretation of Bond, the witty, at times facetious humor --usually in the midst of hair-raising situations-- contributed greatly to the popular and commercial success of these films. While these films established his reputation, much of his later work (Force 10 from Navarone (1978), Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) proved less endearing.
In the mid-1980s, Hamilton retired to the island of Majorca with his second wife, actress Kerima (who had co-starred in "Outcast of the Islands"). He died there on 20 April 2016 at the age of 93.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
John Harlow was born on 19 August 1896 in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, England, UK. He was a director and assistant director, known for While I Live (1947), Meet Sexton Blake! (1945) and Candles at Nine (1944). He was married to Enid Hewitt. He died in 1977 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Lionel Harris was born on 16 August 1922. He was a director and producer, known for BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (1950), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and ITV Play of the Week (1955). He died on 11 April 1984 in Camden, London, England, UK.- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Director
Norman Harrison was born in 1926 in Fifeshire, Scotland, UK. He is an assistant director and director, known for Interpol Calling (1959), Locker Sixty Nine (1962) and Incident at Midnight (1963).- Director
- Cinematographer
- Writer
Ben R. Hart was a director and cinematographer, known for Frozen Fate (1929), River Patrol (1948) and Birds of a Feather (I) (1931). He died in 1968 in Buckinghamshire, England, UK.- Director
- Producer
- Editor
Sidney Hayers entered films in the early 1940s, working in the sound department, as a focus puller and in the cutting room before he began his directing career with Rebound (1959) in 1958. The journeyman director's roster of credits also includes episodic TV on both sides of the Atlantic, a multitude of TV movies and second-unit directing chores on epic films like A Night to Remember (1958) and A Bridge Too Far (1977). At the end of his life, he was residing in Spain with his actress-wife Erika Remberg.- Producer
- Writer
- Production Manager
Stanley Haynes was born on 14 November 1906 in Birmingham, Warks, England, UK. He was a producer and writer, known for Carnival (1946), Madeleine (1950) and Dangerous Cargo (1954). He was married to Rosalyn Boulter. He died in 1958 in London, England, UK.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct the film Number 13 (1922), though the production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed The Pleasure Garden (1925), a British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his first trademark film in 1927, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) . In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940). After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended the service, among them were Mel Brooks (director of High Anxiety (1977), a comedy tribute to Hitchcock and his films), Louis Jourdan, Karl Malden, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh and François Truffaut.- Director
- Editorial Department
- Editor
Seth Holt began as an assistant editor at Ealing in 1944, graduating to editor (1949), producer (1955) and director (1958).He returned to editing for Charles Crichton's The Battle of the Sexes (1960) and for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). Probably his best known film is The Nanny (1965), with Bette Davis. He was working on Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971) when he died.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Ken Hughes was an award-winning writer and director who flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, though he continued directing into the early 1980s. Born in Liverpool, England, on January 19, 1922, Hughes decided early in his life that he wanted to be a filmmaker. When he was 14 years old he won an amateur movie-making contest.
In 1952 his first feature, the crime drama Wide Boy (1952), was released. By 1955 he was working with imported American character actor Paul Douglas in the quirky Joe MacBeth (1955), a retelling of William Shakespeare's tragedy recast as a modern film noir. Hughes directed the movie and wrote the screenplay. That film led to his directing more English pictures with imported Hollywood B-list stars, including Arlene Dahl and Victor Mature. In a reverse of the Atlantic trade, he exported a script to the US, which was picked up by "Alcoa Theater" and aired as Eddie (1958), starring Mickey Rooney and directed by Jack Smight. It brought Hughes an Emmy Award for his teleplay.
His favorite of his many movies was The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), starring Peter Finch as the doomed writer. He was nominated for three BAFTA Awards and Finch took home the BAFTA as Best Actor. It also won the Samuel Goldwyn Award for Best English-Language Foreign Film at the Golden Globes.
During the 1960s Hughes worked on A-List pictures, including Of Human Bondage (1964), an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's book, but it did not make anyone forget the Bette Davis-Leslie Howard classic of 30 years earlier (Of Human Bondage (1934)). He also toiled as one of the five directors on the cinematic mishmash Casino Royale (1967), which was a box-office smash but a critical bomb.
His greatest hit was the adaptation of another Ian Fleming work, his children's book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). The movie was a huge hit, but Hughes was dissatisfied with it. His next picture, the historical epic Cromwell (1970) (1970), got good reviews, but did not burn up the turnstiles at theaters.
His career slowed down in the 1970s, the low point of which was undoubtedly his directing 83-year-old Mae West, vamping eternally as the 30-something sexpot she imagined herself in her mind, in the Golden Turkey Sextette (1977), a critical and box-office dud. He ended his career directing the exploitation film Night School (1981), a slasher pic starring a then-unknown Rachel Ward.
After a period of declining health, Ken Hughes died on April 28, 2001, in Los Angeles. He was 79 years old.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Lawrence Huntington was born on 9 March 1900 in London, England, UK. He was a director and writer, known for Contraband Spain (1955), The Vulture (1966) and Man on the Run (1949). He died on 29 November 1968 in London, England, UK.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Hailing from East Belfast, Northern Ireland, Hans Moore Hawthorn Hurst was a linen worker before joining the army during World War I. He was a private in the Royal Irish Rifles, and survived the slaughter at the disastrous Gallipoli landing in Turkey. He changed his name to Brian Desmond Hurst. On his return home he became disturbed by the continuing troubles in Belfast and left for Canada to train as an artist. He became part of the artistic "bohemian" movement and moved in those circles in Paris and New York. He eventually wound up in Hollywood, where he studied the craft of filmmaking under the tutelage of famed director John Ford. The two became extremely close--Hurst even appeared as an extra in Ford's Hangman's House (1928) along with another of Ford's good friends, John Wayne--and often referred to each other as "cousin", although they were not related by blood, and remained the best of friends up until Ford's death in 1973.
Hurst returned to Europe soon afterward, and made what is generally considered to be Ireland's first sound film, Norah O'Neale (1934). Two years later he made a film that caused the authorities in his native Northern Ireland to forbid it from being shown there: River of Unrest (1936), a story of the 1921 Irish rebellion against British rule. Hurst ran into censorship troubles again with his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's Bucket of Blood (1934), which was banned in many areas of Great Britain for being "too horrible" for public exhibition. These incidents didn't deter Hurst from making controversial films, however. He turned out the dark The Fugitive (1939) in 1939, regarded as one of the first British "noir" films.
During the war Hurst made such films as Suicide Squadron (1941), a well-regarded story of an American newswoman in England who falls in love with an exiled Polish pianist who wants to return to his country to fight the Nazis (the film also popularized the musical number "Warsaw Concerto"). After the war he made what he regarded as his favorite film, Theirs Is the Glory (1946), about the disastrous British-American wartime operation at Arnhem in Holland, which became Britain's biggest-grossing film for almost a decade. He returned to his Irish roots in two other films, Hungry Hill (1947) and John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World (1962) (which was also his final picture). However, the film he is most famous for is A Christmas Carol (1951), considered by critics and audiences alike to be the definitive version of Charles Dickens' classic novel "A Christmas Carol".
Among his other successes was Malta Story (1953), about the defiant resistance of the military and civilian populations on the island of Malta against relentless Nazi bombing during the war, and Simba (1955), about the Mau-Mau rebellion against British colonial rule in Kenya. He retired in 1963 after "Playboy of the Western World", and died in London in 1986.- Producer
- Actor
- Director
Harold Huth was born on 20 January 1892 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England, UK. He was a producer and actor, known for Rome Express (1932), The Ghoul (1933) and My Sister and I (1948). He was married to Bridget Nickols. He died on 26 October 1967 in London, England, UK.- Director
- Production Designer
- Writer
Pat Jackson began as an editor and co-director of documentaries with the famed GPO Film Unit in the mid-1930s. He worked with such icons of the documentary field as John Grierson and Harry Watt, but it was his World War II semi-documentary Western Approaches (1944) that put him on the map. Praised as a skillful blend of real footage and studio-shot model work, the film was photographed in sumptuous Technicolor by renowned cinematographer Jack Cardiff and told the story of the harrowing dangers faced by merchant seamen in the war.
Unfortunately, Jackson was unable to capitalize on this success. He spent an unproductive time under contract to producer/director Alexander Korda and spent an additional two years in Hollywood under contract to MGM, where he made just one film, the somewhat atmospheric melodrama Shadow on the Wall (1950). Returning to Britain in 1951, he was never able to find his niche, drifting among various producers, studios and independent companies. He found a lot of work directing episodic TV series. His fortunes seemed to rise in 1958, however, when he directed Our Virgin Island (1958), a light-hearted tale of a young couple starting their life on an isolated--and uninhabited--West Indian island. His follow-up film, Snowball (1960), was also a critical and commercial success, as was his comedy-thriller No Place Like Homicide! (1961) and the dark, moody Don't Talk to Strange Men (1962). Again, these small successes didn't lead to anything bigger or better, and he finished out his career in television.- Director
- Actor
- Producer
Charles Jarrott was born on 16 June 1927 in London, England, UK. He was a director and actor, known for The Secret Life of Algernon (1998), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) and Encounter (1952). He was married to Suzanne Jarrott, Katharine Blake and Rosemary Palin. He died on 4 March 2011 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
- Director
Patrick Jenkins is known for The Gambler and the Lady (1952), The Winslow Boy (1948) and Now Barabbas (1949).- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Denis Kavanagh was born on 6 May 1906 in Carlow, Ireland. He was a director and writer, known for They Never Learn (1956), Escape from the Iron Curtain (1956) and Starlight Serenade (1944). He died on 14 June 1984 in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, England, UK.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Special Effects
Roy Kellino was born on April 22, 1912 in London, England as Philip Roy Gislingham. He was a director and cinematographer, known for Four Star Playhouse (1952), _Schlitz Playhouse (1951) (TV Series)_, and Charade (1954). He was married firstly to Pamela Ostrer (later known as Pamela Mason), and secondly to Barbara Billingsley. He died unexpectedly on November 18, 1956 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
British writer/director Anthony Kimmins was a naval officer in World War I, and after the war became a film actor and playwright. He wrote and directed several films for British comedian George Formby in the 1930s, but with the outbreak of World War II Kimmins rejoined the Royal Navy and spent the duration in the service. With the end of the war Kimmins returned to the film industry, but his output was somewhat erratic, ranging from the excellent and well-received psychological thriller Mine Own Executioner (1947) to the major flop Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948). His final film, The Amorous Mr. Prawn (1962), was an adaptation of his stage farce that was a hit on the West End.- Director
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Producer/director George King began his career in the British film industry in the 1920s as an agent. He eventually moved into writing, then turned to producing and directing, mostly in the field known as "quota quickies" (films made to comply with the British government's requirement that a certain percentage of films shown in British theaters had to be produced in Britain). He served in those positions on several of flamboyant actor Tod Slaughter's melodramas, notably The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936) and The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1936). After a few more of Slaughter's popular but cheaply made films, King graduated to more "upscale" vehicles with bigger budgets and more respectable subjects, such as Tomorrow We Live (1942), which was a critical and commercial success. After the war, King drastically reduced his workload, directing only three more films before retiring.- Producer
- Writer
- Production Manager
Ronald Kinnoch was born on 11 June 1910 in Dundee, Tayside, Scotland, UK. He was a producer and writer, known for Village of the Damned (1960), Village of the Damned (1995) and The Secret Man (1958). He died on 22 November 1995 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
John Knight was born in 1919 in Auckland, New Zealand. He was a director and producer, known for The Avengers (1961), Out of This World (1962) and Electrode 93 (1957). He was married to Brigid Lenihan. He died in 1967.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Producer
British director Bernard Knowles started his career as a newspaper photographer, and in the 1920s journeyed to the US and worked as a photographer for the Detroit News. Upon his return to England in 1922 he was hired by Gainsborough Pictures as an assistant cameraman, and it didn't take long for him to become a full-fledged Director of Photography. He gained a reputation as an innovator in photographic techniques and for his mastery of moody, atmospheric black-and-white photography, most notably on such classic films as The 39 Steps (1935), King Solomon's Mines (1937) and Gaslight (1940). After World War II he set out to fulfill his ambition of becoming a director, and his debut was the well-received ghost story A Place of One's Own (1945). However, his next film, The Magic Bow (1946), a "biopic" of 19th-century violinist/composer Nicolo Paganini, was a critical and commercial flop, being derided as heavy-handed and slow-moving. His film career faded somewhat after that, and in the mid-'50s he turned to television, making the occasional foray back into feature films.