Search Results for: Roy Fowler

…wcastle and Edinburgh. SUMMARY: In this fascinating interview with Sid Cole and Roy Fowler at Rockett’s home in Glebelands (the CTBF rest home), Rockett gives a rare insight into the trade from the ex…

…t in 1957. SUMMARY: In this extremely brief interview conducted by Sid Cole and Roy Fowler at Glebelands (the CTBF retirement home), Fielder talks about his early experiences and how he entered the in…

Cyril Howard was born in 1926 in Barnet, North London. He entered the industry at Denham in 1941.  He was a runner on Powell and Pressburger's " The :Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" (1943) and "A Canterbury Tale" ( 1944)  He became the  Managing Director at Pinewood Studios.  Notes on audiocassette: Side 1 - Started Denham 1941 (Independent Producers Ltd)Side 2 - Now Man. Director Pinewood Studios

Robert Beatty 1909 - 1992 ,was a  Canadian born actor who worked primarily in the UK. He studied at the University of Toronto and after graduation joined the Hamilton Players' Guild. In 1936 he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and made his debut on the English stage. During the World War II, Beatty achieved international fame through his eyewitness radio reports of the nightly bombing of London during the Blitz for the BBC's Overseas News Service.In 1942, he appeared in two critically acclaimed war propaganda films by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 49th Parallel and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, and in 1949 he was in Carol Reed's Odd Man Out. Beginning in 1947, he starred as Irish detective Philip Odell in a series of BBC Radio dramas which lasted until 1961. For television he played an RCMP officer assigned to New Scotland Yard in the BBC crime drama "Dial 999" (1958-59).Other television roles included General Cutler in the Dr Who serial "The Tenth Planet," Lord Beaverbrook in the TV movie The Gathering Storm, he was in the miniseries "Jesus of Nazareth" (1977) , "The Martian Chronicles" (1980).and in 1987, he portrayed Ronald Reagan in PBS special  "Breakthrough at Reykjavik".One of his most notable film roles was as Dr. Ralph Halvorson in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). His one Canadian film appearance was in The Amateur (1981), His other film credits include Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951), Where Eagles Dare (1968), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), Superman III (1983), and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987).

Val Guest. Valmond Maurice `Grossman.  "Val" Guest (11 December 1911 – 10 May 2006) was an English film director and screenwriter. Beginning as a writer (and later director) of comedy films, he is best known for his work for Hammer, for whom he directed 14 films, and science fiction films. Married to Yolande Donlan.  Guest was born to John Simon Grossman and Julia Ann Gladys Emanuel in Maida Vale, London. He later changed his name to Val Guest (officially in 1939).[4] His father was a jute broker, and the family spent some of Guest's childhood in India before returning to England. His parents divorced when he was young, but this information was kept from him. Instead he was told that his mother had died.[2] He was educated at Seaford College in Sussex, but left in 1927 and worked for a time as a bookkeeper.Guest's initial career was as an actor, appearing in productions in London theatres. He also appeared in a few early sound film roles, before he left acting and began a writing career.Writer[edit]For a time, around 1934, he was the London correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter (when the publication began a UK edition),[5][6] before beginning work on film screenplays for Gainsborough Pictures.This came about because the director Marcel Varnel had been incensed by comments Guest had made in his regular column, "Rambling Around", about the director's latest film. Challenged to write a screenplay by Varnel, Guest co-wrote his first script, which became No Monkey Business (1935) directed by Varnel.[5] This was to be the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership between the two men.[3] Guest was placed under contract as a staff writer at Gainsborough's Islington Studios in Poole Street.[5]Guest wrote screenplays for the rest of the decade. His credits included All In (1936) for Varnel; Public Nuisance No. 1 (1936); A Star Fell from Heaven (1936); O-Kay for Sound (1937) for Varnel with The Crazy Gang; Alf's Button Afloat (1938) with Flanagan and Allen. He also wrote the Will Hay comedies Oh, Mr Porter! (1937) and Ask a Policeman (1939). He wrote Hi Gang! (1941) for Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels.[1]Directing career[edit]Guest became a fully-fledged director in the early 1940s (he had been responsible for some second-unit work previously). His first film was an Arthur Askey short, The Nose Has It (1942), warning of the dangers of spreading infection.[3]Guest's debut feature was Miss London Ltd. (1943), again with Askey; Guest had worked on the scripts of earlier Askey films. Guest's second feature as director also starred Askey, Bees in Paradise (1944). He followed this with two films starring Vic Oliver and Margaret Lockwood, Give Us the Moon (1944) and I'll Be Your Sweetheart (1945); the latter was the first and only musical from Gainsborough Studios.Guest directed two films based on the Just William stories, Just William's Luck (1947) and William Comes to Town (1948). He wrote and directed a thriller, Murder at the Windmill (1949). Sides 1-4 recorded on 17 Aug 1988, sides 5-6 on 23 Aug 1988, sides 7-11 on 30 Aug 1988, and sides 12-15 on 6 Sep 1988.

British Film Commission member; son of G B Samuelson Sir Sydney Samuelson CBE, has been interviewed on three separate occasions for The British Entertainment History Project. First Interview (on Audio)  No: 42. Covered his family, his early days in the film and television industries and the creation with his brothers of the Samuelson Group of Companies. Second Interview (on Camera) No: 706. Covered how he became Britain's first British Film Commissioner. Third Interview (on Camera) No: 706 (continued) Covered his role as British Film Commissioner, a remarkable and frank assessment of his six years in the job, including the role of government and of the British film and television industries at the time, the difficulties included  during his six years as Commissioner having to deal with nine different government 'Films Ministers', but there was also success. Spielberg's 'Saving Private Ryan'is one example among many others, chiefly from the US.

Francis Searle (14 March 1909 – 31 July 2002) was an English film director, writer and producer.Francis  started his early cinema appreciation watching silent films in Putney where he was born in 1909. He first  worked as a builder of ornate decorations for cinema interiors. He was a drummer in a band as a hobby. In the '30s he was hired at Highbury Studios as a camera assistant. He worked on dozens of  one-reel  shorts, then moved over to Gaumont Studios where he made documentaries. His first feature film as a director was A Girl In A Million (1946) written by Muriel Box. Amongst the prolific number of  films he directed were The Man In Black  (1950) for Hammer Films, The Lady Craved Excitement (1950), One Way Out (1955) and It All Goes to Show (1969). 

BIOGRAPHY: A major figure in the British New Wave, Walter Lassally was born in Berlin, the son of an photographer of technical films. He arrived in Britain in 1939 as a refugee from Nazi Germany and spent his early career working at a photography studio, an industrial documentary company and as a clapper boy at Butcher’s Film Service. He worked on documentaries for much of the 1950s and began a fruitful association as cinematographer with the Free Cinema directors Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz, He remains best known for his feature film work with Richardson, for whom he shot A Taste of Honey (1961), The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner (1962) and Tom Jones (1963). But despite his association with British realist cinema, Lassally’s career has been remarkably international in scope, as the title of his biography, Itinerant Cameraman, suggests. His first feature film as a cinematographer was the Greek production A Girl in Black (1956), directed by Mihalis Kakogiannis. Lassally worked with Kakogiannis on several other projects, including Zorba the Greek (1964), for which he won an Academy Award. In later years he continued to work on Greek projects, and shot three films for the Merchant Ivory company, notably the Indian-set Heat and Dust (1982). Another biographical piece is located below as a pdf. SUMMARY: In this interview Lassally talks engagingly about the persecution of his family in Germany and their subsequent experiences in Britain as ‘enemy aliens’. He provides a great deal of detail about his early career in the British film industry, particularly his work as a clapper boy for Butcher’s Film Service and his parallel efforts as an amateur filmmaker. His observations about class hierarchies in postwar camera crews, as well as his experiences of Communist and union politics, are revealing and well told. However, this interview contains very little about his major films with the Free Cinema and New Wave movements, or his association with Richardson, Anderson and Reisz, presumably because this material is covered in his autobiography "Itinerant Cameraman". The final section of the interview is rather digressive, although Lassally’s thoughts on the growth of video and digital photography seem remarkably prescient.  

BIOGRAHY:Ted Candy began his career in 1934 as a press photographer, working first on the Bedfordshire Times and then on the Luton News. In 1940 Candy became a newsreel cameraman with Gaumont British News. According to Jock Gemmell [qv] of Pathe, Candy was in a ship that was torpedoed, but ‘clinging to wreckage for 36 hours...was eventually washed ashore and taken prisoner of war in North Africa.' However, he was featured in ‘CAMERAMAN CANDY SAFE’ in Gaumont British News No.907 of September 1942, and ‘CANDY WELCOMED HOME’ in No.932 of December 1942. In July 1944 Candy worked with cameraman Eddie Edmonds [qv] and sound engineer Harry Abbott [qv] in filming ‘PRESENTATION OF SOVIET AWARDS’ in London for Gaumont British News No.1104 of August 1944. In June 1945 Candy filmed the King and Queen for ‘ROYAL VISIT TO THE CHANNEL ISLANDS’ in Gaumont British News No.1194, and also shot footage for ‘FREEDOM OF THE CITY FOR GENERAL EISENHOWER’ in No.1195. In October 1947 he helped film ‘HIS MAJESTY UNVEILS MEMORIAL TO KING GEORGE V’ for Gaumont British News No.1441. In January 1953 Candy filmed ‘RUGBY - IRELAND v FRANCE’ for No.1990, and in February 1953 he filmed ‘ROYAL FAMILY STARTS A BUSY YEAR: The Queen at Christening’ for No.1995. In the same month it was noted that ‘Candy of Gaumont is replacing Turner as Royal Cameraman during John Turner’s [qv] illness and his material is Rota.' His first footage appeared as ‘THE QUEEN AT LARKHILL POINT-TO-POINT’ in Gaumont British News No.1998 of February 1953. In June 1953 Candy filmed at Westminster Abbey for ‘THE CORONATION OF QUEEN ELIZABETH’ in Gaumont British News No.2026. In February 1955 Candy was in Trinidad filming Princess Margaret for ‘ROYAL TOUR: THE PRINCESS IN TRINIDAD’ for Gaumont British News No.2201, and in June 1956 he filmed the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret for ‘LONDON: THE ROYAL TOURNAMENT’ in No.2341. In September 1956 he also filmed Princess Margaret in Kenya for ‘MOMBASA: EAST AFRICA WELCOME’ in No.2372. In March 1959 Rank closed both Gaumont British News and Universal News, but created a new division of the company - ‘Special Features’ - to release a weekly colour cinemagazine called Look at Life. Candy was made Production Head, and announced that Look at Life ‘won’t be ‘spot news’. We’ll be doing things such as the colour bar, which is news all the time’. When Rank closed Look at Life in April 1969 Candy transferred to Movietone. In May 1979 British Movietone News itself closed, Candy explaining that ‘The people behind Movietone News are very sentimental about it and have kept it going for many years losing money. But the point comes when you can’t afford to lose anymore.' Candy remained at Movietone until his retirement as general manager in 1985. SourcesBUFVC, British Paramount News files, Issue Number 1401 (Candy rota dopesheet, July 1944), Numbers 1491 and 1492 (Candy rota dopesheets, June 1945), Number 1738 (Gaumont rota dopesheet, October 1947), Number 2292 (Candy rota dopesheet, 11/2/1953), Number 2295 (Read’s dopesheet, 21/2/1953), Number 2323 (Candy rota dopesheet, 2/6/1953), Number 2499 (Candy rota dopesheets, 2-4/2/1955), Number 2638 (Candy rota dopesheet, June 1956), Number 2669 (Candy rota dopesheets, September 1956): J. C. Gemmell ‘Newsreels - Ancient and Modern,' Cine Technician, January-February 1952, p.5: Sunday Times, 1 March 1959, ‘Two newsreels to carry on’: Evening Standard, 24/5/1979, p.3, ‘Fifty years on - the last reel of history’: J. Ballantyne (ed) ‘Researcher’s Guide to British Newsreels’ (BUFVC, 1983), p.91: J. Ballantyne (ed) ‘Researcher’s Guide to British Newsreels: Vol.II’ (1988), p.31940s - Gaumont British News - War correspondence - Malta Convoys, D-Day1950s - General discussion of newsreel work, filming royalty, test match - rivalry between newsreel companies.1960s - Look at Life. Movietone News General Manager

born in Croydon in March 1929, Secretarial college then worked in  Production Facilities Films, which was the holding company for the Rank Organisation in the Star Artists’ Department where contract artists were scheduled, as a junior shorthand typist. Then worked briefly for a producer called John Corfield. Then Aubrey Baring and Maxwell Setton of Mayflower Pictures - secretary to Max and Aubrey. First film worked on was Cairo Road. Then London contact for Lee Katz eventually running the Production office. Worked for Mr Zanuck; Otto Preminger. Then worked on a freelance basis and eventually joined ACTT. Production Assistant for Hammer TV productions