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Harold French
Harold French (23 April 1897 – 19 October 1997) was an English film director, screenwriter and actor. Biography After training at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, Italia Conti School, he made his acting debut age 12, in a production of ''The Winter's Tale''. As an actor, most of his roles occurred between 1912 and 1936, not gaining as much attention as later he would as a director. He worked as a screenwriter on three of the four films produced by Marcel Hellman's and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s production company ''Criterion Film Productions'' in the late 1930s, before switching to film direction in 1937, often with Marcel Hellman as producer. From 1940 to 1955, he had several box-office successes as director. This successful period was clouded by the 1941 death of his wife Phyllis in a Luftwaffe bombing raid. Although he did some television work after 1955, he appears to have retired from directing and acting after 1963. He directed the hit West End play ''Out of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Actor
An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), literally "one who answers".''Hypokrites'' (related to our word for Hypocrisy, hypocrite) also means, less often, "to answer" the Tragedy, tragic Greek chorus, chorus. See Weimann (1978, 2); see also Csapo and Slater, who offer translations of classical source material using the term ''hypocrisis'' (acting) (1994, 257, 265–267). The actor's interpretation of a rolethe art of acting pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. This can also be considered an "actor's role", which was called this due to scrolls being used in the theaters. Interpretation occurs even when the actor is "playing themselves", as in some forms of experimental performance art. Formerly, in an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secret Mission
''Secret Mission'' is a 1942 British war film directed by Harold French and starring Hugh Williams, James Mason, Nancy Price, Carla Lehmann and Roland Culver. Plot British Army Major Peter Garnett assembles a team consisting of Captain ‘Red’ Gowan, Private ‘Nobby’ Clark and Raoul de Carnot, a member of the Free French forces, during the Second World War. Their mission is to collect intelligence on German military strength in the coastal area of occupied France. Sub-Lieutenant Jackson watches as their dinghy across the English Channel and remarks that he does not envy them their jobs. Nobby knows the target area well: He used to live in Saint Antoine, where he ran a café with his French wife, Lulu. After killing a sentry once ashore, they set a time and place for a rendezvous in two days with the code for bringing the aircraft. They split up, Gowan and Nobby to the village, Raoul and Garnett to the chateau that is Raoul's ancestral home where Lulu, Nobby's wife, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Pelissier
Harry Anthony Compton Pelissier (27 July 1912 – 2 April 1988) was an English actor, screenwriter, producer and director. Biography Pelissier was born in Barnet, north London, and came from a theatrical family. His parents were the theatre producer H. G. Pelissier (who presented ''Pelissier's Follies'') and the actress Fay Compton. His uncle was Compton MacKenzie, who wrote '' Whisky Galore''. He was barely a year old when his father died, and with his nineteen year-old widowed mother in pursuit of her acting career, was mostly raised by his grandmother Virginia Compton and a series of nannies. This background would inform one of his most successful films, ''The Rocking-Horse Winner'' with its plot of a neglected young boy desperate to please his worldly mother. Pelissier began acting in the 1930s. In 1935 and 1936, he was featured in Noël Coward's play cycle, '' Tonight at 8.30'', both in Britain and on Broadway. He also played in Coward's '' Set to Music'' (1939).T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Encore (1951 Film)
''Encore'' is a 1951 anthology film composed of adaptations of three short stories by W. Somerset Maugham: * "The Ant and the Grasshopper", directed by Pat Jackson and adapted by T. E. B. Clarke; * "Winter Cruise" (from the 1947 collection of Maugham stories '' Creatures of Circumstance''), directed by Anthony Pelissier, screenplay by Arthur Macrae; * "Gigolo and Gigolette" (from the 1940 collection of Maugham stories '' The Mixture as Before''), directed by Harold French, written by Eric Ambler. Maugham introduces each part of the film with a piece to camera from his garden on the French Riviera. ''Encore'' was the final film in a Maugham trilogy, preceded by ''Quartet'' and '' Trio''. The film was entered into the 1952 Cannes Film Festival. Plot summary "The Ant and the Grasshopper" Idle Tom Ramsay continually borrows from his hard-working brother George. George later puts up the Ramsay estate for sale so he can buy out his business partner, despite Tom's protests. Shortly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pat Jackson
Patrick Douglas Selmes Jackson (26 March 1916 – 3 June 2011) was an English film and television director. Biography Born in Eltham to a formerly affluent family which was severely affected by the Wall Street crash in 1929, Jackson's formal education was ended by his father's long-term illness and early death. He joined the GPO Film Unit on his 17th birthday as a messenger boy after his mother persuaded her MP, Sir Kingsley Wood, then also postmaster general, to find work for her son. Rising to production assistant, he was part of the crew for the short film '' Night Mail'' (1936). The voice narrating the poem by W.H. Auden ("This is the Night Mail crossing the border, bringing the cheque and the postal order.") was Jackson himself. He directed a number of documentaries, the first being ''The Horsey Mail'' (1938) about the rural postal service in Suffolk. ''The First Days'' (1939), co-directed by Harry Watt and Humphrey Jennings, was the first of the wartime documentarie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trio (1950 Film)
''Trio'' (also known as ''W. Somerset Maugham's Trio'') is a 1950 British anthology film based on three short stories by W. Somerset Maugham: "The Verger", "Mr Know-All" and "Sanatorium". Ken Annakin directed "The Verger" and "Mr Know-All", while Harold French was responsible for "Sanatorium". ''Trio'' is the second of a film trilogy, all consisting of adaptations of Maugham's stories, preceded by the 1948 '' Quartet'' and followed by the 1951 '' Encore''. Production budget of the film was shared by the J. Arthur Rank Organization and Paramount. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound, Recording ( Cyril Crowhurst) and was the final one released under the Gainsborough Pictures banner. Plot The Verger The new vicar at St Peter's Church is astonished to learn that the long-serving verger, Albert Foreman, is illiterate. Foreman is too set in his ways to want to learn to read and write, and the vicar feels he has no choice but to sack him. Foreman's savi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Smart
Ralph Foster Smart (27 August 1908 – 12 February 2001) was an English-born film and television producer, director and writer, who worked in the UK and Australia. Early life Smart was born in England to H. C. Smart, an Australian publicist, and his English wife, Hope Daisy Smart, née Foster. Career Smart found work in Britain with Anthony Asquith and later alongside the film director Michael Powell, whom he assisted with 'quota quickies': low-budget "B" pictures made partly in order to exploit the advantageous position of the British film industry under the Cinematograph Films Act 1927. During the Second World War, Smart joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1942 and served until 1945. Afterward he worked for the Rank Organisation and Ealing Studios, returning to Australia to direct several films beginning with ''The Overlanders (film), The Overlanders'' and including ''Bitter Springs (film), Bitter Springs'' (1950), addressing the mistreatment of young Indigenous Austral ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Crabtree
Arthur Crabtree (29 October 1900 in Shipley, Yorkshire, England – 15 March 1975 in Worthing, Sussex, England) was a British cinematographer and film director. He directed films with comedians such as Will Hay, the Crazy Gang and Arthur Askey and several of the Gainsborough melodramas. He married Marguerite Vanière, whom he met as one of the dancers in the chorus line of ''Evergreen'' (1934), and with whom he had three children, Richard (b. 1938), Robert (b. 1948) and Loretta (b. 1953). Their parents told them that they could take up any career but the theatre, because of the uncertainty of that profession. Robert taught for more than 40 years at Yale where he developed what came to be known as Crabtree's catalyst. Cinematographer Crabtree earliest credits as a cinematographer were for British International Pictures. He shot '' Out of the Blue'' (1931) with Jessie Matthews; '' Verdict of the Sea'' (1932); and ''The Maid of the Mountains'' (1932). Crabtree did some fil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Annakin
Kenneth Cooper Annakin, OBE (10 August 1914 – 22 April 2009) was an English film director. His career spanned half a century, beginning in the early 1940s and ending in 1992, and in the 1960s he was noticed by critics with large-scale adventure epic and comedies films, like '' Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines'', ''Battle of the Bulge'', ''The Biggest Bundle of Them All'' and '' Monte Carlo or Bust!''. During his career, Annakin directed nearly 50 pictures. Biography Annakin was born in and grew up in Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire where he attended the local grammar school. After leaving school he became a trainee income tax inspector in the city of Hull. Annakin subsequently decided to emigrate to New Zealand, and travelled around the world in a variety of jobs. He was compere and stage manager of Eugene Permanent Waving Company's roadshow, touring the Northern provinces. When World War II broke out, Annakin became a firefighter in Soho, then joine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quartet (1948 Film)
''Quartet'' is a 1948 British anthology film with four segments, each based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham. The author appears at the start and end of the movie to introduce the stories and comment about his writing career. It was successful enough to produce two sequels, '' Trio'' (1950) and ''Encore'' (1951), and popularised the compendium film format, leading to films such as '' O. Henry's Full House'' in 1952. The screenplays for the stories were all written by R. C. Sherriff. The Facts of Life Based on "The Facts of Life", included in the 1940 collection of Maugham stories '' The Mixture as Before''. * Director: Ralph Smart * Cinematographer: Ray Elton Cast * Basil Radford as Henry Garnet * Naunton Wayne as Leslie * Mai Zetterling as Jeanne * Angela Baddeley as Mrs. Garnet * Jack Watling as Nicky * Nigel Buchanan as John * James Robertson Justice as Branksome * Ian Fleming as Ralph * Jack Raine as Thomas * Jean Cavall as Cabaret Artist Plot Despite their reservations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quiet Weekend
''Quiet Weekend'' is a 1946 British comedy film directed by Harold French and starring Derek Farr, Frank Cellier, Marjorie Fielding, George Thorpe and Barbara White. A family try to relax during a weekend holiday in the country.QUIET WEEK END (1946) It was a sequel to the 1941 film '' Quiet Wedding'', with several of the actors reprising their roles. It was based on the long running 1941 West End play '' Quiet Weekend'' and shot at Welwyn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Without Tears
''English Without Tears'' is a 1944 British romantic comedy film directed by Harold French and starring Michael Wilding, Penelope Dudley-Ward and Lilli Palmer. The screenplay was by Terrance Rattigan and Anatole de Grunwald. It was released in the U.S. under the title ''Her Man Gilbey'', as a reference to the classic Screwball comedy, '' My Man Godfrey'' (1936). The film depicts the romance between a young English aristocrat and her family's butler. During World War II, the butler becomes an officer of the Royal Army Service Corps and the girl joins the Auxiliary Territorial Service. Their change in status and her maturity affect their relationship. The world around them is also transformed. Plot In July 1939, the top-hatted deliveryman from a Fortune and Weedon carriage takes a basket of quail to the tradesman's entrance of Beauclerk House. An elaborate process brings the birds to the dinner plates of Lady Christabel Beauclerk and her nephew, Sir Cosmo Brandon, a Britis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
