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The Clouded Yellow
''The Clouded Yellow'' is a 1950 British mystery film directed by Ralph Thomas and produced by Betty E. Box for Carillon Films. A dismissed secret service agent falls in love with a disturbed young woman who is wrongly accused of murder and the two go on the run, pursued by the police, the secret service, and the real murderer. Plot A successful member of the UK Secret Intelligence Service during the Second World War, ex-Major David Somers is dismissed following the failure of a mission. The only work he can find is cataloguing butterflies at the country house of Nicholas and Jess Fenton. (The "clouded yellow" is a rare species of butterfly.) Somers and Sophie Malraux, Jess's niece, become attracted to each other. After the murder of Hick, a local gamekeeper and Jess's lover, suspicion wrongly falls on Sophie. She is considered mentally fragile because of the apparent suicide of her parents when she was six, the memory of which she has suppressed. Somers helps Sophie to evade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Thomas
Ralph Philip Thomas MC (10 August 1915 – 17 March 2001) was an English film director. He is perhaps best remembered for directing the ''Doctor'' series of films. His brother, Gerald Thomas, was also a film director, probably best remembered for the '' Carry On...'' film series, and his son is the Academy Award-winning film producer, Jeremy Thomas. He cast the actor James Robertson Justice in many of his films. Thomas often worked with the producer Betty E. Box, who was married to ''Carry On'' producer Peter Rogers. Thomas was a nephew of producer Victor Saville. Early career Born in Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, Thomas studied law at Middlesex University College. He entered the film business as a clapper boy at Shepperton Studios in 1932 during his summer vacation while at college. Following graduation, instead of becoming a lawyer he decided to enter the film industry, and became an apprentice at Shepperton Studios, working as a clapper boy and then in the editing room ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Brennan (actor)
Michael Brennan (25 September 1912 – 29 June 1982) was an English film and television actor. Born in London, Brennan was married to actress Mary Hignett. He appeared in such films as '' Tom Brown's Schooldays'', ''Ivanhoe'', '' Thunderball'', ''Tom Jones'', '' The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders'' and '' Doomwatch''. On television, he made guest appearances on '' All Creatures Great and Small'' (which featured his wife) and ''Dixon of Dock Green''. Partial filmography *''"Pimpernel" Smith'' (1941) - Camp Guard with Lantern (uncredited) *'' They Made Me a Fugitive'' (1947) - Jim *''Captain Boycott'' (1947) - Jim O'Rourke (uncredited) *'' Brighton Rock'' (1947) - Crabbe (uncredited) *'' Blanche Fury'' (1948) - Farmer *'' Escape'' (1948) - Truck Driver (uncredited) *''My Brother's Keeper'' (1948) - Police Constable at Roadblock (uncredited) *'' Noose'' (1948) - Ropey (uncredited) *'' Brass Monkey'' (1948) - Wilks *'' Cardboard Cavalier'' (1949) - Brother Barebones *'' For ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake District
The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or '' fells''), and its associations with William Wordsworth and other Lake Poets and also with Beatrix Potter and John Ruskin. The Lake District National Park was established in 1951 and covers an area of . It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017. The Lake District is today completely within Cumbria, a county and administrative unit created in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972. However, it was historically divided between three English counties (Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire), sometimes referred to as the Lakes Counties. The three counties met at the Three Shire Stone on Wrynose Pass in the southern fells west of Ambleside. All the land in England higher than above sea level lies within the National Park, including Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Film Finance Corporation
The National Film Finance Corporation (NFFC) was a film funding agency in the United Kingdom in operation from 1949 until 1985. The NFFC was established by the Cinematograph Film Production (Special Loans) Act 1949, and further enhanced by the Cinematograph Film Production (Special Loans) Act 1952, which gave the NFFC the power to borrow from sources other than the Board of Trade. The NFFC was abolished by the Films Act 1985. The lawyer John Terry (from 1976, Sir John) served as the NFFC's manager for twenty years from 1958 to 1978. During that time, he helped to secure the backing for hundreds of films launching the careers of director Ridley Scott and producer David Puttnam, among many others. The NFFC acted as a lender of last resort for the film industry however, in the early 1970s, the government reduced its funding so it started to operate as a consortium, including with banks, with National Westminster Bank a big investor. This change led to the NFFC using more commerc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Wilcox
Herbert Sydney Wilcox CBE (19 April 1890 – 15 May 1977) was a British film producer and director. He was one of the most successful British filmmakers from the 1920s to the 1950s. He is best known for the films he made with his third wife Anna Neagle. Early life Wilcox's mother was from County Cork, Ireland, and Wilcox considered himself Irish, but he was born in Norwood, south London.7 Dagmar Villas, Gipsy Road. ''Mr Michael Thornton'' re Mr Herbert Wilcox. ''The Times'', Thursday, 19 May 1977; p. 18; Issue 60007; col F His family moved to Brighton when Wilcox was eight years old; he was one of five children. His family were poor and Wilcox had to do a number of part-time jobs, including some work as a chorus boy at the local Hippodrome. His mother died of tuberculosis when she was 42. Wilcox left school before the age of fourteen to find work. Shortly afterwards, his father died at the age of 42. Wilcox began earning money as a professional pool player at the Metropole ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Ambler
Eric Clifford Ambler OBE (28 June 1909 – 22 October 1998) was an English author of thrillers, in particular spy novels, who introduced a new realism to the genre. Also working as a screenwriter, Ambler used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books cowritten with Charles Rodda. Life Ambler was born in Charlton, South-East London, into a family of entertainers who ran a puppet show, with which he helped in his early years. Both parents also worked as music hall artists. He later studied engineering at the Northampton Polytechnic Institute in Islington (now City, University of London) and served a traineeship with an engineering company. However, his upbringing as an entertainer proved dominant and he soon moved to writing plays and other works. By the early 1930s, he was a copywriter at an advertising agency in London. After resigning, he moved to Paris, where he met and in 1939 married Louise Crombie, an American fashion correspondent. Ambler was then politically a staunch antif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Age
''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and southern New South Wales. It is delivered both in print and digital formats. The newspaper shares some articles with its sister newspaper '' The Sydney Morning Herald''. ''The Age'' is considered a newspaper of record for Australia, and has variously been known for its investigative reporting, with its journalists having won dozens of Walkley Awards, Australia's most prestigious journalism prize. , ''The Age'' had a monthly readership of 5.321 million. History Foundation ''The Age'' was founded by three Melbourne businessmen: brothers John and Henry Cooke (who had arrived from New Zealand in the 1840s) and Walter Powell. The first edition appeared on 17 October 1854. Syme family The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rank Organisation
The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment conglomerate founded by industrialist J. Arthur Rank in April 1937. It quickly became the largest and most vertically integrated film company in the United Kingdom, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities. It also diversified into the manufacture of radios, TVs and photocopiers (as one of the owners of Rank Xerox). The company name lasted until February 1996, when the name and some of the remaining assets were absorbed into the newly structured Rank Group plc. The company itself became a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox and was renamed XRO Limited in 1997. The company logo, the Gongman, first used in 1935 by the group's distribution company General Film DistributorsThe Independent July 16, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sydney Box
Frank Sydney Box (29 April 1907 – 25 May 1983) was a British film producer and screenwriter, and brother of British film producer Betty Box. In 1940, he founded the documentary film company Verity Films with Jay Lewis. He produced and co-wrote the screenplay, with his then wife Muriel Box, for '' The Seventh Veil'' (1945), which received the 1946 Oscar for best original screenplay. Sydney and Muriel married in 1935, had a daughter Leonora, the following year and divorced in 1969. Gainsborough Studios The couple were then hired by the Rank Organisation to run Gainsborough Studios. They disapproved of the Gainsborough melodramas which had been the studio's major successes for several years, and switched production to a broader range of more "realistic" films with mixed results. Box made 36 films at Gainsborough, which was merged into the Rank Organization in 1949. In 1951 he founded his own production company London Independent Producers with William MacQuitty. Box ende ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maxwell Reed
Maxwell Reed (2 April 1919 – 31 October 1974) was a Northern Irish actor who became a matinee idol in several British films during the 1940s and 1950s. Biography Early Years Reed was born in Larne. He left school aged fifteen to work on ships, including as a blockade runner. He wanted to act and ended up studying at RADA for a year. During World War II he served in the RAF and then the Merchant Navy. After demobilisation he worked as an extra and in repertory. He did a screen test for Riverside Studios at Rank and joined The Company of Youth at the age of 27. Reed made his film debut in '' The Years Between'' (1946) and then appeared in ''Gaiety George'' (1946), both in uncredited roles. Leading Man Producer Sydney Box thought Reed had star potential and promoted him to leading man status for '' Daybreak'', a film noir which Box produced and co-wrote with his wife Muriel; Reed played an employee of Eric Portman who lusts after Portman's wife, played by Ann Todd. The film ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sandra Dorne
Sandra Dorne (born Joan Smith; 19 June 1924 – 25 December 1992) was a British actress. Career Also known as Sandra Holt, Dorne was often known in the 1950s as the B-film Diana Dors. As a platinum blonde, she was a regular female lead in B-films in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She trained at the Rank Organisation's "charm school". Film roles dried up as she grew older, but she still found work and acted mainly in British television, appearing in such series as ''Z-Cars'', ''The Avengers'' and '' The Third Man''. Personal life Married to the actor Patrick Holt from 1954 until her death, Dorne died on Christmas Day 1992 at Paddington Community Hospital, Westminster, London. The cause of death was kidney cancer. Partial filmography * ''Eyes That Kill'' (1947) – Joan * '' Saraband for Dead Lovers'' (1948) – (uncredited) * '' A Piece of Cake'' (1948) – Minor Role (uncredited) * '' Once a Jolly Swagman'' (1949) – Kay Fox * ''All Over the Town'' (1949) – Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wattis
Richard Wattis (25 February 1912 – 1 February 1975) was an English actor, co-starring in many popular British comedies of the 1950s and 1960s. Early life Richard Cameron Wattis was born on 25 February 1912 in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, the elder of two sons born to Cameron Tom Wattis and Margaret Janet, née Preston. He attended King Edward's School and Bromsgrove School, after which he worked for the electrical engineering firm William Sanders & Co (Wednesbury) Ltd. His uncle, William Preston (1874–1941), was the managing director and was the Conservative MP for Walsall from 1924 to 1929. Career After leaving the family business, Wattis became an actor. His debut was with Croydon Repertory Theatre, and he made many stage appearances in the West End in London. His first appearance in a film was ''A Yank at Oxford'' (1938), but war service interrupted his career as an actor. He served as a second lieutenant in the Small Arms Section of Special Operations Executive at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
