DOCSLIB.ORG

Maurice Elvey (Film Director) 11/11/1887 – 28/8/1967 by Admin — Last Modified Jul 28, 2008 04:49 PM

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Maurice Elvey (Film Director) 11/11/1887 – 28/8/1967 by Admin — Last Modified Jul 28, 2008 04:49 PM Maurice Elvey (film director) 11/11/1887 – 28/8/1967 by admin — last modified Jul 28, 2008 04:49 PM BIOGRAPHY: Maurice Elvey was one of the most prolific directors in British cinema history, directing over 300 feature films between 1917 and 1953. Elvey began his career on stage as an actor, and he also acted in his directorial debut, The Fallen Idol (1913). He later became known for his historical-biographical films, including Life Story of David Lloyd George (1918). By the early 1920s, Elvey had become the chief director at Stoll studios, where he worked particularly on literary adaptations. His career in silent cinema culminated with the well-regarded Hindle Wakes (1927). In the 1930s he Elvey was involved in the production of numerous ‘quota quickies’. Faltering eyesight eventually led him to retire in 1957. SUMMARY: In this brief interview he talks to Ralph Bond about his early life working in London, his early career as a stage director with the Adelphi Play Society, and his conversion to film on a trip to America in 1912. Elvey talks about some of the high points of his career as a silent film director, particularly the making of The Flag Lieutenant (1926) and High Treason (1929). He talks about working conditions within the ‘quota quickie’ section of the industry, offering memories of figures like Julius Hagen. Elvey muses interestingly on the changes in working conditions which he has observed during his extraordinarily long career in British film. BECTU History Project - Interview No. 110 [Copyright BECTU ] Transcription Date: [? Pilot Project] Interview Date: 1963-10-01 Interviewer: Ralph Bond Interviewee: Maurice Elvey Tape 1, Side 1 Ralph Bond : This is a tape-recorded interview with Maurice Elvey, who is certainly one of the pioneers of the British film industry. Even the doyen of the British film industry. During his lifetime, Maurice has made at least 150 films. Maurice, I gather you were born in 1887, and I wonder if you can tell us something about your early days. Maurice Elvey : I will, but I don't like to remember them very much. I try and forget, but I suppose the experiences I underwent formed me, for good or ill. I never went to school. My early life, my young life, my childhood life, was spent avoiding school board inspectors - uniformed men who came round and tried and captured you, and made you go to a local board school somewhere. Well, of course, if I was at school I couldn't work, and if I didn't work I didn't eat, so you escaped for that reason. Not because you wanted to get away from the restraint of going to school. I was actually working when I was 9 years old in the streets of London. I expect you've all heard the Flanagan and Allen song, "Underneath the Arches." Well, I know those arches; they're actually between Northumberland Avenue and Villiers Street, underneath Charing Cross, er..., railway viaduct-thing. And that is where I slept many, many, many, many times. It was damn cold, and full of fleas, but that was some shelter. The great problem, of course, was that if you did earn a few coppers - never a few shillings, that was a lot of money - if you did earn a few coppers, the problem was: did you find somewhere warm at night, or did you eat? Well, at that age, of course, you ate - when you could. Well, all these... hardships one didn't realise were hardships at the time. But I'm not sure that they weren't very good for me. I'm not sure that most people today aren't over-educated. I think life is the only real education, but, however, this is getting off the track. What would you like me to tell you? Ralph Bond : Well, you obviously had hard times in those days. What was your first real job, apart from earning hard coppers? Maurice Elvey : Well, my first real job - the first job I really remember - was being a page boy at the Hyde Park Hotel - which is still there. And, of course, this was wonderful. I must have been then, I suppose, in my very early 'teens. This was wonderful because of course I had about 9 meals a day - you could always cram something. And we all slept together - that is, the males - in a large dormitory at the top of the building, which, of course, meant that you were warm. Ralph Bond : And how long did this go on? Were your ambitions higher than to be... Maurice Elvey : Oh, I hated it! I hated the uniform. I was very rebellious, like all teenagers should be. And I couldn't bear the implied servitude which this uniform forced upon me. But, of course, it was very lucky in a way because I remember the thing that changed my whole existence was an American who left the Hyde Park Hotel in a four-wheeler - I presume to catch a train. I presume he had a wife; I don't know. I'd know his face again if he walked in this room today. I remember him with the utmost gratitude because he looked at me - I must have done an errand for him, and got back in time, or something - and he said, "You're a bright spark," or words to that effect. And I must have said, "Thank you sir," and he said, "Do you like your job?" and I said, "No sir!" and he said "You would like to get out of that uniform, rig," - or whatever he called it - and I said "oh God, yes," or words to that effect. And he said, "Alright! If I give you five English sovereigns will you throw that uniform away this afternoon and go out and get a real job?" And I said "Yes sir!" And he did, he gave me five English golden pounds. And I walked out of the Hyde Park Hotel the moment my turn of duty was done that day, and I never looked back in the whole of my life. Ralph Bond : What did you do with the five pounds? Maurice Elvey : Well, that was a lot of money. You could live then for six or eight weeks on that, you know, at my age. And I took a room in the Adelphi, just off The Strand. And I remember I paid half a crown a week for it, and it had nothing in it whatever, not even a chair. And there was some water on the landing. But, it was my own, and I had a corner. And it was in the middle of theatreland, which I'd always been obsessed by - the theatre. Don't ask why, I don't know. But I was. And then, eventually, I got a job, of sorts, working a printing press - printing machine, rather - which used to print visiting cards at a shilling a hundred. And I was exhibited in the window working this machine, and I got twelve shillings a week. It was in Garrick Street - again, you see, theatreland - opposite the Garrick Club, and I used to see my great idols of the theatre, and I used to spend sixpence to go up in the "gods" and applaud. George Alexander, Lewis Waller: all these people who meant everything in my life at that impressionable age. And I got twelve-and-six a week for that. And one lunchtime - I mean, you've asked for this, so you might as well have it! - one lunchtime I went out and I walked past the stage door of what is now the Strand theatre; it was then called the Waldorf theatre, next to the Waldorf Hotel. And I saw a bunch of people - there were no queues in those days - and I was curious, and a man said "They are engaging 'supers' for a new play, a new production," - it turned out to be Hamlet, incidentally. And I said, "What is a 'super?'" He said, "Well, you walk on," as it was called then - we call them extras now. You were a walking-on gentleman - and you got a guinea a week, mark you! And you only worked six nights and two matinees: this was a miracle compared to twelve and sixpence for umpteen hours trundling away at some filthy machine! So I never went back to that. And I remember I had to pay the super-master half a crown out of my weekly wages which was no more than his due, I think, because he was acting as an agent. And then, of course, I had the most extraordinary experiences for a young lad at that age of listening to Shakespeare every night. Ralph Bond : So, that's how you started in the theatre, in walk-on parts? Maurice Elvey : That's how I started in the theatre, and I determined never to leave it! Then the next job I got when that came to an end was I went to an agent in Regent Street - one of those large fur-collared gentlemen of the old school, with a curly top hat. His name, believe it or not, was Mr. Kelsom-Truman - and he looked it! He sent me off to Nottingham to be a chorus boy in a pantomime. He asked me if I could sing. Of course, I said "Yes," and I'd never sung a note! And there I went up, and I got two pounds a week. And being an ambitious sort of lad - I must have been - I understudied the Demon Rat - ha ha - and eventually became assistant stage manager.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Origen De La Enfermería En El Cine: El Género Histórico-Documental Y Biográfico
    ORIGEN DE LA ENFERMERÍA EN EL CINE: EL GÉNERO HISTÓRICO- DOCUMENTAL Y BIOGRÁFICO José Siles González Universidad de Alicante INTRODUCCIÓN El cine y las películas constituyen una herramienta fundamental para transmitir los fe- nómenos humanos en toda su complejidad, sin renunciar a ninguna de las dimensiones que intervienen en los acontecimientos. Ya Terencio y Shakespeare formularon la famosa frase: «Nada de lo humano me es ajeno». La enfermedad, el dolor, la muerte forman parte de la na- turaleza humana y, más tarde o temprano, de una u otro forma, acaban arribando a la existen- cia de todos los seres humanos que experimentan sus vivencias de forma tan diversa como compleja; es decir, mediante un determinado tipo de estética experiencial. Al cine, nada de lo humano le es ajeno y, particularmente, aquellos fenómenos vinculados a situaciones que producen cambios notables en quienes las viven (enfermedades, dolencias, pérdidas, etc.). Carper (1999) incluyó la dimensión estética como la cuarta integrante de los cuatro niveles del conocimiento enfermero (empírico-científico, ético, personal y estético). Otros autores desarrollaron modelos basándose en estos diferentes patrones y reinterpretando el conoci- miento estético desde las necesidades tanto del paciente como de la práctica profesional de enfermería partiendo de la base de la pertinencia de la estética ante situaciones –como el sufrimiento ante la enfermedad– donde el pensamiento subjetivo adquiere una gran intensi- dad (Chinn, 1994). Debido a su potencial de configuración ideológica (Lebel, 1973), el cine ha desempeña- do un papel determinante en el desarrollo de clichés, estereotipos y en una amplia gama de modelado de todos aquellos asuntos que forman parte de la realidad histórica.
    [Show full text]
  • Foreign Women Authors Under Fascism and Francoism
    Foreign Women Authors under Fascism and Francoism Foreign Women Authors under Fascism and Francoism: Gender, Translation and Censorship Edited by Pilar Godayol and Annarita Taronna Foreign Women Authors under Fascism and Francoism: Gender, Translation and Censorship Edited by Pilar Godayol and Annarita Taronna This book first published 2018 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2018 by Pilar Godayol, Annarita Taronna and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-0665-7 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0665-7 This book is the result of work by the consolidated research group “Gender Studies Research Group: Translation, Literature, History and Communication” (GETLIHC) (2014 SGR 62) of the University of Vic– Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) (C. de la Laura, 13, 08500, Vic, Spain), and the R&D project “Traducción y censura: género e ideología (1939-2000)” (ref. FFI2014-52989-C2-2-P), financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitivity. This book is also the result of work by the research group “Archivio di Genere Carla Lonzi” of the University of Bari. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ..................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Pilar Godayol and Annarita Taronna Part One: FASCISM (1922-1940) Notes on the Fascist Censorship ................................................................ 10 Annarita Taronna Chapter One ..............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Bibliography
    BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES BY AGATHA CHRISTIE Christie, Agatha. An Autobiography [1977] (London: Harper, 2011). ———. The Big Four (London: Collins, 1927). ———. The Body in the Library [1942] (New York, London, Toronto: Harper, 2011). ———. “The Capture of Cerberus” [1941], in Agatha Christie ’ s Secret Notebooks : Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making , ed. by John Curran (London: HarperCollins, 2009), 425-52. ———. “The Capture of Cerberus” [1947], in Herucle Poirot : The Complete Short Stories (London: HarperCollins, 1999), 831-51. ———. Cards on the Table [1936] (Glasgow: Fontana, 1969). ———. Cards on the Table : Marple Tie-In (London: HarperCollins, 2005). ———. A Caribbean Mystery (London: Book Club, 1964). ———. “The Case of the Discontented Soldier” [1934], in Parker Pyne Investigates (New York: William Morrow, 2012), 17-38. ———. “The Case of the Rich Woman” [1934], in Parker Pyne Investigates (New York: William Morrow, 2012), 87-104. ———. “The Cornish Mystery” [1923], in Poirot ’ s Early Cases (London: Harper, 2002), 57-80. ———. Crooked House [1949] (Glasgow: Fontana, 1990). ———. Curtain : Poirot ’ s Last Case [1975] (London: Harper, 2002). ———. Dead Man ’ s Folly [1956] (London: Collins, 1956). ———. Death on the Nile [1937] (New York, London, Toronto: Harper, 2011). © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 271 J.C. Bernthal, Queering Agatha Christie, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33533-9 272 BIBLIOGRAPHY ———. “The Double Clue” [1923], in Hercule Poirot : The Complete Short Stories (London: HarperCollins, 1999), 282-90. ———. Dumb Witness (London: Book Club, 1937). ———. Elephants Can Remember [1972] (London: HarperCollins, 2002). ———. Evil under the Sun [1941] (Glasgow, London: Fontana, 1988). ———. The Grand Tour (London: HarperCollins, 2012). ———. Hallowe ’ en Party [1969] (London: HarperCollins, 1994).
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Shakespeare and Film
    Shakespeare and Film: A Bibliographic Index (from Film to Book) Jordi Sala-Lleal University of Girona [email protected] Research into film adaptation has increased very considerably over recent decades, a development that coincides with postmodern interest in cultural cross-overs, artistic hybrids or heterogeneous discourses about our world. Film adaptation of Shakespearian drama is at the forefront of this research: there are numerous general works and partial studies on the cinema that have grown out of the works of William Shakespeare. Many of these are very valuable and of great interest and, in effect, form a body of work that is hybrid and heterogeneous. It seems important, therefore, to be able to consult a detailed and extensive bibliography in this field, and this is the contribution that we offer here. This work aims to be of help to all researchers into Shakespearian film by providing a useful tool for ordering and clarifying the field. It is in the form of an index that relates the bibliographic items with the films of the Shakespearian corpus, going from the film to each of the citations and works that study it. Researchers in this field should find this of particular use since they will be able to see immediately where to find information on every one of the films relating to Shakespeare. Though this is the most important aspect, this work can be of use in other ways since it includes an ordered list of the most important contributions to research on the subject, and a second, extensive, list of films related to Shakespeare in order of their links to the various works of the canon.
    [Show full text]
  • Re-Investigating Limehouse Chinatown: Kandinsky’S 2010 Limehouse Nights and Early 20Th-Century Oriental Plays
    24 Lia Wen-Ching Liang National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan Re-investigating Limehouse Chinatown: Kandinsky’s 2010 Limehouse Nights and early 20th-century Oriental Plays Kandinsky’s production of Limehouse Nights, performed in 2010, presented a story about the interwar British society seen through the eyes of Thomas Burke, a police detective named after Thomas Burke who wrote extensively about London’s Limehouse Chinatown. By examining the trends and events in the years around 1918, which were extensively referred to in Limehouse Nights, this article discusses the Chinese images emerging from both Kandinsky’s production and the plays from the early 20th century. The analysis underlines the lasting influence of earlier China-related popular entertainment on later developments in theatre as well as on the British public perception of Chinese culture at home and abroad. Limehouse Nights thus provides a contemporary refraction of the converging elements in the early 20th century that at the same time raises questions about factuality, representation and cross-cultural understanding. Lia Wen-Ching Liang is Assistant Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. Her major research interests are contemporary British theatre, postdramatic theatre, early 20th- century theatre, and Deleuze studies.1 Keywords: Limehouse Chinatown, British inter-war theatre, musical comedy, Oriental plays, Thomas Burke, contemporary British theatre, early 20th-century theatre t is now debatable whether London’s notorious “Old Chinatown” in I Limehouse could actually have existed.2 As historian John Seed rightly points out, “[a] series of best-selling novels and short stories, several English and American movies, American comic books, radio programmes, a classic jazz number and two very different hit records brought into international currency Popular Entertainment Studies, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • Money Behind the Screen
    Scanned from the collection of Richard Koszarski Coordinated by the Media History Digital Library www.mediahistoryproject.org Funded by a donation from David Pierce ( Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 ^ http://archive.org/details/nnoneybehindscreeOOfdli MONEY r.l.IIINI) IIIK SCRF.KN MONEY BEHIND THE SCREEN A Report prepared on behalf of the Film Council by F. D. Klingender and Stuart Legg With a preface by John Grierson 1937 LAWRENCE AND WISHART LONDON printed at The Farleigh Press (T.U. throughout) 17-39 Cavton St., London E.C.I — INTRODUCTIOX. This analysis of film finance may seem in parts to touch the realms of fantasy. Its rich figures and the spectacular flutters with fortune which lie behind (hem, are, however, as near as we can make it, the truth of the matter. The story itself was published in outUne in the January number of World Film Xews and not the least ardent of its readers was the intelligence section of one of the bipger banks concerned. Within a week came the news that the lavish credits till now advanced to the film industry, were to be brought under review. It may, therefore, be a useful moment to publish the full account from which the World Film Xews' story was taken. It is the work of the Film Council, a small research group, which a few enquiring members of the film industry set up some months ago to study the social aspects of the cinema. We felt a lack in the information trotted out, and often very ably, in the trade papers, fan magazines and film columns of the newspapers.
    [Show full text]
  • Guide to the William K
    Guide to the William K. Everson Collection George Amberg Memorial Film Study Center Department of Cinema Studies Tisch School of the Arts New York University Descriptive Summary Creator: Everson, William Keith Title: William K. Everson Collection Dates: 1894-1997 Historical/Biographical Note William K. Everson: Selected Bibliography I. Books by Everson Shakespeare in Hollywood. New York: US Information Service, 1957. The Western, From Silents to Cinerama. New York: Orion Press, 1962 (co-authored with George N. Fenin). The American Movie. New York: Atheneum, 1963. The Bad Guys: A Pictorial History of the Movie Villain. New York: Citadel Press, 1964. The Films of Laurel and Hardy. New York: Citadel Press, 1967. The Art of W.C. Fields. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967. A Pictorial History of the Western Film. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1969. The Films of Hal Roach. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1971. The Detective in Film. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1972. The Western, from Silents to the Seventies. Rev. ed. New York: Grossman, 1973. (Co-authored with George N. Fenin). Classics of the Horror Film. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1974. Claudette Colbert. New York: Pyramid Publications, 1976. American Silent Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, Love in the Film. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1979. More Classics of the Horror Film. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1986. The Hollywood Western: 90 Years of Cowboys and Indians, Train Robbers, Sheriffs and Gunslingers, and Assorted Heroes and Desperados. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Pub. Group, 1992. Hollywood Bedlam: Classic Screwball Comedies. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Pub. Group, 1994.
    [Show full text]
  • Cambridge Companion Crime Fiction
    This page intentionally left blank The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction covers British and American crime fiction from the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth. As well as discussing the ‘detective’ fiction of writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, it considers other kinds of fiction where crime plays a substantial part, such as the thriller and spy fiction. It also includes chapters on the treatment of crime in eighteenth-century literature, French and Victorian fiction, women and black detectives, crime in film and on TV, police fiction and postmodernist uses of the detective form. The collection, by an international team of established specialists, offers students invaluable reference material including a chronology and guides to further reading. The volume aims to ensure that its readers will be grounded in the history of crime fiction and its critical reception. THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO CRIME FICTION MARTIN PRIESTMAN cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9780521803991 © Cambridge University Press 2003 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the
    [Show full text]
  • There'll Always Be an England : Representations of Colonial Wars and Immigration, 1948-68 “In Malaya,” the Daily Mail Note
    1 There’ll always be an England : representations of colonial wars and immigration, 1948-68 “In Malaya,” the Daily Mail noted in 1953, “three and a half years of danger have given the planters time to convert their previously pleasant homes into miniature fortresses, with sandbag parapets, wire entanglements, and searchlights.” 1 The image of the home as fortress and a juxtaposition of the domestic with menace and terror were central to British media representations of colonial wars in Malaya and Kenya in the 1950s. The repertoire of imagery deployed in the Daily Mail for the “miniature fortress” in Malaya was extended to Kenya, where the newspaper noted wire over domestic windows, guns beside wine glasses, the charming hostess in her black silk dress with “an automatic pistol hanging at her hip.” Such images of English domesticity threatened by an alien other were also central to immigration discourse in the 1950s and 1960s. In the context of the decline of British colonial rule after 1945, representations of the empire and its legacy – resistance to colonial rule in empire and “immigrants” in the metropolis -- increasingly converged on a common theme: the violation of domestic sanctuaries. Colonial wars of the late 1940s and 1950s have received little attention in literatures on national identity in early post-war Britain, but the articulation of racial difference through immigration discourse, and its significance in redefining the post- imperial British national community has been widely recognised. 2 As Chris Waters has suggested in his work on discourses of race and nation between 1947 and 1963, these years saw questions of race become central to questions of national belonging.
    [Show full text]
  • Different from the Others
    DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS A Comparative Analysis of Representations of Male Queerness and Male-Male Intimacy in the Films of Europe and America, 1912-1934 A thesis submitted to the University of East Anglia for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Shane Brown School of Film, Television and Media ©This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 1 | P a g e ABSTRACT Since the publication of Vito Russo's now classic study, The Celluloid Closet, in 1981, much has been written on the representation of queer characters on screen. However, no full length work on the representation of queer sexualities in silent and early sound film has yet been published, although the articles and chapters of Dyer (1990), Kuzniar (2000) and Barrios (2003) are currently taken as the definitive accounts of these issues. However, each of the above studies deals with a specific country or region and, since their publication, a significant number of silent films have been discovered that were previously thought lost. There has also been a tendency in the past to map modern concepts of sexuality and gender on to films made nearly one hundred years ago. This thesis, therefore, compares the representations of male queerness and male-male intimacy in the films of America and Europe during the period 1912 to 1934, and does so by placing these films within the social and cultural context in which they were made.
    [Show full text]
  • Mapping the British Biopic: Evolution, Conventions, Reception and Masculinities
    Mapping the British Biopic: Evolution, Conventions, Reception and Masculinities Matthew Robinson A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education, University of the West of England, Bristol June 2016 90,792 words Contents Abstract 2 Chapter One: Introduction 3 Chapter Two: Critical Review 24 Chapter Three: Producing the British Biopic 1900-2014 63 Chapter Four: The Reception of the British Biopic 121 Chapter Five: Conventions and Themes of the British 154 Biopic Chapter Six: This is His Story: ‘Wounded’ Men and 200 Homosocial Bonds Chapter Seven: The Contemporary British Biopic 1: 219 Wounded Men Chapter Eight: The Contemporary British Biopic 2: 263 Homosocial Recoveries Chapter Nine: Conclusion 310 Bibliography 323 General Filmography 355 Appendix One: Timeline of the British Biopic 1900-2014 360 Appendix Two: Distribution of Gender and Professional 390 Field in the British Biopic 1900-2014 Appendix Three: Column and Pie Charts of Gender and 391 Profession Distribution in British Biopics Appendix Four: Biopic Production as Proportion of Total 394 UK Film Production Previously Published Material 395 1 Abstract This thesis offers a revaluation of the British biopic, which has often been subsumed into the broader ‘historical film’ category, identifying a critical neglect despite its successful presence throughout the history of the British film industry. It argues that the biopic is a necessary category because producers, reviewers and cinemagoers have significant investments in biographical subjects, and because biopics construct a ‘public history’ for a broad audience.
    [Show full text]
  • Bernard Vorhaus (Film Director) 25/12/1904 – 23/11/2000 by Admin — Last Modified Jul 27, 2008 02:46 PM
    Bernard Vorhaus (film director) 25/12/1904 – 23/11/2000 by admin — last modified Jul 27, 2008 02:46 PM BIOGRAPHY: Bernard Vorhaus was born in New York city on Christmas Day 1904. He got interested in film through his sister who used to sell stories to the early studios in New Jersey. After graduating from college, he got work writing scripts for Harry Cohn at Columbia. He worked as a writer for various production companies during the 1920s, and began to direct films of his own. With the arrival of sound he moved to England, working initially for Phonofilm/British Talking Pictures. When they folded he bought their library and made a living selling stock shots, until he had raised enough to make his first feature film, Money for Speed (1933), starring Ida Lupino. During the early 1930s Vorhaus worked consistently in Britain, directing low budget films for ‘quota quickie’ producers such as Julius Hagen, the best remembered of which are The Ghost Camera (1933), Dusty Ermine (1936) and The Last Journey (1936). When the British film finance boom ended in 1937-8, Vorhaus returned to America, to work for Republic Pictures, again on low budget features. During the war, Vorhaus volunteered for the Air Force Motion Picture Unit, and made training documentaries on technical matters, as well as public information films on subjects such as Venereal Disease. During this period he worked with Ronald Reagan, who he remembers sympathetically. One of Vorhaus’ documentaries – about the Yalta Conference – was suppressed before release in the face of the onset of the cold war.
    [Show full text]