Quartet

Ralph Smart was a film and television producer, director, and writer, born in England to Australian parents in 1908. He 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 to fill production... quotas. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1942 and served until 1945. Afterwards he worked for the Rank Organisation and Ealing Studios, returning to Australia to direct several films including Bitter Springs , addressing the mistreatment of young Aborigines. Back again in Britain, he became an influential figure in television, remembered as the creator and producer of Danger Man, also known as Secret Agent. He produced, directed or wrote a number of television series and films, including the 1950s series The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Invisible Man. He retired to Australia, and died 12 February 2001, in his nineties, in Bowen, Queensland.
more

Kenneth Cooper Annakin OBE was an English film director. Annakin grew up in Beverley, Yorkshire where he attended the local school. He began his career in feature films following an early experience making documentaries. His first filmwork was in 1947 with the Rank Organisation. The following year... he moved to Gainsborough Pictures to direct three films about the Huggetts, a working class family living in suburban England these highly successful films starring Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Petula Clark and Diana Dors are seen as the genesis of the British soap opera. Annakin became known for a series of Walt Disney adventures including The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men , The Sword and the Rose , Third Man on the Mountain , and Swiss Family Robinson . He was later associated with another American producer, Darryl F. Zanuck, when he was hired to direct the British segments in The Longest Day . As head of the 20th Century-Fox Studio, Zanuck endorsed Annakin's most ambitious project Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines .
more

Arthur Crabtree was a British cinematographer and film director. He directed several of the Gainsborough Melodramas. Crabtree earliest credits as a cinematographer working on such films as the Will Hay comedies Oh, Mr. Porter! and Good Morning, Boys and Hey! Hey! USA! , the Arthur Askey vehicle... Charley's Aunt , and The Man in Grey and Fanny by Gaslight for Gainsborough Pictures. Crabtree continued his association with Gainsborough as he started his directorial career, beginning with the melodramatic fantasies Madonna of the Seven Moons , starring Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger and Caravan . His last two films were Fiend Without a Face and Horrors of the Black Museum , a science fiction and horror, respectively, both of which have become cult favourites, although the former enjoys a better critical reputation. He also directed episodes of television series such as The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Adventures of Sir Lancelot .
more

Harold French was an English director and actor of stage and screen. As an actor most of his roles occurred between 1912 and 1936. He did not garner as much attention as an actor as he would as a director. From 1940 to 1955 he had a several solid box-office successes. This successful period was... clouded by the 1941 death of his wife Phyllis in a bombing raid. Although he did some TV work after 1955 he appears to have retired from directing or acting after 1963. He died in 1997, aged 100.
more