Walter C. Mycroft, the time of my life : the memoirs of a British film producer / Walter C. Mycroft ; introduced, edited, and annotated by Vincent Porter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mycroft, Walter C.

Contributor:

Porter, Vincent.

Series:

Filmmakers series ; 125.

Filmmakers series ; 125

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mycroft, Walter C.

Motion picture producers and directors--Great Britain--Biography.

Motion picture producers and directors.

Great Britain.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

xl, 233 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2006.

Summary:

Walter Mycroft (1891-1959) was a film critic for the Evening Standard from 1922 to 1927 and a founding member of London's Film Society. In 1928, he was appointed head of the Scenario Department and later director of production at British International Pictures (later Associated British Pictures). In 1941, Mycroft was fired after the death of the company's managing director and the requisition of Elstree studios by the British government for war purposes. After that, his career went into steady decline, although after World War II he worked for nearly a decade as scenario adviser to Robert Clark, who ran the rebuilt Elstree studios.

Walter C. Mycroft: The Time of My Life, which Mycroft wrote mainly in the 1940s, offers a detailed account of the vagaries and complex economic vicissitudes of British film production in the 1930s. Mycroft recalls how he selected film stories for directors Harry Lachman, E. A. Dupont, and Alfred Hitchcock and reveals for the first time the true story behind Hitchcock's departure from British International Pictures. He also provides incisive portraits of British film industry captains, including Alexander Korda, C. M. Woolf, J. Arthur Rank, and John Maxwell, the shrewd iconoclastic Scottish lawyer who built Associated British into the largest and most financially successful film corporation in prewar Britain. The book concludes with the death of Maxwell and Mycroft's fall from grace at Elstree.

This long-lost memoir is supplemented by four appendixes consisting of Mycroft's earlier writings on the aesthetics and business of film production, along with a filmography of the more than 200 films on which he worked. His story provides both scholars and general readers with new and fascinating insights into the world of British journalism during the first two decades of the twentieth century and British film production during the 1930s. Walter C. Mycroft: The Time of My Life will be of interest not only to scholars of British journalism and prewar British film production but also to anyone interested in prewar British culture.

Contents:

1 The Poet in the Pub 1

2 Critic by Chance 13

3 Journey into Films 26

4 Halfway House 44

5 Fade In 62

6 Comic Business 74

7 The Glittering Prizes 82

8 The Man Who Was Elstree 102

9 Some of My Best Friends ... 116

10 The Man Who Knew Too Much 127

11 Grief 135

12 New Blood 143

13 The Captains and the Kings 150

14 The Way Is the Stars 162

15 Farewell Scene 170

Appendix A Scenario Writing: Principles of Adaptation: Hints to Authors 175

Appendix B Finding a New Screen Story Every Fortnight 181

Appendix C Films as an Industrial Element of Entertainment: Sane Production Costs Will Triumph over British Studio Crisis 186

Appendix D Shaw-and the Devil to Pay 188

The Filmography of Walter C. Mycroft / Vincent Porter 199.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes filmography: pages 199-222.

ISBN:

0810857235

OCLC:

62281616

Publisher Number:

9780810857230