Angus MacPhail | |
---|---|
Born | 8 April 1903 London, England, UK |
Died | 22 April 1962 59) Sussex, England, UK | (aged
Occupation | Screenwriter |
Nationality | English |
Alma mater | Westminster School Trinity Hall, Cambridge |
Genre | Screenwriting, film |
Angus Roy MacPhail (8 April 1903 – 22 April 1962) was an English screenwriter, active from the late 1920s. He is best remembered for his work with Alfred Hitchcock. [1]
Son of merchant clerk Angus MacPhail and Fanny Maud (née Karlowa), he was born in Lewisham, [2] London, and educated at Westminster School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he studied English and edited Granta . At Cambridge, he was a close friend of fellow Old Westminsters Ivor Montagu, later a filmmaker, who described MacPhail as "a red-haired and rather gauche Scot from Blackheath", and Arnold Haskell, later a dance critic and headmaster of the Royal Ballet School. [3] [4]
He began to work in the film business in 1926, writing subtitles for silent films. He began writing his own scenarios for Gaumont British Studios and later Ealing Studios under Sir Michael Balcon. During World War II, he made films for the Ministry of Information. MacPhail wrote a number of screenplays for director Alfred Hitchcock. One of the latter's favourite devices for driving the plots of his stories and creating suspense was what he called the MacGuffin. His old friend Ivor Montagu, who worked with Hitchcock on several of his British films, attributes the coining of the term to MacPhail. [5]
Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes, who wrote as Marie Belloc Lowndes, was a prolific English novelist, and sister of author Hilaire Belloc.
Sir Michael Elias Balcon was an English film producer known for his leadership of Ealing Studios in West London from 1938 to 1955. Under his direction, the studio became one of the most important British film studios of the day. In an industry short of Hollywood-style moguls, Balcon emerged as a key figure, and an obdurately British one too, in his benevolent, somewhat headmasterly approach to the running of a creative organization. He is known for his leadership, and his guidance of young Alfred Hitchcock.
Frank Launder was a British writer, film director and producer, who made more than 40 films, many of them in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat.
George S. Barnes, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer active from the era of silent films to the early 1950s.
Lee Garmes, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer. During his career, he worked with directors Howard Hawks, Max Ophüls, Josef von Sternberg, Alfred Hitchcock, King Vidor, Nicholas Ray and Henry Hathaway, whom he had met as a young man when the two first came to Hollywood in the silent era. He also co-directed two films with legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht: Angels Over Broadway and Actor's and Sin.
Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu was an English filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, film critic, writer, table tennis player, and Communist activist in the 1930s. He helped to develop a lively intellectual film culture in Britain during the interwar years, and was also the founder of the International Table Tennis Federation.
Alfred Junge was a German-born production designer who spent a large part of his career working in the British film industry.
Arnold Lionel David Haskell was a British dance critic who founded the Camargo Society in 1930. With Ninette de Valois, he was influential in the development of the Royal Ballet School, later becoming the school's headmaster.
Wylie Watson was a British actor. Among his best-known roles were those of "Mr Memory", an amazing man who commits "50 new facts to his memory every day" in Alfred Hitchcock's film The 39 Steps (1935), and wily storekeeper Joseph Macroon in the Ealing comedy Whisky Galore! (1949). He emigrated to Australia in 1952, and made his final film appearance there in The Sundowners (1960).
Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti was a Brazilian-born film director and producer. He was often credited under the single name "Cavalcanti".
Bernard Knowles was an English film director, producer, cinematographer and screenwriter. Born in Manchester, Knowles worked with Alfred Hitchcock on numerous occasions before the director emigrated to Hollywood.
Eliot Stannard was an English screenwriter and director. He was the son of civil engineer Arthur Stannard and Yorkshire-born novelist Henrietta Eliza Vaughan Palmer. Stannard wrote the screenplay for more than 80 films between 1914 and 1933, including eight films directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He also directed five films. During the early 1920s, he worked on most of the screenplays for the Ideal Film Company, one of Britain's leading silent film studios.
William Gordon Harker was an English stage and film actor.
Donald Esme Clayton Calthrop was an English stage and film actor.
Gus McNaughton, also known as Augustus Le Clerq and Augustus Howard, was an English film actor. He appeared in 70 films between 1930 and 1947. He was born in London and died in Castor, Cambridgeshire. He is sometimes credited as Gus MacNaughton. He appeared on stage from 1899, as a juvenile comedian with the Fred Karno company, the influential British music hall troupe. In films, McNaughton was often cast as the "fast-talking sidekick", and he appeared in several popular George Formby comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. He also appeared twice for director Alfred Hitchcock in both Murder! (1930) and The 39 Steps (1935).
Walter Forde was a British actor, screenwriter and director. Born in Lambeth, south London in 1898, he directed over fifty films between 1919 from the silent era through to 1949 in the sound era. He died in Los Angeles, California in 1984.
Ivor Barnard was an English stage, radio and film actor. He was an original member of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, where he was a notable Shylock and Caliban. He was the original Water Rat in the first London production of A. A. Milne's "Toad of Toad Hall". In 1929 he appeared on stage as Blanquet, in "Bird in Hand" at the Morosco Theatre in New York, after a successful run in London's West End. The part had been specially written for him by John Drinkwater.
Harold Huth was a British actor, film director and producer.
John Henry Graham Cutts, known as Graham Cutts, was a British film director, one of the leading British directors in the 1920s. His fellow director A. V. Bramble believed that Gainsborough Pictures had been built on the back of his work.
Walter Charles Mycroft was a British journalist, screenwriter, film producer and director. In the 1920s he was film critic of the London Evening Standard, and a founder of the London Film Society, before joining the film industry.