Peter Morley (documentary filmmaker)

Peter Morley , OBE (born June 26, 1924 in Berlin as Peter Meyer , † June 23, 2016 in Aylesbury , Buckinghamshire ) was a British documentary filmmaker and television producer .

life and career

Peter Meyer was born in Berlin in 1924 as the son of the Jewish couple Willy Meyer (1882–1954) and Alice Meyer, née Altheimer (1894–1976). Even before the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, the family was planning to emigrate to Britain. Meyer's parents registered Peter, his brother Thomas (1922–1997) and his sister Anne Marie (1919–2004) in the Herrlingen country school home , which later that year was to relocate the entire school to Great Britain. There he and his siblings attended the Bunce Court School founded by Anna Essinger in Otterden , Kent. While the children were housed in the boarding school there, the father lived in London. The mother had since left the family and fled to Paris with Harry Kahn . Peter Meyer also spent a lot of time with the Corbett-Fishers, a host family who became his surrogate parents.

After the outbreak of the Second World War , his brother and father were classified as " Enemy Aliens " and interned. Peter Meyer escaped internment due to his age. In 1940 he graduated from school and initially got by with various temporary jobs before he was hired as assistant projectionist in London's Dominion Theater in 1941 , which Meyer regarded as his "entry into the film industry". A performance by Citizen Kane made a deep impression on Meyer and made him decide to become a filmmaker himself.

At the age of 17 he applied for service with the Royal Air Force , but was initially rejected due to his status as an "enemy alien". After his brother applied to the British Army in 1943 , Meyer followed him. Due to their German-Jewish origins, it was recommended that the brothers change their names in the event that they were captured by German troops. Peter Morley's brother stuck a needle into the pages of an open phone book with his eyes closed and found the name "Morley". Both brothers then adopted this name. Relocated to France during the Normandy invasion, they both fought in the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars. With this unit both saw the end of the war in Berlin. During the Potsdam Conference , Morley was one of the soldiers who served as bodyguard for Winston Churchill . During his stay in Berlin, despite strict bans on the black market, he exchanged cigarettes and other goods for a Cine-Kodak 16 mm camera.

In 1947 Morley became a British citizen. In September of that year he was discharged from the army.

Morley aspired to work in the film industry. Without membership in the British film union ACT ( Association of Cinematograph Technicians ), however, he received no employment and without employment no membership in the ACT, which Morley referred to as " Catch-22 syndrome". To avoid this dilemma, he founded the production company PJ Morley Film Production Limited with the support of his father . With his camera smuggled out of Berlin, he then shot a seven-minute long advertising film for a television dealer. However, the performances in the shop window of the dealer caused crowds of people every evening, whereupon the police stopped the performances. Furthermore, since he could not prove that he had employed a film crew and a film editor in his production and paid them according to the union tariff, his membership application was again rejected.

An acquaintance who worked for the Shell Film Unit gave him the opportunity to apply directly to its director Arthur Elton . He saw in Morley "not a spark of talent", which is why a career in the film industry was excluded. Morley eventually reluctantly accepted a position as assistant projectionist with the Film Producers Guild , which also had its own production studio. There, Morley learned the basics of film editing and film production and met filmmakers such as Humphrey Jennings , John Grierson , Jill Craigie and Paul Rotha at screenings .

In 1947 he finally made his first documentary, Once Upon a Time, about his old school in Kent. After Morley had convinced Anna Essinger of the project, the Bunce Court School took over the costs of the production. Morley wrote the screenplay, acquired lighting technology and shot the entire film on his own in three weeks with his Cine-Kodak. The film magazine Amateur Cine World praised the film.

With the support of the film producer Ronald H. Riley , he finally got a job as a tea boy at a production company of the Film Producers Guild. Thanks to his knowledge of film editing, he quickly took on other tasks in film production and was soon working as a film editor . Oswald Hafenrichter , who was friends with his sister, finally put him in a film production for which the ACT could not provide a member. So Morley was able to become a member of the ACT in 1950.

From 1955 Morley worked as a freelance director for the newly founded television station Associated Rediffusion of the ITV network. In the course of his career he produced over 200 programs. In addition to documentaries, there were also music programs and broadcasts of opera performances and state acts.

One of his first directorial jobs for ITV was the documentary series People Are Talking , for which Morley shot four episodes. In particular, the episode Fan Fever , which was dedicated to the new phenomenon of extremely euphoric music fans at concerts, attracted a lot of attention . Morley filmed an appearance by Dickie Valentine at the Coventry Theater in front of 8,000 mostly female fans. Some recordings in which women from the audience threw their bras on the stage were destroyed before they were broadcast. The broadcast achieved very high ratings and also made the phenomenon known to a larger audience for the first time through the extensive press coverage that followed.

Morley's most notable productions included ITV's first full-length documentary Tyranny: The Years of Adolf Hitler from 1959, for which Morley interviewed Adolf Hitler's sister Paula , among others . The film reached over 10 million viewers when it first aired. It was then sold to an American broadcaster and only survived in fragments. In 1965, Morley produced ITV's live broadcast of Sir Winston Churchill's state funeral . The broadcast, recorded live for over five hours by 45 cameras, with commentary by Laurence Olivier, was Britain's largest live broadcast of a historic event to date. For this show and LSO - The Music Men , a documentary about the London Symphony Orchestra , Morley received the British Academy Television Award in the category Outside Broadcasts in 1966 . In 1969 he documented the investiture of Prince Charles in Caernarfon . In 1980 the four-part series Women of Courage was created , about Hiltgunt Zassenhaus , Sigrid Helliesen Lund , Mary Lindell and Maria Rutkiewicz , who risked their own lives during the Second World War to save Jews and other people persecuted by the Nazis. A year earlier, Kitty: Return to Auschwitz was a documentary about a trip by Holocaust survivor Kitty Hart-Moxon to Auschwitz-Birkenau . The film won several awards, including an RTS Television Award. Morley had become aware of her story while researching Women of Courage , but had to be convinced by his team to turn it into a film.

In addition to his work for ITV, Morley was freelance for other broadcasters. From 1974 to 1975 he produced the 13-part documentary series Europe - The Mighty Continent for the BBC .

In 1969 he was awarded the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

From 1962 until her death in 2013 he was married to Jane Morley (nee Tillet). The marriage resulted in two sons. The family lived in North London in Highgate . Peter Morley died on June 23, 2016, three days before his 92nd birthday. He left behind his two children and six grandchildren.

Filmography (selection)

Director

• 1947: Once Upon a Time (documentary)
• 1957: Salute to Show Business (TV movie)
• 1958: People are Talking (documentary series, 4 episodes)
• 1959: Tyranny: The Years of Adolf Hitler (documentary)
• 1959: The Turn of the Screw (TV movie)
• 1960: The Two Faces of Japan (documentary)
• 1968: Lord Mountbatten: A Man for the Century (documentary series, 12 episodes)
• 1977: Twenty Five Years (documentary)
• 1979: Kitty: Return to Auschwitz (documentary)
• 1980: Women of Courage (documentary series, 4 episodes)

production

• 1961–1963: This Week (TV series)
• 1964: Black Marries White - The Last Barrier (documentary)
• 1965: The State Funeral of Sir Winston Churchill (live documentary)
• 1969: Investiture at Caernarfon (live documentation)
• 1974–1975: Europe - The Mighty Continent (documentary series, 13 episodes)
• 1977: Twenty Five Years (documentary)
• 1979: Kitty: Return to Auschwitz (documentary)
• 1980: Women of Courage (documentary series, 4 episodes)

literature

• A Life Rewound: Memoirs of a Freelance Producer and Director. Autobiography. Bank House Books, 2010, ISBN 978-1-904408-77-2 .

Web links

• Peter Morley in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} A Life Rewound: Memoirs of a freelance Producer and Director at thejc.com, accessed June 9, 2016.
2. ^ ^{A b} Peter Morley obituary at theguardian.com, accessed September 6, 2016
3. ^ ^{A b c} Obituary: Peter Morley, television documentary-maker at scotsman.com.com, accessed September 6, 2016
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s} A Life Rewound: Memoirs of a freelance Producer and Director. Part One. at static.bafta.org, accessed June 9, 2016.
5. ↑ Anna's children at theguardian.com, accessed June 9, 2016.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Peter Morley at screenonline.org.uk, accessed June 9, 2016.
7. ↑ Television Documentaries: ITV's golden boy from a golden age at independent.co.uk, accessed June 9, 2016.
8. ^ Highgate man who won Bafta for Sir Winston Churchill's funeral marks anniversary at hamhigh.co.uk, accessed June 9, 2016.
9. ↑ Bernard Sendall: Independent Television in Britain: Volume 2 Expansion and Change, 1958-1968. The Macmillan Press, 1983, ISBN 0-333-30942-1 , p. 326.
10. ↑ Television | Outside Broadcasts in 1966 at awards.bafta.org, accessed June 9, 2016.
11. ↑ Films on Women Rescuers During World War II to Screen at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ( Memento of the original from August 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at ushmm.org, accessed June 9, 2016. 
12. ↑ Kitty: Return to Auschwitz - Awards at imdb.com, accessed on June 9, 2016.
13. ↑ Toby Haggith, Joanna Newman (ed.): Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television Since 1933 Wallflower Press, 2005, ISBN 1-904764-51-7 , page 154 .
14. ↑ Peter Morley - A Life Rewound at bafta.org, accessed on June 6, 2016.