GB Samuelson

George Berthold "Bertie" Samuelson (born July 6, 1889 in Southport , † April 17, 1947 in Great Barr ) was a British film producer and director.

The son of Polish-Jewish immigrants attended the University School in Southport until he was 14 years old. He then had various jobs over several years and eventually ran a cinema in Southport. In 1910 he founded a film distributor, the Royal Film Society , with which he moved to Birmingham in the same year. The profits from the company enabled him to found the Samuelson Film Manufacturing Company in 1913 . With Will Barker he produced the film Sixty Years a Queen here , which was a financial success.

With the proceeds from this film, he acquired Worton Hall in Isleworth and turned it into a film studio. Here he shot the film A Study in Scarlet with director George Pearson and James Bragington as Sherlock Holmes . It was followed by The Great European War and incidents of the Great European War . With the cameraman Sydney Blythe , the writers Roland Pertwee and Walter Summers and the actors Isobel Elsom , Owen Nares , Tom Reynolds , Campbell Gullan , Peggy Hyland and Lillian Hall-Davies , he built a base of employees with whom he made films such as The Admirable Crichton , Hindle Wakes and Milestones - the latter is considered Samuelson's masterpiece. After Pearson left, Alexander Butler , Fred Paul , Rex Wilson and Albert Ward worked for him as directors.

He traveled to Hollywood with HH Laurie and a troupe of actors and technicians, where he made films such as Love in the Wilderness , At the Mercy of Tiberius and The Ugly Duckling from 1919-20 . Due to the decline of the film business during this time, he founded the Samuelson Transport Company in 1921 . The following year he returned to film with the founding of British Super Films with partner William Jury . Super Films produced three films: Brown Sugar , If Four Walls Told, and The Right to Strike . In the same year, Samuelson founded Napoleon Films , which produced the film A Royal Divorce in 1923 .

Most of his films between 1924 and 1928 were made by Reciprocity Films, which he founded with HH Laurie . Financial failures led to his film production being taken over by British Screen Productions in 1928 and to his personal bankruptcy in 1929. After that, he was unable to build on his successes and he worked, among other things, as an office worker at British Lion Films .

Samuelson's brother Julian Wylie became a pantomime producer, his brother Lauri Wylie a playwright. His son Sidney Samuelson became British Film Commissioner in 1991 and his son David Samuelson became a cameraman. Sydney's son Peter Samuelson was in turn a film producer.

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• GB Samuelson in the Internet Movie Database (English)

literature

Gabriel A. Sivan: "George Berthold Samuelson (1889–1947): Britain's Jewish film pioneer" , JEWISH HISTORICAL STUDIES - TRANSACTIONS OF THE JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF ENGLAND, Volume 44, The Jewish Historical Society of England, 2012