Gerry O'Hara

Gerald "Gerry" O'Hara , pseudonym Laurence Britten (* 1924 in Boston , United Kingdom ) is a British film director and screenwriter of B-productions from the 1960s to 1980.

Live and act

Gerald "Gerry" O'Hara attended St. Mary's Catholic School in his eastern English hometown of Boston and was a junior reporter for the Boston Guardian at the beginning of World War II . In 1942, O'Hara joined films and got to know the industry from the bottom up. O'Hara's first cinematic activities brought him together in the late phase of the war with the production of documentaries with propaganda content. At the end of the war, O'Hara switched to fiction and learned the craft of directing initially through assistantships to director Ken Annakin (including Miranda, Quartet, Vote for Huggett ), and later also from renowned and more important filmmakers such as Laurence Olivier ( Richard III. ), Anatole Litvak ( Anastasia and The Journey ), Carol Reed ( The Key and Our Man in Havana ), Otto Preminger ( Exodus and The Cardinal ), Vincente Minnelli ( The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ) , Peter Glenville ( Playing with Fate ), and Tony Richardson ( Tom Jones - Between the bed and the gallows ).

In 1963, O'Hara was finally given the first opportunity to direct a cheaply made exploitation film about the dangers of STDs, Adam and Eve . O'Hara's other oeuvre remained closely linked to inexpensive entertainment films without ambitions in terms of content or design. This also includes a speculative swinging London romance ( Die Goldpuppen ) as well as an agent film ( Morocco 7 ) and a standard crime thriller ( Die Vielgeliebte ). On the side, O'Hara was also hired as a guest director for 60s television series such as Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone and The Man with the Suitcase . The majority of his 1970s films hardly ran outside of Great Britain, at the end of the decade he filmed Lady Diamond, a highly speculative erotic story penned by Jackie Collins , with her sister Joan Collins in the title role. Gerry O'Hara temporarily ended his career with the soft-focus porno Fanny Hill . His later work, including several scripts for productions by other directors such as the horror stories Death on Safari and The Phantom of the Opera (both 1989), are hardly worth mentioning. After his last direction, the horror film Mummy - Valley of Death (1993) with Hollywood star Tony Curtis in a double role, Gerry O'Hara ended his film career.

Filmography

as a director, unless otherwise stated

• 1963: Adam and Eve (That Kind of Girl)
• 1965: Die Goldpuppen (The Pleasure Girls) (also screenplay)
• 1966: Morocco 7 (Maroc 7)
• 1967: The Much Beloved (Amsterdam Affair) (also screenplay)
• 1971: All the Right Noises (also screenplay)
• 1971: Journey to the Unknown
• 1972: The Spy's Wife
• 1973: Paganini Strikes Again
• 1974: Professor Popper's problem
• 1974: Feelings
• 1976: Blind Man's Bluff
• 1977: The Brute (also screenplay)
• 1977: Leopard in the Snow
• 1978: Lady Diamond (The Bitch)
• 1978–82: The Professionals (TV series)
• 1982: Fanny Hill
• 1985: Operation Julie (script only)
• 1986: CATS Eyes (TV series, script only)
• 1989: Death on Safari (Ten Little Indians) (screenplay only)
• 1989: The Phantom of the Opera (The Phantom of the Opera) (only screenplay)
• 1990: The Sandgrass People (script only)
• 1993: Mummy Valley (The Mummy Lives)

literature

• International Television Almanac 1985, Quigley Publishing Company, New York 1985, p. 199

Web links

• Gerry O'Hara in the Internet Movie Database (English)