Herbert Wilcox

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Herbert Wilcox (born April 18, 1892 in Cork , Ireland , † May 15, 1977 in London ) was a British film producer and director. Although he was somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries Michael Balcon and Alexander Korda , he was one of the most important personalities in British film and he managed to assert himself in the film business for almost four decades.

Life

Wilcox grew up in England. After the First World War , he sold American films. Together with director Graham Cutts , he founded the film production company Graham-Wilcox in the early 1920s. You produced films together with German companies; Wilcox made his directorial debut in 1923 with the German-produced film Chu Chin Chow with Betty Blythe in the lead role. Wilcox and Cutts used well-known American actors in their films to improve the saleability of their films on the American market - British films did not have a good reputation in the 1920s. In 1926/27 Wilcox made three films with Dorothy Gish : Nell Gwynne , London and Madame Pompadour , the latter was a production by the German Ewald André Dupont .

With the American entrepreneur JD Williams he built the Elstree Studios and the British National Company, which later became part of John Maxwell's British International Pictures . In early 1929, Wilcox invested in talkies and produced Black Waters , which premiered before Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail . With Goodnight Vienna (1932), Wilcox began working for many years with the actress, singer and dancer Anna Neagle , whom he also married in 1943. Many of the films we have made together are biographies .

Wilcox produced and directed his last film in 1959, after which his film company went bankrupt.

In 1967 he published his autobiography Twenty-Five Thousand Sunsets .

Filmography (selection)

Director
producer

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wilcox, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British film producer and director
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Cork , County Cork , Ireland , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1977
Place of death London , England , UK