Walter Summers (Director)

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Walter George Thomas Summers (born September 2, 1892 in West Derby near Liverpool , United Kingdom , † April 1973 in London - Wandsworth ) was a British theater maker, film director , screenwriter and film producer .

Live and act

Training and war missions 1914–1918

Summers had early established legends regarding his origin, date of birth (“1896”) and place of birth (“Barnstaple” in Devon). His supposedly outstanding career in World War I was later put into perspective thanks to research by British researchers. The son of two stage actors became a half-orphan at an early age and began his theater career at the tender age of eleven at the Royal Court Theater in his hometown of Liverpool. There he was entrusted with the production of props, among other things. Soon Summers was also taken on tours, with a comprehensive trip with Thomas Quinlan's opera company to Australia and South Africa . Shortly before the outbreak of war in 1914, US director George Loane Tucker shot a new version of the popular adventure material The Prisoner of Zenda , in which Summers assisted the American. Summers volunteered to take up arms in October 1914, but was not sent to France until the fall of 1915 with the 9th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment. In Belgium he experienced the bloody battles for Ypres and on the Somme in 1916/17 . He returned to England in November 1918 with a wound. He was then briefly stationed in India before Summers was finally released into civilian life in April 1920 with the rank of lieutenant. Summers himself made no secret of the fact that he would miss the war.

When it comes to silent films

He returned to film and began writing screenplays in 1921. In 1923 he presented his first film directing work, the following year he made it possible for the young John Gielgud to do his first film role. Although at home in most genres, Summers continued to be fascinated by war and the turmoil in silent films, and so he made a few strips in the middle of the decade that retold what happened on the European battlefields from 1914 to 1918 (Ypres, Mons). After a film biography in honor of the former British sea lord Horatio Nelson (1926), Walters Summers presented his most ambitious World War II work the following year, with which he illustrated two decisive naval battles between the Germans and the British. The film was also shown in German cinemas under the title The Sea Battles near Coronel and the Falkland Islands in 1928 and was, at least in Great Britain, a great box-office success: the cost of production was around 18,000 pounds, the revenue (in the UK alone) included around 70,000 pounds The sui generis war, understood as a "great adventure", continued to hold on to Summers. On the threshold of the transition from silent to sound films, he brought out another war film with Lost Patrol : This time the focus was on a British military unit on patrol in Mesopotamia, attacked and wiped out by a horde of “wild” Arab tribes.

With talkies and return to the army

In the early 1930s, Summers led a cinematic expedition that took him across North Africa and the Sahara to Timbuktu . This journey found expression in another film (which was very poorly received by the critics): Timbuctoo . Summers' next crime film, The Return of Bulldog Drummond, reflected the spirit of its creator: Drummond is a retired officer who feels uncomfortable in civilian life and thirsts for new adventure and command in an armed conflict. As a consequence, Walter Summers tried again and in vain to get back into the British military from the mid-1930s. In 1939 he directed the spy thriller Traitor Spy , which can be understood as a premonition of the looming Second World War. In the same year the horror film Der Würger was made with Bela Lugosi in a role typical of his work. When a new armed conflict between Great Britain and Germany became apparent in September 1939, Walter Summers was in the process of filming the mystery crime thriller At the Villa Rose . Immediately afterwards he volunteered again for the army and, unlike in previous years, was accepted this time. In 1946, Summers returned to his old pre-war employer, Associated British Productions , and prepared the apparently never-realized films Evil, Be My God and So Frail a Thing , but never made a film again: Summers seemed to have completely lost the enthusiasm for filmmaking to have. What he did instead over the next few decades is unknown to this day.

Filmography

script

  • 1922: Stable Companions
  • 1922: Brown Sugar
  • 1922: The Faithful Heart
  • 1923: Napoleon and Josefine ( A Royal Divorce )
  • 1923: The Knockout
  • 1923: Married Love
  • 1923: The Hotel Mouse
  • 1923: Afterglow
  • 1924: Who Is the Man?
  • 1924: The Cost of Beauty
  • 1924: The Unwanted
  • 1925: Afraid of Love
  • 1925: Ypres
  • 1926: Mons
  • 1926: Nelson
  • 1928: Bolibar
  • 1929: Chamber of Horrors
  • 1929: Lost Patrol
  • 1930: Raise the Roof
  • 1930: Suspense
  • 1930: The Man From Chicago
  • 1931: The Flying Fool
  • 1932: The House Opposite
  • 1932: Timbuctoo
  • 1934: The Warren Case
  • 1934: The Return of Bulldog Drummond
  • 1936: The Limping Man
  • 1937: The Price of Folly
  • 1937: Lucky Jade
  • 1938: Queer Cargo
  • 1939: Black Limelight
  • 1939: The Strangler ( The Dark Eyes of London )
  • 1939: Traitor Spy

Directed unless otherwise stated

  • 1923: Afterglow
  • 1924: Who Is the Man?
  • 1924: The Cost of Beauty
  • 1924: The Unwanted
  • 1925: Ypres
  • 1926: Mons
  • 1926: Nelson
  • 1927: The battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands ( The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands )
  • 1928: Bolibar
  • 1929: Chamber of Horrors
  • 1929: Lost Patrol
  • 1930: Raise the Roof (also production)
  • 1930: The Flame of Love
  • 1930: Suspense (also production)
  • 1931: The Flying Fool
  • 1931: Men Like These
  • 1932: The House Opposite (also production)
  • 1932: Timbuctoo (also production)
  • 1933: The Butterfly Affair
  • 1934: The Warren Case
  • 1934: The Return of Bulldog Drummond
  • 1935: Music Hath Charms
  • 1935: Royal Cavalcade
  • 1936: The Limping Man (also production)
  • 1937: The Price of Folly (also not mentioned production)
  • 1937: Lucky Jade
  • 1938: premiere
  • 1939: The Strangler ( The Dark Eyes of London )
  • 1939: Traitor Spy
  • 1939: At the Villa Rose

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Summers in World War I.
  2. ↑ Gielgud's Who is the Man? on old.bfi.org
  3. ^ Rachael Low: History of the British Film, 1918-1929. P. 181. George Allen & Unwin, London 1971
  4. ^ International Motion Picture Almanac 1965, Quigley Publishing Company, New York 1964, p. 282
personal data
SURNAME Summers, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Summers, Walter George Thomas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British screenwriter, film director and film producer
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH West Derby near Liverpool , United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH April 1973
Place of death London - Wandsworth