 Robert Stevenson was born in Buxton, Derbyshire on 31 March 1905. After
studying mechanical sciences and psychology at Cambridge, where he also edited
the literary journal Granta, he began his career in a newsreel agency. In 1930 he entered
the film industry as a writer and general assistant for Gainsborough, where his
first script assignment was a musical, Greek Street (d. Sinclair Hill, 1930).
For the next five years he co-wrote a variety of films, from two musical
comedies with Jack Hulbert, Sunshine Susie (d. Victor Saville, 1931) and Love on
Wheels (d. Saville, 1932), to the Edgar Wallace thriller The Ringer (d. Walter
Forde, 1932). Together with Hulbert he co-directed Falling for You (1933) and
Jack of all Trades (1936). One of production chief Michael Balcon's favoured
protégés, Stevenson also broadened his experience with the foreign ventures of
Gaumont-British, working in France as dialogue director on La Bataille (d.
Nicolas Farkas/Viktor Tourjansky, 1933), and in Berlin's UFA studios, where
he supervised English-language versions of German films and joined Paul Martin
in co-directing Happy Ever After (1932), the English edition of Martin's Lillian
Harvey musical Ein Blonder Traum.
From 1936, Stevenson directed nine modestly budgeted but high-quality films
in England, the first and best of which was Tudor Rose (1936), a sturdy but moving
historical drama based on the life of Lady Jane Grey, with Nova Pilbeam fresh
and poignant as the young pawn trapped in Tudor political manoeuvrings. Others
made for Gaumont-British included the spirited pot-boiler The Man Who Changed
His Mind (1936), with Boris Karloff as a mad doctor; a lively account of H.
Rider Haggard's African adventure King Solomon's Mines (1937), with Cedric
Hardwicke, Roland Young and Paul Robeson pausing for song; and Non-Stop New
York (1937), a droll, sharply characterised thriller largely set on a
transatlantic plane. All three films also starred Stevenson's wife of the time,
the glamorous Anna Lee.
When Michael Balcon became head of production at Ealing he recruited
Stevenson to direct The Ware Case (1938), a strong courtroom drama adapted from
a popular play, starring Clive Brook; and Young Man's Fancy (1939), a mordant
romantic comedy about a young lord (Griffith Jones) who rejects a society
heiress for a human cannonball (Anna Lee). He also made Return to Yesterday
(1939), a piquant and touching drama about the provincial theatre, for Balcon,
but as the war clouds gathered, Stevenson, a pacifist, left Britain to take up a
contract with David O. Selznick.
At first, his work in Hollywood was just as diverse as in England,
ranging between the romantic melodrama of Back Street (1941), a visually
ambitious and powerful adaptation of Jane Eyre (1944) with Orson Welles, and To
the Ends of the Earth (1948), a clever thriller with atmospheric photography. In
1956, after a period in television, he settled at Disney, where he
remained, busy and productive, until his retirement in 1976. Although he
returned to Britain for only two more films - Disney's Kidnapped (US/UK, 1960) and In
Search of the Castaways (US, 1962) - his nostalgia for his home country is
discernible in several other Disney entertainments, including the highly
successful Mary Poppins (US, 1964) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (US, 1971). He died in Santa Barbara,
California, on 30 April 1986.
Bibliography
McFarlane, Brian, An Autobiography of British Cinema (London: Methuen, 1997)
McFarlane, Brian, 'Jack of All Trades: Robert Stevenson', in Jeffrey Richards (ed.), The Unknown 30s: An Alternative History of the British Cinema 1929-39 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998)
Nolan, Jack, Edmund, 'Films on TV', Films in Review, Aug/Sept. 1969, pp. 432-434
Roberts, John, 'Robert Stevenson', Films of the Golden Age, Spring 1997, pp. 35-9
Margaret Butler, Directors in British and Irish Cinema
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