 David Farrar, riding high in critical and popular esteem, went to Hollywood and, though he enjoyed the glamour, it ruined his career, via films such as The Golden Horde (US, d. George Sherman, 1951) and The Black Shield of Falworth (US, d. Rudolph Maté, 1954), usually in two-dimensional villain roles. A strongly virile figure, he had served a ten-year apprenticeship in British films before making his mark in Michael Powell's Black Narcissus (1947), as the district agent who stirs up sexual tensions in a Himalayan convent. There were two other striking roles for Powell - as the lame bomb-disposal expert in The Small Back Room (1948) and the swaggering squire in Gone to Earth (1950) - and substantial leads for Ealing in Frieda (d. Basil Dearden, 1947) and Cage of Gold (d. Dearden, 1950). This burst of star filming climaxed a career begun in 1937, after a stint at journalism and stage experience from 1932: he played Sexton Blake twice, had small parts in big films, like Went the Day Well? (d. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942), starred in Ealing's semi-documentary about the Air-Sea Rescue Service, For Those in Peril (d. Charles Crichton, 1944), and made several poor films at British National, including Lisbon Story (d. Paul L.Stein, 1946), before hitting his stride in the late 1940s. He retired when he was just over 50, unwilling to play 'the heroine's father' as he did in Beat Girl (d. Edmond T.Gréville, 1960), depriving British cinema of an interesting mix of sneering authority and sensitivity, and eventually moving to South Africa. Bibliography
Autobiography: No Royal Road, 1948. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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