 In a 1950 press release, production company Associated British Pictures
(ABPC) described director Lawrence Huntington as 'workmanlike', which might seem
like damning with faint praise. However, the studio qualified its use of the
word, explaining that directors like him were crucial if the British film
industry was to survive the crisis it was in, since he was able to "combine
quality with economic plan". Huntington's film career had already peaked, with a
string of high profile feature films in the late 1940s including Night Boat to
Dublin (1946), When the Bough Breaks (1947) and, perhaps his best work, Mr
Perrin and Mr Traill (1948).
Born in London in 1900, Huntington embarked on his directing career just as
sound films took over from silents. His very first credit, however, was a silent
feature, which he produced, directed and edited himself over a period of four
years. It was picked up for release by MGM in 1930 and given the (somewhat
ironic) title After Many Years. The sale led to a directing contract with MGM,
but it was another four years until he made his next feature. Huntington worked
solidly throughout the remainder of the decade, making low budget, fairly
average comedies and dramas. 1936 was particularly productive: one of five films
he released that year, Full Speed Ahead, which he also wrote and produced, is an
exciting tale of shady goings-on aboard a steamship, and typical of his
output.
But it was during the 1940s that Huntington's career really flourished. In
1941 he directed the crime feature This Man is Dangerous, in which James Mason
stars as detective Mick Cardby, hero of a series of popular novels by British
mystery writer David Hume. The film won enthusiastic reviews and marked a
turning point in Huntington's career, leading to a contract with ABPC. His first
film for the studio was The Tower of Terror (1941), a spy story featuring
Wilfrid Lawson as a half-mad lighthouse keeper.
Spies featured heavily in his wartime and postwar productions, from 1942's
Women Aren't Angels to 1946's Night Boat to Dublin, but 1947 saw a change of
studio and a change of tack. That year's The Upturned Glass was made for
Gainsborough and saw Huntington reunited with James Mason for a psychological
drama co-scripted by Mason's wife Pamela Kellino. Next came When the Bough
Breaks, a controversial social drama about bigamy and adoption starring Patricia
Roc. The following year's Mr Perrin and Mr Traill was a Two Cities film notable
for a fine performance from Marius Goring as a schoolmaster who finds himself
supplanted in the popularity stakes by a new colleague.
Into the 1950s, Huntington went back to scripting most of his films, as well
as some for other directors, but, despite success with the Josephine Tey
adaptation The Franchise Affair (1950) his film career had more or less dried up
by 1953. As many directors did, he turned to television, working on series' such
as Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Presents (US, 1953-57) and Errol Flynn Theatre (ITV, 1956-57) before returning to
the big screen in the early 1960s. His work during that decade was unremarkable
and the last film he directed was a minor horror, The Vulture (1967). He died in
London the following year.
Huntington is one of several British directors who are all but forgotten
today but who played a valuable role in the British film industry during the
middle of the 20th century. Perhaps more a writer than a director, he was
praised by some critics for his skill with actors, although Muriel Pavlow, star
of Night Boat to Dublin, recalled that he was not particularly attuned to the
emotional side of her scenes. Both she and production secretary Renée Glynne
describe a witty and well-liked man, who went wherever the work was - a jobbing
director who made a decent living and left behind some fine examples of postwar
British social drama.
Jo Botting
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FILM & TV CREDITS
