Lance Comfort
Lance Comfort (11 August 1908 – 25 August 1966) was an English film director and producer born in Harrow, Middlesex.
Lance Comfort | |
---|---|
Directing Jess Conrad in Rag Doll (1961) | |
Born | London, England, UK | 11 August 1908
Died | 25 August 1966 58) | (aged
Occupation | Film director and film producer |
In a career spanning over 25 years he became one of the most prolific film directors in Britain, though he never gained critical attention and remained on the fringes of the film industry, creating mostly B movies.[1]
Comfort carried on working almost right up to his death in Worthing, Sussex, 1966. He had four children: Edward, born in 1929, James, born in 1931, Anna, born in 1934 and Jack, born in 1936.
Filmography
- Penn of Pennsylvania (1941)
- Hatter's Castle (1942)
- Those Kids from Town (1942)
- Squadron Leader X (1943)
- Escape to Danger (1943)
- When We Are Married (1943)
- Old Mother Riley Detective (1943)
- Hotel Reserve (1944)
- Great Day (1945)
- Bedelia (1946)
- Temptation Harbour (1947)
- Daughter of Darkness (1948)
- Silent Dust (1949)
- Portrait of Clare (1950)
- Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Presents (1953-1957)
- The Girl on the Pier (1953)
- Bang! You're Dead (1954)
- Eight O'Clock Walk (1954)
- The Man in the Road (1956)
- Face in the Night (1957)
- Man from Tangier (1957)
- At the Stroke of Nine (1957)
- The Ugly Duckling (1959)
- Make Mine a Million (1959)
- The Breaking Point (1961)
- Rag Doll (1961)
- Pit of Darkness (1961)
- The Painted Smile (1961)
- Touch of Death (1961)
- The Break (1962)
- Tomorrow at Ten (1962)
- The Switch (1963)
- Blind Corner (1963)
- Live It Up! (also known as Sing and Swing in the U.S.) (1963)
- Be My Guest (1965)
- Devils of Darkness (1965)
Critical assessment
The film historians Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane praise Comfort's gifts "in the confident exercise of melodramatic impulses in the interests of illuminating character and relationship, in a decorative visual style to serve these impulses, and in giving their heads to string of dominant actors". They add that all of his films "are persuasive narratives, marked by absence of sentimentality and the whiff of human reality".[2]
References
- http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/552314/index.html Lance Comfort
- Steve Chibnall & Brian McFarlane, The British 'B' Film, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2009, pp. 140–43.
Further reading
External links