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Anthony Asquith

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Anthony Asquith
Walter J. Turner, Anthony Asquith, Charles Percy Sanger, Mark Gertler in photo taken by Lady Ottoline Morrell
Born9 November 1902
London, England
Died20 February 1968(1968-02-20) (aged 65)
London, England
OccupationFilm director
Years active1927–1964

Anthony Asquith (/ˈæskwɪθ/; 9 November 1902 – 20 February 1968) was a leading English film director. He collaborated successfully with playwright Terence Rattigan on The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Browning Version (1951), among other adaptations. His other notable films include Pygmalion (1938), French Without Tears (1940), The Way to the Stars (1945), and a 1952 adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

Biography

Born in London, he was the son of H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the first two years of the First World War, and Margot Asquith who was responsible for 'Puffin' as his family nickname.[1] He was educated at Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford.

The film industry was viewed as disreputable when Asquith was young, and according to the actor Jonathan Cecil, a family friend, Asquith entered his profession in order to escape his background.[2] At the end of the 1920s he began his career with the direction of four silent films the last of which, A Cottage on Dartmoor established his reputation with its meticulous and often emotionally moving frame composition.[1] Pygmalion (1938) was based on the George Bernard Shaw play featuring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. He was a longtime friend and colleague of Terence Rattigan (they collaborated on ten films) and producer Anatole de Grunwald. His later films included Rattigan's The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Browning Version (1951), and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1952).

Asquith was an alcoholic and, according to Jonathan Cecil, a repressed homosexual. He died in 1968.[2]

Filmography

Feature films

Short films

References

  1. ^ a b Anthony Asquith biography at BFI Screenonline
  2. ^ a b Geoffrey Macnab "The Asquith version", The Guardian, 6 February 2003
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