Herbert Wilcox
Herbert Wilcox ( born April 18, 1892 in Cork, Ireland, † May 15 1977 in London) was a British film producer and director. Although he was somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries Michael Balcon and Alexander Korda, he was one of the most important personalities of the British film and he managed to assert itself over almost four decades in the movie business.
Life
Wilcox grew up in England. After the First World War, he sold American films. Together with director Graham Cutts, he founded in the early 1920s, the film production company Graham - Wilcox. They produced films together with German companies; his debut as a director had Wilcox in 1923 with the film produced in Germany Chu Chin Chow with Betty Blythe in the title role. Wilcox and Cutts put in their movies targeted already well-known American actor, in order to improve the saleability of their films to the American market - British films in the 1920s were not in a good reputation. 1926/27, he made three films with Dorothy Gish: Nell Gwynne, London and Madame Pompadour, the latter was a production of the German Ewald André Dupont.
With the American entrepreneur JD Williams, he built up the Elstree Studios and the British National Company, which later became in John Maxwell's British International Pictures. In early 1929 Wilcox invested in sound film and produced Black Waters, who had before Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail premiere. With Goodnight Vienna (1932), Wilcox began ' many years of work with the actress, singer and dancer Anna Neagle, whom he also married in 1943. Many of the common films are biopics.
His last film he produced and shot in 1959, his film company then went bankrupt.
In 1967 he published his autobiography, Twenty-Five Thousand Sunsets.