Background

Charles Ainslie Crichton was born on August 6, 1910, in Wallasey, England. He was the son of John Douglas and Hester Wingate (Ainslie) Crichton.

Education

Charles Crichton was educated at the Oundle School and New College at Oxford University, where he studied history, graduating from it with a bachelor's degree in 1931.

Career

Crichton started out in the British film industry with editing assignments during the 1930s; among the notable films of that period, that he co-edited were the H. G. Wells-based Things to Come (1936) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). After the advent of World War II, Crichton moved briefly into film production with 1943’s Nine Men, which he also edited; then he got his first chance at directing with the 1944 war film For Those in Peril. His big break came with 1945’s Dead of Night, a horror anthology consisting of five stories and a linking tale. Each of the five segments was directed by a different person; most famous is the episode, directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, in which Michael Redgrave plays a ventriloquist who becomes enslaved by his dummy. Crichton’s episode, “The Golfing Story,” was “freely adapted” from a story by H. G. Wells, according to Ruth M. Goldstein in Film News, and provided valuable comic relief to an otherwise grim omnibus.

Propelled by this success, Crichton had the opportunity to direct many films in a variety of genres throughout the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Critics contend that his most enduring work of that period was the Alec Guinness comedy The Lavender Hill Mob (1952), perhaps the best-loved of the numerous Ealing Studios crime comedies of that era. In the late 1950s, in addition to directing the hit comedy The Battle of the Sexes (1959), Crichton directed his own screenplay Floods of Fear (1959). During the same period, Crichton began gravitating into the relatively new field of television, a medium for which he directed episodes of Danger Man and The Avengers. He bade a twenty-year farewell to the big screen after directing the film He Who Rides a Tiger in 1966; from that point, he concentrated on television films and series, and on shorts, sometimes for the industrial market.

It was well into the 1980s when comedian John Cleese brought Crichton into the fold for the creation of a contemporary comic heist movie, A Fish Called Wanda. The pair collaborated on the story and screenplay and were nominated for an Academy Award.

Achievements

• Charles Crichton was best known as the author of series of classic comedies he made for Ealing Studios in the 1940s and ’50s, notably Hue and Cry (1947), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953); by the 1960s he had retreated to directing for television, but he made a triumphant big-screen comeback—and garnered an Academy Award nomination—for A Fish Called Wanda in 1988.

Works

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  • A Fish Called Wanda: Charles Crichton 1988
  • The Adventures of Black Beauty: William Lucas, Charlotte Mitchell, Charles Crichton, Anna Sewell, Ted Willis, Sidney Cole 1972
  • Space: 1999: Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Nick Tate, Zienia Merton, Sarah Bullen, Catherine Schell, Charles Crichton, Ray Austin, Tom Clegg, David Tomblin, Bob Kellett, Val Guest 1976
  • The Lavender Hill Mob: Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James, Alfie Bass 1951
  • Titsfield Thunderbolt 1953
  • Hue & Cry ( Hue and Cry ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2.4 Import - Netherlands ] 1943
  • Floods Of Fear 1959
  • Battle of the Sexes 1960 1959

Connections

In 1936, Crichton married Vera Harman-Mills, and together they had two sons, David and Nicholas. Crichton then married his second wife, Nadine Haze, in 1962, and their marriage lasted until his death.

First wife:

Vera Harman-Mills

Second wife:

Nadine Haze

Son:

David Crichton

Son:

Nicholas Crichton