Verity Films
Verity Films was a British documentary film production company, founded by Sydney Box and Jay Gardner Lewis in March or May 1940.[1][2]
Background
The company's initial purpose was to make short
Box's former employer Publicity Films helped pay off the £2,000 debt and the company was refloated in 1941.[4] With Lewis gone, Box ran the company alone and found quick success. Turnover during 1942 was £75,000, and after paying salaries of £5,000 to Box and others, Verity still made a £2,000 profit.[4] A January 1943 report in Kinematograph Weekly called Verity "by far the largest documentary film organisation in Great Britain".[4]
By 1944, Verity had absorbed several other documentary producers and had eight to ten production units in the field.
Director Gerry O'Hara landed a job as a runner at Verity in 1941 at the age of 17, as he told Wheeler Winston Dixon:
O'Hara: I got a job there at 3 pounds 7/6 a week. I started as a trainee in the script department, because theoretically I was a journalist. But I was just running errands for the script department, carrying film cans and stuff like that. Then Ken Annakin, who became quite famous later on, was a young assistant director there; he sort of took me under his wing, and I switched to being a runner and errand boy in the assistant director's department.
Dixon: So basically you were working on documentaries as an assistant director?
O'Hara: Yes. How to put out a firebomb, and stuff like that. It was a lot of wartime work, of course, and most of it was civil defense stuff, films for hire.
Dixon: Did you work on any films for the GPO, for the General Post Office?
O'Hara: Yes, the Ministry of Information. We did a sort of copy of Carol Reed's [sic] The Next of Kin, called Jigsaw, which was a naval version of how to keep secrets and so forth.
I think at that time I seemed to waver between first and second assistant, which happened a lot. I was still very young then, only about 18 or 19. But it was a great apprenticeship; it was incredible.[5]
Among Box's other wartime hires (in 1944) was a 16-year-old Eric Marquis, who became one of Verity's longest serving employees, and was by the 1960s the company's director.[6]
After the end of the Second World War, Sydney Box moved on to
In later years, the documentary director Seafield Head worked for Verity Films.
Filmography
This filmography is a partial list of films produced or co-produced by Verity Films.
Year | Title | Director | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1940[9] | Herring | Jay Lewis | Produced for the Ministry of Food in December 1940. |
Oatmeal Porridge | |||
Potatoes | |||
Steaming | |||
Casserole Cooking | |||
1941[9] | A-tish-oo | ||
Breast Feeding | |||
Canteen on Wheels | Jay Lewis | A longer, non-theatrical version was produced as Mobile Canteen for the Ministry of Information and Empire Tea Bureau.[9][10] | |
Dai Jones | Daniel Birt | Produced for the Ministry of Information.[10] | |
The English Inn | Muriel Box | ||
Everybody's Business | |||
Food Advice Centre | |||
HM Mine Layer | |||
Roots of Victory | |||
Salvage Sense | |||
Shunter Black's Night Off | Max Munden | [11] | |
The Sixteen Tasks of Maintaining Motorised Vehicles | |||
The Soldier's Food | unknown | ||
Switchover | |||
Tea is Served | |||
Telefootlers | John Paddy Carstairs | ||
Ten Tips for Tackling Tanks | |||
UXB | About unexploded bombs.[12] | ||
Women at War | |||
1942[9] | Action | ||
Ask CAB | |||
Cookers in the Field | |||
Cooks | |||
House | |||
HMS George V | |||
Jane Brown Changes Her Job | Harold Cooper | Co-production with Verity-Technique for the Ministry of Labour.[13] | |
The Job that Fits | Co-production with the Auxiliary Territorial Service | ||
We Serve | Carol Reed | Recruiting film for the Auxiliary Territorial Service.[14] Ken Annakin was assistant director.[8] | |
WVS | Louise Birt | Produced for the Ministry of Information.[10] | |
1943 | Jigsaw | Henry Cass | Produced for the Admiralty.[15]
|
London 1942 | Ken Annakin | Produced by Greenpark Productions in association with Verity Films. View the digitised film on the TIME/IMAGE site. | |
1944 | Men of Rochdale | Compton Bennett | Produced for the Co-operative Wholesale Society.[16]
|
Other Men's Lives | Henry Cass | Intended for munitions workers.[15] | |
You Too Can Catch Malaria | Produced for the army.[13] | ||
1946 | English Criminal Justice | Ken Annakin | "I was lucky, in that I got a picture called English Criminal Justice, which really explained the British system of law and gave me a wonderful break."[8] |
1968 | Time Out of Mind | Eric Marquis | Produced for Roche Products.[17]
|
Notes
- ^ a b Spicer, 18.
- ^ "Verity Films". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 7 December 2008. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
- ^ Spicer, 20–21.
- ^ a b c d e f g Spicer, 21.
- ^ Dixon, Wheeler Winston (3 December 2010). "Working Within the System: An Interview with Gerry O'Hara". Screening the Past. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
- ^ Vick, Rebecca. "Marquis, Eric (1928–)". Screen Online. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
- ^ Spicer, 80.
- ^ a b c Valliance, Tom (25 April 2009). "Obituary. Ken Annakin: Film director whose 50 films included 'The Longest Day' and 'The Battle of the Bulge'". The Independent. Archived from the original on 11 August 2022. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
- ^ a b c d Spicer, 212.
- ^ a b c Spicer, 26.
- ^ Spicer, 26–27.
- ^ UXB [Unexploded bomb] at Australian War Memorial.
- ^ a b Spicer, 24.
- ^ Spicer, 24–25.
- ^ a b Spicer, 25.
- ^ Spicer, 28.
- ^ Wyvern, John (16 November 2010). "Films from another country 2". Illuminations: Essential media about the arts. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
References
- Spicer, Andrew (2006). Sydney Box. British Film Makers. Manchester University Press. pp. 18–41. ISBN 978-0-7190-5999-5. Retrieved 13 April 2012.