Dallas Bower

Dallas Bower (25 July 1907, London – 18 October 1999, London) was a prominent British director and producer active during the early development of mass media communication.[1][2] Throughout his career Bower’s work spanned across radio plays, television shows, propaganda shorts, animations, and feature films with his most notable projects consisting of Alfred Hitchcock’s first film in sound Blackmail (1929), the British Broadcasting Company’s radio play Julius Caesar (1938), the Dunkirk evacuation propaganda short Channel Incident (1940), the feature film Henry V (1944), and an Anglo-French adaptation of Alice in Wonderland titled Alice Au Pays Des Merveilles (1949). While later in Bower's career he produced some of the earliest British television commercials. Dallas Bower died 18 October 1999 at the age of 92, due to a heart failure.

The majority of Bower’s work has been lost overtime, due to both degradation and the purposeful melting down of the cellulose nitrate prints to extract small amounts of silver during the Second World war, leading to the placement of some of Bower’s projects in the British Film Institutes’ 75 most wanted lost films. [3]

Biography

Personal Life

Dallas Bower was born on the 25 July 1907, in apartment 34 of Kensington Hall Gardens, London. Throughout his childhood Bower frequently visited the Old Royalty Cinema alongside his uncle, where they saw motion pictures such as The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), which Bower would later cite as a significant early influences that would inspire his future involvement in the film industry. [4] Bower was educated at Willington Primary School in Putney, where he met Violet Florence Collings (1906-1999) who he married on the 18 November 1925 at the age of 18, together they had two daughters and a son before they separated in 1945. Bower continued his education at St John’s College Hurstpierpoint where he studied classical literature in addition to contemporary technology.[5]

Radio Career

Dallas Bower was first introduced to radio by an older student at St John’s College who had been working on a small valve set, the pair would soon after work in collaboration establishing an amateur radio station based in Bower’s grandfather’s house in Putney. [6] Following his graduation from St John’s College Bower was employed by the Marconi Scientific Instrument Company, while at the same time he was selected to edit the radio theory and design journals Modern Wireless in 1925 and Experimental Wireless in 1926. As a prominent figure in the developing British radio industry he was invited to the Radio Society of Great Britain in 1926, where Bower personally heard Campbell Swinton lecture on the topic of cathode ray oscillography, the theory on which modern television transmissions are predicated on. Bower stated that the lecture made a ‘profound impression on him’ directly leading to his collaborations with the British developer and radio physicist Robert Watson Watt. [7] Bower's meetings with Watt convinced him to enter the world of cinema, as the newfound technological advancements of the 20s made the type of ambitious projects Bower envisioned feasible.

Early Cinematic Career

In 1927 Bower was hired as a sound recordist for the British International Pictures, located in Elstree London. In this position Bower recorded audio for a multitude of the British International Pictures' projects, the most notable inclusions being Harry Lachman’s Under the Greenwood Tree (1929) and Alfred Hitchcock’s first movie filmed with dialogue Blackmail (1929). However, Dallas was forced to leave British International Pictures the same year due to the Great Depression and the British International Pictures' efforts to make the division more economical.[7] In 1930 Stoll Pictures hired Dallas Bower to continue sound recording for the director and first university professor of film Thorold Dickinson. Throughout this period Dickinson educated Bower on the principles of sound editing, which Bower utilised when give the opportunity to edit the scoring for the film ‘Q-Ships’ (1930), a drama set in the First World War. The success of ‘Q-Ships’ allowed him to quickly transition from sound editor into film editing, with his first project being ‘Midnight Sister’ (1930) a comedy produced by the Pathé Film Company.

In 1933 Reginal Smith, the founder of Riverside Studios, offered Bower a directorial position on the feature film The Path of Glory (1934) a satirical take on the war genre, however, the film was lost over time and is currently listed as one of the British Film Institute’s 75 Most Wanted lost films. [3] The Path of Glory’s success put Bower into close association with Paul Czinner, a Hungarian director who had fled Nazi-Germany and required an assistant director to aid in communication. In the role of assistant director Bower assisted in the pre-production and on-set filming of Czinner’s films Escape me Never (1935) and As You Like It (1936), until their partnership ended when Bower joined the British Broadcasting Corporation. [8]

Involvement with the British Broadcasting Company

In May 1936 Dallas Bower and Stephen Thomas were appointed as the senior producers of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) by Gerald Cock the first Director of Television for the BBC. Bower, who had worked with Cock at British International Pictures, was tasked with the role to adapt ‘high culture’ to the developing mediums of mass communication, in the forms of radio plays, short films, and television shows. [6] In this position Bower was accredited with the production of the programs Television Comes to London (1936), Television Demonstration Film (1937), Julius Caesar (1938), Checkmate (1938), and Rope (1939), the majority of which have been completely or partially lost to time. He had additionally been working on a screenplay for an adaption of Shakespeare’s Henry V, set in a Fascist state, however the BBC halted all services before the script’s completion due to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939.

World War II

Due to the outbreak of World War II Dallas Bower was commissioned into the Royal Corps of Singles, where he was posted to a training brigade located in Whitby. However, relatively soon into the conflict Bower was transferred into the Ministry of Information, which produced propaganda for the British war effort. Bower’s role in the Ministry of Information was equivalent to an executive producer. One of Bower’s first pieces of propaganda was Channel Incident (1940) a short based on the Dunkirk Evacuation of British troops, reportedly Channel Incident was one of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s favourite propaganda pieces. [9] In addition, he was responsible for the production of the radio play Alexander Nevsky’ (1941), a project which was commissioned in correlation with the Soviet’s entry into WWII, as well as Columbus another radio plays to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the European arrival to America. Over the course of the conflict Bower had continued to work and reconfigure the script for ‘Henry V’, creating a more traditional appropriation. The final script was bought by Filippo del Giudice in 1944, causing Bower to resign from the Ministry of Information to attach himself to the project. [9]

Film Career

Following his resignation from the Ministry of Information Bower initially envisioned himself as the director for ‘Henry V’, however, due to a multitude of setbacks the lead actor Sir Laurence Oliver took his position, while Bower remained on the project as an Associate Producer. Bower contributed significantly towards to the film throughout the production, as he wrote the original screenplay, approved all further edits, sourced the film’s composer, and secured the BAFTA award winning cinematographer Robert Krasker. [5] Ultimately the film was a critical and financial success. Bower’s follow up project was an Anglo-French adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, which he had signed on to after being approached by a French film crew who had been in search for a British director. The film was only released in France and the United States to mixed audience reception, and an underwhelming box-office due in-part to Walt Disney’s release of Alice in Wonderland at a similar time. 50 years after the film's initial release the US Museum of Modern Art restored the film, which had been damaged due to negligent storage.[10]

Bower directed two more films, The Second Mrs Tanquerary (1952), which was filmed over the course of eight days in the Adelphi Theatre for under £25,000, and Doorway to Suspicion. Both films received negative reviews and a minimal impact at the box office.

Later Career

After retiring from the director's chair Bower began work on the production of the earliest television commercials under the company TV Advertising, over this period of his career Bower produced 80 and directed 12 commercials. He found the new avenue of work taxing which led to his retirement in the mid 60s. [7]

After retiring from commercials Bower was never involved in production or directing, continuing to his death on 18 October 1999.

Selected filmography

Director

Soundman
  • Blackmail (1929)
  • Under the Greenwood Tree (1929)

Editor
gollark: Okay, hm.
gollark: Um.
gollark: ++tel setup
gollark: The other end keeps hanguping it.
gollark: ++tel call YanksTowelBegin

References
  1. BFI.org
  2. Dallas Bower on IMDb
  3. "BFI Most Wanted". BFI. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  4. Purser, Phillip (20 October 1999). "Dallas Bower". The Guardian.
  5. Mcfarlane, Brian (1994). "Dallas Bower: The Man Behind Olivier's Henry V". Shakespeare Bulletin. 12: 45–46.
  6. Wyver, John (2012). "Dallas Bower: A Producer for Television's Early Years 1936-9". Journal of British Cinema and Television. 9: 26–39.
  7. Cole, Sid (8 June 1987). "Dallas Bower". The British Entertainment History Project. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  8. Czinner, P. & Bernstein’S, H. (1937) Reviews: On the Screens Now - DREAMING LIPS. Picturegoer (Archive: 1932-1960) 7 (333) p.28, 30. [online]. Available from: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1771136634/.
  9. Hill, A. G. “Bower, Dallas Gordon (1907-1999), Film.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 23 Sept. 2004. Web.
  10. Nichols, Catherine (2014). Alice's Wonderland. New York, New York: Race Point Publishing. p. 105.



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