ANTHONY SIMMONS

(16 December 1922 - 22 January 2016)

The name Anthony Simmons may not mean much to most filmgoers or even the cinéastes among us. Although he had early ambitions to be a lawyer and novelist, Simmons drifted into films and had a long career as a director, producer and screenwriter, beginning with his documentary shorts in the 1950s, which were influenced by the work of Humphrey Jennings and Robert Flaherty. His Sunday by the Sea won a Grand Prix at Venice, after which Simmons went on to direct TV series, commercials and seven feature films until he retired in 1995. Of his two dozen directing credits Simmons wrote the screenplays for half of them. His TV career included episodes of Play for Today, The Professionals, Super Gran, Van der Valk, Inspector Morse, A Touch of Frost, The Good Guys etc. In 1957 he produced the Joseph Losey thriller Time Without Pity, adapted from an Emlyn Williams play about a man trying to save his son from being hanged. It starred Michael Redgrave, Alec McCowen and Ann Todd. Simmons’ first cinema film as a director was Your Money or Your Wife (1960), a witless comedy with Donald Sinden, Peggy Cummins, Richard Wattis and a cameo by horror queen Barbara Steele. Simmons cast Judi Dench in her first major cinema role in Four in the Morning (1965), for which she won a Bafta for Most Promising Newcomer, even though the film was not generally released. He directed the film of his own novel The Optimists of Nine Elms (1973) about two children who befriend an old street musician played by Peter Sellers. His Black Joy (1977), a comedy about Brixton immigrants, was entered in the Cannes Festival and On Giant’s Shoulders (1979) with Judi Dench was an Emmy Award-winning TV drama about thalidomide. In Little Sweetheart (1989) John Hurt played an embezzler who gets blackmailed by a couple of young girls, after which for Simmons it was back to television series and commercials in a career that was generally unsung but nonetheless interesting for all that.

MICHAEL DARVELL