NORMAN SPENCER

(13 August 1914 – 16 August 2024)

The producer and screenwriter Norman Spencer has died in Wimbledon at the age of 110. He was believed to be the oldest person living in London at the time and the second oldest man living in the United Kingdom. Born in Stockwell, London, two weeks after the outbreak of the First World War, he started out as a film extra (and stand-in for Leslie Howard) and was working at Denham Film Studios when he first met David Lean. As it happens, he lived in Denham for most of his life, at the side of his beloved wife Barbara Sheppard. When David Lean made his directorial debut (alongside Noël Coward) on the WWII classic In Which We Serve, he hired Norman as his third assistant and a professional relationship was born. Joining Lean’s production company Cineguild Productions, with Ronald Neame, he worked as a production manager, in which capacity he helped turn Lean’s Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948) into two of the most highly acclaimed Dickens adaptations of all time. He was a producer on Lean’s The Passionate Friends, The Sound Barrier, Hobson’s Choice (which he co-wrote) and, with Katharine Hepburn, Summertime. He collaborated on the script of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and was instrumental in turning the iconic ‘Colonel Bogey March’ into a hit by suggesting the song be whistled, to circumnavigate the censorship of the bawdy lyrics. He also assisted Lean (uncredited) on the production of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), negotiating with King Hassan II of Morocco for suitable locations and recruiting countless extras for the battle scenes. When he branched out on his own, he produced the American road movie Vanishing Point (1971), a box-office hit, and Richard Attenborough’s big-budget Cry Freedom (1987) with Kevin Kline and Denzel Washington. He was an affable raconteur and a frequent visitor to my parents’ home in Denham, where he enjoyed a good glass of Scotch, and even appeared (uncredited) alongside my mother (uncredited) in Leslie Howard’s enjoyable wartime drama Pimpernel Smith (1941).
 

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON