Walter C. Mycroft


Walter Charles Mycroft was a British journalist, screenwriter, film producer and director. In the 1920s he was film critic of the London Evening Standard, and a founder of the London Film Society, before joining the film industry.
In 1928 he became Literary Adviser and Scenario Editor at the newly founded studio British International Pictures at Elstree, sometimes working with his friend Alfred Hitchcock. He was by his own account the principal author of Hitchcock's first BIP film The Ring, and credited as the author of the original story on which Champagne was based. Their friendship does not seem to have survived their collaboration.
Mycroft was elevated to head of production at Elstree during the 1930s, during which time BIP was reconstituted as the Associated British Picture Corporation. The company released many films on which Mycroft was credited as producer, with varying levels of actual involvement.
His adopted son, David Rees Mycroft, worked as assistant director on a number of Elstree productions. David Mycroft, who is not mentioned in Walter Mycroft's autobiography The Time of My Life, edited by Vincent Porter and published posthumously, was an experimental filmmaker, poet and psychologist who studied with R.D. Laing. David Mycroft's daughter Ruth Novaczek is a British experimental film maker.
Screenwriter Charles Bennett called him " a horrible little man... Hitch very cruelly used to say of Mycroft - Mycroft was a hunchback - and Hitch very cruelly used to say: 'If you break his back open you'll find chocolates!'"

Selected filmography

Producer

Carmen Sleepless Nights His Wife's Mother For the Love of Mike Hawley's of High Street Red Wagon A Southern Maid Freedom of the Seas The Old Curiosity Shop Give Her a Ring Girls Will Be Boys What Happened Then? The Warren Case My Old Duchess Over the Garden Wall The Great Defender The Luck of a Sailor Drake of England The Student's Romance It's a Bet Mimi McGlusky the Sea Rover Music Hath Charms Invitation to the Waltz Heart's Desire A Star Fell from Heaven Living Dangerously Spring Handicap The Dominant Sex Aren't Men Beasts! Premiere Star of the Circus Hold My Hand Queer Cargo Jane Steps Out Oh Boy! Marigold Murder in Soho Hell's Cargo The Outsider Just like a Woman The House of the Arrow The Middle Watch Dead Man's Shoes The Flying Squad

Director

My Wife's Family Spring Meeting Banana Ridge

Screenwriter

Murder! directed by Alfred HitchcockThe Man from Chicago Dreyfus Keepers of Youth Let's Love and Laugh Carmen Money for Nothing Love and Luck