More Than Coronets

Robert Hamer was one of the most promising film directors in Britain at the end of the 1940s, after a decade spent moving through the ranks from editor to screenwriter, associate producer and finally director, beginning with a co-credit on Ealing Studios' remarkable portmanteau horror classic Dead of Night, following this with the Edwardian melodrama Pink String and Sealing Wax, the neo-realistic It Always Rains on Sunday and the masterly Kind Hearts and Coronets. Away from Ealing, Hamer directed a number of stylish and acclaimed movies including Father Brown, The Spider and the Fly, The Long Memory and one final classic comedy, School for Scoundrels. Tragically, he was dead at the age of 52, mourned by friends and colleagues not just for their personal loss but, as one wrote in the press, 'the tragedy for the cinema - there was so much more he could have done.' This is the first book to deal with Robert Hamer's life and entire career, celebrating his great triumphs but also reminding us of those often overlooked later films, none of which is without interest, and revealing some of the unrealised projects that could have made Hamer one of the greatest directors of his era.