Leslie Halliwell

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Leslie Robert James Halliwell (23 February 1929 – 21 January 1989) was a British motion picture historian and encyclopedist who shaped domestic tastes through his career as a buyer for television stations.

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[edit] Life

Born in Bolton, Lancashire, England, Halliwell was captivated by films from an early age. A boy from a modest background, he won a scholarship to Bolton School and after National Service he studied English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge before holding a number of jobs in film journalism and cinema management.

After working for a decade as a researcher and buyer for Southern Television and then Granada Television, in 1968 he took responsibility for purchasing films for the entire ITV network. In 1982, at the personal invitiation of Jeremy Isaacs, he became buyer of U.S. films for Channel 4. He retired in 1986.

Halliwell's tastes were conservative. He had a preference for the cinema of the 1930s and 1940s. In his Film Guide, he gave ratings of 0 stars to 4 stars for films, but no film since 1967's Bonnie and Clyde received four stars. However, he believed that films needed to be of a certain age before their historical influence could be appraised. His sharp eye for technical quality, regardless of a film's age, was evident. John Walker, who took over the editorship after his death, has broader tastes.

Halliwell's professional knowledge of the entire gamut of cinema is still seen in his encyclopedias The Filmgoers' Companion, now published as Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies (first published 1965), Halliwell's Film Guide (first published 1977) and Halliwell's Television Companion (first published 1979 as Halliwell's Teleguide).

After his retirement, he wrote for the Daily Mail. He also published a number of historical and critical works about the cinema.

He married Ruth Porter in 1959 and they had one son. Halliwell died of stomach cancer in the Princess Alice hospice in Esher, Surrey.


Halliwell's ten favourite films:


Citizen Kane

Trouble in Paradise

The Bride of Frankenstein

Le Million

A Matter of Life and Death

Lost Horizon (1937)

Sons of the Desert

The Philadelphia Story

The Maltese Falcon

The Lady Vanishes

[edit] References

Halliwell's film guide is mentioned in Irvine Welsh's short story 'snuff', about an isolated man whose life is centered around watching every film from the book.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links

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