Harry Alan Towers
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Harry Alan Towers (born in London on October 19, 1920) is a radio and film producer and screenwriter, who has produced over a hundred feature films and who continues to write and produce well into his eighties.
He sometimes uses the pseudonym Peter Welbeck. Formally a child actor, he became a prolific radio writer while serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II. In 1946 he and his mother Margaret Miller Towers started a company called Towers of London that sold various syndicated radio shows around the world, including The Black Museum with Orson Welles, The Secrets of Scotland Yard with Clive Brook, Horatio Hornblower in which Michael Redgrave played the famous character created by C.S. Forester, and a series based on the Sherlock Holmes stories, featuring Sir John Gielgud as Holmes, Sir Ralph Richardson as Watson, and Orson Welles as Professor Moriarty. Sir John's brother, Val Gielgud, directed several episodes[1].
In the mid 1950's he produced television shows for ITV then went into producing and sometimes writing feature films beginning in 1962. Towers filmed in various countries such as Ireland, South Africa, Hong Kong, Bulgaria and others. A number of his films and scripts have been based on the works of Sax Rohmer (Fu Manchu, Sumuru), Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None and the Miss Marple series) and the plays of Edgar Wallace.
He collaborated with Jesus Franco during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He is married to the actress Maria Rohm who has appeared in many of his movies.
In 1983 Lobster Magazine ran a long article[2], citing many reliable sources, alleging Towers' links with (among others) Stephen Ward, Peter Lawford, the Soviet Union, and a vice ring at the United Nations.
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[edit] Further reading
The book Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984 (1994) by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs dedicates an entry to him.