| Alexander Mackendrick | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 8, 1912 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | December 22, 1993 (aged 81) Los Angeles, California |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Spouse | Eileen Ashcroft (1934-1943) Hilary Lloyd (1948-1993) |
Alexander Mackendrick (September 8, 1912 - December 22, 1993) was a Scottish American director and teacher. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and later moved to Scotland. He began making television commercials before moving into post-production editing and directing films, most notably for Ealing Studios where his films include Whisky Galore! (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951), and The Ladykillers (1955).
His films made a gradual decline after Ealing Studios closed and he returned to America to become a teacher in film studies. He was the cousin of the Scottish writer Roger MacDougall.
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He was born on 22 December 1912 and was the only child of Francis and Martha Mackendrick, who had emigrated to the United States from Glasgow in 1911. His father was a ship builder and a civil engineer. When Mackendrick was six, his father died of influenza as a result of an pandemic that swept the world just after World War I. His mother, in desperate need of work, decided to be a dress designer. In order to pursue that decision, it was necessary for Martha MacKendrick to hand her only son over to his grandfather, who took young MacKendrick back to Scotland when he was seven years old. Mackendrick never saw or heard from his mother again.
Young Alexander Mackendrick had a very sad and lonely childhood. He attended Hillhead High School from 1919 to 1926 and then went on to spend three years at the Glasgow School of Art. In the early 1930s, MacKendrick moved to London to work as an art director for the advertising firm J. Walter Thompson. Between 1936 and 1938, Mackendrick scripted five cinema commercials. He later reflected that his work in the advertising industry was invaluable, in spite of his extreme dislike of the industry itself. In 1937 MacKendrick wrote his first film script, Midnight Menace, with his cousin and close friend, Roger MacDougall. It was later bought by Associated British.
At the start of the Second World War, Mackendrick was employed by the Minister of Information making British propaganda films. In 1942 he went to Algiers and then to Italy, working with the Psychological Warfare Division. He then shot newsreels, documentaries, made leaflets, and did radio news. In 1943, he became the director of the film unit and approved the production of the classic Rossellini film, Rome, Open City.
After the war, Mackendrick and riley set, set up Merlin Productions, where they produced documentaries for the Ministry of Information. Merlin Productions soon proved to be a poor investment, so in 1946 Mackendrick joined Ealing Studios where he worked for nine years and directed three of the most famous films made at the studios including Whisky Galore! (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951), and The Ladykillers (1955).
Mackendrick often spoke of his dislike of the film industry and decided to leave the United Kingdom for Hollywood in 1955. [1] When Ealing studios was sold, Mackendrick was cut loose to pursue a career as a freelance director, something he was never prepared to do:
The rest of his professional life was spent commuting between London and Los Angeles. He began directing the Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions (HHL) film Sweet Smell of Success in 1957. It was a critical success about a press agent played by Tony Curtis who is wrapped up in a powerful newspaper columnist’s (Burt Lancaster) plot to end the relationship between his younger sister and a jazz musician. Mackendrick got along poorly with the producers of the film because they felt that he was too much of a perfectionist. After Sweet Smell of Success, he went back to England to make the second HHL film, The Devil’s Disciple in 1959, but he was fired only a month into production due to lingering tension from their first project together. Mackendrick was devastated. Mackendrick later assisted Dutch film maker Bert Haanstra with the production of the popular comedy film, Fanfare in (1958).
After his disappointment with HHL, Mackendrick directed several television commercials in Europe for Horlicks. He also made a handful of films throughout the Sixties including Sammy Going South (1963), A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), and Don't Make Waves (1967). A project to film Ionesco's Rhinoceros, which would have starred Tony Hancock and Barbara Windsor, fell through at the last minute. In 1969 he returned to the United States after being made Dean of the film school of the California Institute of the Arts and gave up the position in 1978 to become a professor at the school.
Some of Mackendrick's most notable students include Doug Campbell, Terence Davies, Don device, F. X. Feeney, Richard Jefferies, James Mangold, Stephen Mills, Thom Mount, Sean Daniel, Bruce Berman, Gregory Orr, Don Di Pietro, Michael Pressman, Douglas Rushkoff and Lee Sheldon, and David Brisbin, amongst others.
Mackendrick suffered from severe emphysema for many years and as a result, was unable to go home to Europe during much of his time at the college. He stayed with the school until he died of pneumonia in 1993, aged 81. His remains are buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.
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