Roy Ward Baker

Known for DirectingBorn 1916-12-19Died 2010-10-05London, England

Roy Ward Baker was an English film director born in London on 19 December 1916. His best known film is A Night to Remember which won a Golden Globe for best foreign English language film in 1959. His later career was varied, and included many horror films and television shows. Baker's early career, from 1934 to 1939, was spent working for Gainsborough Pictures, a British film production company based in Islington, North London, famous for its prestige productions. His first jobs were menial - making tea for crew members, for example - but by 1938 he had risen through the ranks to work as assistant director on Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. He served in the army during World War II, until transferring to the Army Kinematograph Unit in 1943 in order to make better use of skills developed in his pre-war career producing documentaries and teaching materials for troops. One of his superiors at the time was novelist Eric Ambler. It was he who gave Baker his first big break directing The October Man, from an Ambler screenplay, in 1947. Ambler also adapted Walter Lord's A Night to Remember for Baker's 1958 screen version. During the early 1950s, Baker worked for three years in Hollywood where he directed Marilyn Monroe in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and Robert Ryan in 3D film noir Inferno (1953). He returned to the UK for the latter part of the decade, but defected to television in the early 1960s. He directed episodes of The Avengers, The Saint and The Champions - all adventure series created with an eye on the American market. The low-budget ethic of television production made him well-suited to his next career move into cheaply produced but lavish-looking British horror films. He directed, amongst others, Quatermass and the Pit (1967) The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Scars of Dracula (1970) for Hammer, and Asylum (1972) for Amicus. In the latter part of the 1970s he returned to television, and throughout the 1980s continued to work in Television. He retired in 1992.Read more

Movies & web series

Heat Wave

The Saint Steps In... To Television

Inside the Fear Factory

The Valiant

The Human Jungle

Danger UXB

Jason King

The Flame Trees of Thika

Tudor Rose

The Avengers

First Offence

The Persuaders!

A Night to Remember

Von Werra

Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror

A Profile of Hitchcock: The Early Years

A History of Horror

The Saint

Q.E.D.

Hitchcock: Alfred the Great

Minder

The Fiction Makers

The Lady Vanishes

Return of the Saint

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)

Journey to the Unknown

Night Train to Munich

Gideon's Way

Sodankylä Forever

The One That Got Away

Morning Departure

Foreign Exchange

The Anniversary

Quatermass and the Pit

Tiger in the Smoke

The Spy Killer

The Champions

Don't Bother to Knock

The Weaker Sex

The Vampire Lovers

The Vault of Horror

The Singer Not the Song

Mission: Monte Carlo

The House in the Square

Flame in the Streets

Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde

Jacqueline

The Protectors