Pen Tennyson
| Pen Tennyson | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Frederick Penrose Tennyson 26 August 1912 Chelsea, London, England |
| Died | 7 July 1941 (aged 28) |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Years active | 1934–1941 |
| Spouse(s) | Nova Pilbeam (1939–1941) |
Frederick Penrose "Pen" Tennyson (26 August 1912 – 7 July 1941) was a British film director whose promising career was cut short when he died in a plane crash. Tennyson gained experience as an assistant director to Alfred Hitchcock in several of his British films during the 1930s. Tennyson directed three films between 1939 and his death in 1941.
Tennyson was the son of Charles Tennyson, through whom he was a great-grandson of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
He went to Eton College and married actress Nova Pilbeam in 1939.
Tennyson entered the film industry in May 1932 after his mother introduced him to C.M. Woolf, the business partner of producer Michael Balcon. He began his career as a camera assistant at Gaumont British Studios at Shepherd's Bush. He developed a very close relationship with Balcon which lasted for the rest of his life; Balcon's children both later commented that their father "regarded him as a son".
At Gaumont, he was assigned to assist Hitchcock on his original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), on which he met his future wife. He also assisted Hitchcock on The 39 Steps (1935) with Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll; during filming, Hitchcock reportedly humiliated Tennyson by pretending that Carroll had refused to be carried across the Scottish marsh set by Donat, and he forced Tennyson to don Carroll's wig and costume and double for her in the scene.
Tennyson followed Balcon when he was appointed head of production at the former Associated Talking Pictures, newly renamed as Ealing Studios. Under Balcon, Tennyson's made his first feature as a director, There Ain't No Justice (1939), a contemporary drama about a young boxer, which writer Matthew Sweet describes as "one of the first British films of the sound era to make a serious attempt to represent the lives of working-class Londoners".
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