Herbert Wilcox

Herbert Sydney Wilcox CBE (19 April 1890 – 15 May 1977), was a British film producer and director.

Wilcox's mother was from County Cork, Ireland, but he was born in Norwood, south London and attended school in Brighton. During the First World War, he served in the Royal Flying Corps.

In 1919, Wilcox used his war gratuity to found his own company, Astra Films, and produced and directed his first film, The Wonderful Story, in a makeshift studio in Kew. He formed another company, Graham Wilcox Productions, with Jack Graham Cutts in 1920. Further, he set up the British National Company, which was later absorbed into British International Pictures.

Generally, Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail is regarded as the first film with sound, but Wilcox's Black Waters was trade-shown several weeks earlier in May, 1929. He produced more than a hundred films, of which he directed about half. In the 1950s, he planned to make a biopic about Van Gogh starring Trevor Howard, but it was never made. "His film production team were never laid off, even during the worst depressions of the British film industry. They were on full salary 52 weeks of the year."

Wilcox's postwar films include Odette (1951), Trent's Last Case (1952), Yangtse Incident (1956), and The Lady is a Square (1959). His film company failed in the 1960s, and he was declared bankrupt in 1964; however, the musical play Charlie Girl, starring his wife Anna Neagle, ran for five years and resolved this financial situation.

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