Lewis Allen (director)
| Lewis Allen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
25 December 1905 Oakengates, Shropshire, England, UK |
| Died | 3 May 2000 (aged 94) Santa Monica, California, US |
| Occupation | Director |
| Years active | 1943–1977 |
Lewis Allen (25 December 1905 – 3 May 2000) was an English director. Allen worked mainly in the United States, working on Broadway and directing 18 feature films between 1944 and 1959. From the mid-1950s he moved increasingly into television and worked on a number of the most popular shows of the time in the US.
Allen was born in the small Shropshire town of Oakengates and on leaving school joined the Merchant Navy for four years. After leaving the service he became, briefly, an actor, before moving into London theatrical management, first for Raymond Massey and later for Gilbert Miller.
In 1935 he began working on Broadway. His credits include directing the U.S. premieres of Laburnum Grove (1935) and The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1937), and the general stage direction of Victoria Regina, Tovarich and French Without Tears.
He directed a wartime propaganda short Freedom Comes High in 1943 and was given his first chance to direct a feature film in 1944. He made a highly auspicious debut with The Uninvited, an atmospheric and memorable ghost story set on the misty coast of south-west England, starring Ray Milland and Gail Russell. The film was very favourably received and subsequently acquired the status of a classic of its genre. Allen again worked with Russell, alongside Joel McCrea and Herbert Marshall, in 1945's The Unseen, a film with a similar supernatural theme which is often considered the unofficial follow-up to The Uninvited. Other films of this period included a romantic comedy The Perfect Marriage (1947) with David Niven and Loretta Young, and Desert Fury (1947), a noir-ish Western drama starring Lizabeth Scott and John Hodiak.
...
Wikipedia