Walter Summers
| Walter Summers | |
|---|---|
| Born | 2 September 1892 Barnstaple, Devon, United Kingdom |
| Died | April 1973 Wandsworth, London, United Kingdom |
| Years active | 1922-1940 |
Walter Summers (1892–1973) was a British film director and screenwriter.
Born in Barnstaple to a family of actors, British motion picture director Walter Summers began his career in the family trade; his first contact with filmmaking was as an assistant to American director George Loane Tucker, who worked for the English London Films unit from 1914 to 1916. With the outbreak of war, Summers mobilized into the British Army, gaining experiences that would serve him well later as a filmmaker. At war’s end, Summers worked briefly for Cecil Hepworth, and then the Territorial Unit in India before making contact with producer/director George B. Samuelson. Samuelson hired Summers as a writer, primarily on films starring the popular actress Lillian Hall-Davis such as Maisie’s Marriage (1923). Summers co-directed a couple of pictures with Samuelson before flying solo for the first time with a drama, A Couple of Down and Outs (1923). Summers followed this up with Who Is the Man? a drama which received mixed reviews but is included on the "BFI 75 Most Wanted" list of missing British feature films and which launched the film career of John Gielgud.
Tiring of Samuelson’s on again, off again production schedule, Summers left and worked on a couple of features for even smaller concerns before landing at British Instructional Films, or BIF. There he directed historical battle recreations that within Britain are regarded as his greatest and most consequential films: Ypres (1925), Mons (1926), Nelson (1926), The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927) and Bolibar (1928). The Battles of the Coronel and the Falkland Islands was so popular that it was reissued in a sound version under the title The Deeds Men Do (1932). The film was restored and re-released by the BFI in 2014. While the tone of these films (save Bolibar) are heavily patriotic they continue to hold up well.
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