William MacQuitty
| William MacQuitty | |
|---|---|
| Born |
15 May 1905 Belfast, UK |
| Died | 4 February 2004 (aged 98) London, UK |
William MacQuitty (15 May 1905 – 4 February 2004) was a British film producer and also a writer and photographer. He is most noted for his production of the 1958 Rank Organisation / Pinewood Studios film, A Night to Remember, which recreates the story of the sinking of RMS Titanic, based on the book of the same name by Walter Lord.
Born in Belfast, the son of the managing director of the Belfast Telegraph, he was educated at Campbell College. MacQuitty attained employment with the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China (known today as the Standard Chartered), at the age of 18, where he remained until 1939.
In 1926, he was posted to the Far East, joining the Auxiliary Punjab Light Horse at Amritsar, who were a handful of volunteer soldiers whose job was to defend the memsahibs and the children in a city that was widely regarded as one of the most seditious in India.
In 1928 he became a founder member of the Lahore Flying Club. Further postings in the Far East included Ceylon, Siam, Malaya and China before he resigned and returned to Ireland in 1939.
Intending to take up psychoanalysis as a career, MacQuitty started a seven-year medical course in London but his amateur film Simple Silage, made for the benefit of Ulster farming neighbours, came to the attention of the Ministry of Information, launching him on a new and unexpected career.
After an informal apprenticeship working with the established film producer Sydney Box, MacQuitty's film contributions to the war effort included Out of Chaos, a portrait of the war artists Henry Moore, Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland, among others, and The Way We Live (1946), which chronicled the rebuilding of the heavily bombed city of Plymouth. He also filmed T. S. Eliot reading Little Gidding, and Stanley Spencer and his crucifix painting in Cookham churchyard.
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