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obituaries
The men behind Paragon are Yorkshire pharmacists Afzal Khan and Abdul Hafiz, who between them own a string of pharmacies and also are behind a number of high-profile property develop- ments in Huddersfield.
With a shared love of movies, the pair decided to try their hand at production. A contacts-mak- ing trip to Cannes last year was followed by a flight to Bombay to find themselves a project.
“I remember we sat in a hotel room in Bombay all week and lots of people came to see us with ideas,” recalled Hafiz. “Word had got out we were looking for a project to finance so there was no shortage of people wanting to see us.”
Starring Manisha Koriala, grand- daughter of the former Prime Minister of Nepal, and a perennial Bollywood player, Punjabi Girl is now up and running, and the men from Paragon are now actively looking for new British-based proj- ects. Bernice Saltzer
Photos left: Clive Parsons and Davina Belling; Centre from top: Ray Winstone in Scum; A scene from The Queen’s Nose; Paragon Pictures’ Afzal Khan and Abdul Hafiz; Right: Tony Curtis, Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon celebrat- ing the 25th Anniversary of Some Like It Hot on 28 April, 1986 at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego which served as the backdrop for the film.
B
He always kept you wonderful- ly entertained, eyeing you through thick, black-rimmed glasses and serving up anecdotes with the richest sachertorte accent.
But from you he wanted news, he wanted opinions, he wanted to be able to keep in touch about movies, sport, restaurants and art exhibitions. For more than two decades I felt privileged to call this amazing man my friend.
I regularly kibitzed on work ses- sions with Billy and his long-time partner I.A.L. Diamond – Billy paced, scratched and swatted while Izzy sat, smoked and typed, each other’s sternest critic. I spent an unforgettable week watching Billy direct Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, even though the movie – Buddy Buddy – turned out to be less than everyone hoped.
It also turned out to be Billy’s last movie so the years I knew him were tinged with frustration and an often dismissive tone about so much of modern cinema. Every month it seemed he was being given life achievement awards, a golden this and silver that, and a BAFTA Fellowship in 1995, but Billy would have traded all of them for a green light.
Right to the end though, Billy would be up early every morning and leave Audrey, his wife of nearly 60 years, to go to the office, have a social lunch and do some shopping.
Billy Wilder was an aristocrat of Hollywood, the last survivor of a golden age of directors. He was one of many highly cultured exiles from Europe, chased out by Hitler and coping with the knowl- edge that all his family had per- ished in the gas chambers.
He arrived in Hollywood with barely a word of English but a lot of talent and chutzpah. Billy
would have agreed with something his friend and fel- low emigre
Fred Zinnemann once told me: “My early life
and career are rather interesting but then it’s just another boring success story.”
Within a decade, Billy became Hollywood’s highest paid screenwriter – then in part- nership with Charles Brackett – and soon joined that elite club, the “double-hyphenate” – pro- ducer-director-writer. In 15 years he created five straight-down- the-line masterpieces – Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment.
To these I would add his romantic comedies made in the style of his mentor Lubitsch, films like Sabrina and Avanti!, as well as the elegiac British-made The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
Billy forged what is arguably the greatest career of any American filmmaker – more ver- satile then Ford or Hitchcock, less ephemeral than Hawks, less solemn than Wyler or Lean, more consistent than anyone.
Of course, there were occa- sional failures, artistic as well as commercial, but let’s skim over those. Well, nobody’s perfect, but Billy Wilder sure came close. Adrian Turner
Donald Wilson
onald Wilson who died aged 91 just as ITV’s new production of The Forsyte Saga began to air was the man behind BBC’s epic 26-part series 35 years earlier.
As head of serials at the BBC, Wilson doggedly pursued the rights and when secured he stepped down from running his department to produce and co- write the trailblazing black-and- white production.
Wilson joined the BBC in 1954 as head of the script department after working in the film industry before and after the war as an assistant director then producer and screenwriter at Elstree and Pinewood with credits like Poets Pub, Stop Press Girl and Miss Robin Hood.
After The Forsyte Saga, Wilson was responsible for costume
series like The First Churchills (1969) and Anna Karenina (1977), with Diana Rigg.
JBohn Nathan-Turner
efore becoming the last and longest-serving producer of Doctor Who, John Nathan- Turner, who has died aged 54, lit- erally rose through the ranks on one of the BBC’s most enduring and popular series.
Birmingham-born, he started as its floor assistant in 1969 then became assistant floor manager and production unit manager before taking over as producer in 1980. All in all he worked with six of the seven Doctors until the pro- gramme was scrapped in 1989.
Bob Penn
ob Penn’s adult life was a tale of two families. His and Sheila’s own kids and grandchildren – and the interna- tional film industry family, like any offspring sometimes fractious, often energy – sapping but end- lessly rewarding.
Penn, who had died aged 76, was the leading British movie stills photographer of his generation and top scorer in the unofficial Life magazine cover shot league.
From Kind Hearts And Coronets, The Cruel Sea, Cleopatra and The Lion In Winter to Get Carter, The Spy Who Loved Me, Alien and The Omen – for demanding directors like Houston, Visconti, Wilder, Kubrick, Milius, Ridley Scott, James Cameron and George Cukor.
Some of the films may have faded but many of his haunting images remain. Bob always thought of himself as an ordinary bloke – but then extraordinary people often do. Gordon Arnell
Roy Field FBKS BSC
oy Field, the visual effects wizard who won an Oscar as part of the sfx team on Superman, has died aged 67 after a short battle with cancer.
Field entered the industry in 1952 and worked on films like Outland, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and Air America as well as the whole Superman series.
He was also recipient of the first-ever Charles Staffell Award at the annual BSC prize-giving last December “for exemplary work in the field of optical effects.”
Willy Wilder 1906-2002 illiam Holden once described Billy Wilder as having “a mind full of razor blades.” This meant that when you met him for lunch or simply over his office desk you had to be razor sharp.
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