Frank LAUNDER and Sidney GILLIAT

Among the several film-making partnerships which have distinguished British cinema, that of Launder and Gilliat was the most enduring and productive. Frank Launder was born on 28 January 1906 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. His first job was in the offices of the Official Receiver of Bankruptcy, but it was through his involvement with Brighton Repertory Company, for whom he had acted and written a play, that he entered the film industry in 1928. He started in the script department at British International Pictures (BIP) at Elstree and continued as a writer for a variety of British studios during the 1930s. At this time he met and began to collaborate on scripts with Sidney Gilliat. Gilliat was born 15 February 1908 in Stockport. The son of a journalist and newspaper editor, it was his father's former film critic on the London Evening Standard, Walter C. Mycroft, who helped Gilliat into the film industry when he took over the running of BIP's script department in 1928. They began to work together on comedy-thrillers which were often distinguished by their skill in observing the quirks of British behaviour. Typical of this is their witty screenplay for HITCHCOCK's The Lady Vanishes (1938) where they created the characters of the bumbling Charters and Caldicott who were to reappear in a number of later British films.