Raymond Longford

Raymond Longford
Portrait of Raymond Longford, circa 1935.
Born	John Walter Longford 23 September 1878(1878-09-23) Hawthorn, Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.
Died	2 April 1959(1959-04-02) (aged 80) North Sydney, Australia.
Other names	Raymond Hollis Longford
Occupation	Director, actor, screenwriter, editor, film producer
Years active	1911–1941

Raymond Longford (23 September 1878 – 2 April 1959) was a prolific Australian film director, writer, producer and actor during the silent era.^[1] Longford was a major director of the silent film era of the Australian cinema. He formed a production team with Lottie Lyell. His contributions to Australian cinema with his ongoing collaborations with Lyell include The Sentimental Bloke (1919) and The Blue Mountains Mystery (1921) earned an AFI award named in his honour, inducted in 1968.

Biography

John Walter Hollis Longford was born in Hawthorn, a suburb of Melbourne, son of John Walter Longford, a Sydney civil servant, and his English wife, Charlotte Maria. His family moved to Sydney in the 1880s when his father became a warder at Darlinghurst Gaol.

Longford became a sailor and spent his early life at sea. He started acting on the stage in India under the name Raymond Hollis Longford. In the early 1900s he toured Australia and New Zealand with Edwin Geach's Popular Dramatic Organisation, and Clarke and Meynell companies. He also began acting in films for producer Charles Cozens Spencer.^[2]

Film Career

In 1911 Spencer hired Longford to direct his first feature, The Fatal Wedding. It was a major financial success and launched his career behind the camera. He soon established himself as one of Australia's leading directors which such films as The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole (1911) and The Midnight Wedding (1912). Most of his early films were adapted from stage melodramas or heavily influenced by then. They were often made quickly, with limited budgets and a small crew. From the beginning, Lottie Lyell was a key collaborator for him as an actor, writer, producer and (later) co-director.

Following Charles Cozens Spencer's withdrawal from Australian production, Longford found it increasingly difficult to secure funding for a time. He was forced to make two films in New Zealand and also became embroiled in legal battles over making The Silence of Dean Maitland (1914) and The Church and the Woman (1917).

The Sentimental Bloke

Longford's career revived towards the end of World War I when he helped establish the Southern Cross Feature Film Company. He enjoyed a large hit with The Woman Suffers (1918) which enabled him to get finance for an adaptation of the poetry of C. J. Dennis, The Sentimental Bloke (1919). This was an enormous critical and popular success, and is regarded as one of the greatest Australian films of all time. Longford followed it with another hit, On Our Selection (1920). Both that and Bloke led to sequels which were also directed by Longford.

Decline

As the 1920s went on, Longford again found difficulties securing finance and/or distribution for his films. He made some for Australasian Films but the collaboration was not a successful one. In 1925 Lottie Lyell died of tuberculosis and Longford's career never recovered.

In 1926 it was announced Longford would serve on the board of the film company Phillips Film Productions Ltd, ^[3] but little seems to have come of this. He gave evidence at the 1928 Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry in Australia^[4] where he urged the introduction of a film quota.^[5]

Longford appeared in bankruptcy court in 1929 but managed to tour Europe the following year.^[6][7]

Sound Era

Throughout the 1930s Longford worked steadily as an actor and assistant director but only directed one feature, The Man They Could Not Hang (1934) That year he was elected head of the New South Wales Talking Picture Producers Association with the aim of promoting a quota for Australian films.^[8][9] In 1935 he established Mastercraft Film Corporation Ltd.^[10]

Later Years

During World War II, he was a clerk for the U.S. military stationed in Australia and was still active as a night watchman on the Sydney wharfs before dying on 2 April 1959 at the age of 80.

Personal Life

Longford married Melena Louisa Keen at St Luke's Anglican Church, Concord, Sydney, on 5 February 1900. They had one child, a son, Victor. Longford and Melena later separated and he started a relationship with Lottie Lyell but could not marry her as Melena would not give him a divorce until 1926 - the year after Lyell died.

Longford married for a second time in 1933 to Emilie Elizabeth Anschutz.^[2]

AFI Longford Life Achievement Award

Named in Longford's honour, the AFI Raymond Longford Award is the Australian film industry's highest accolade for an individual based on their contributions to "unwavering commitment over many years to excellence in the film and television industries and has, through their body of work to date, contributed substantially to the enrichment of Australian screen culture". Since the introduction of the award by the AFI in 1968, winners have included Peter Weir, David Stratton, Ian Jones and Geoffrey Rush.^[11]

Filmography

Director