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They initially joined forces in the mid 1930s as scriptwriters, specialising in comedy-thrillers; then the upheavals of the Second World War gave them their chance to direct their own scripts, beginning with <cite>Millions Like Us</cite> (1943).</p> <p>Many projects were developed jointly, yet each had their own preferences. <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite>'s forte was dry social comedy with a pessimistic streak, an ideal platform for his caustic sense of humour; <cite class="party">Launder</cite> was happiest with lighter, farcical comedy, or subjects with a Celtic flavour. Neither matched their ingenious scripts with a particularly developed visual style, though the flourishes of European silent cinema - an early passion - found distant echoes in some of <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite>'s scripts, and both knew much about comic timing.</p> <p><cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> was born in Stockport, on 15 February 1908. His father was a journalist and newspaper editor, and <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> entered films in 1928 in tandem with <cite class="party">Walter C. Mycroft</cite>, formerly the film critic on his father's paper, the <cite class="party">London Evening Standard</cite>. For ten months he performed dogsbody chores in <cite class="party">Mycroft</cite>'s scenario department at <cite class="party">British International Pictures</cite> at <cite class="party">Elstree</cite>, but learned more about film-making assisting the comedian and director <cite class="party">Walter Forde</cite> at the more modest Nettlefold Studios.</p> <p>In 1931 he joined <cite class="party">Gaumont-British</cite> as a junior writer, and won his industry breakthrough writing the lion's share of <cite class="party">Forde</cite>'s fast-moving thriller <cite>Rome Express</cite> (1932), a prestige product for the company. He cemented his success writing comedy-thrillers with <cite class="party">Launder</cite> which were consciously modelled along <dfn>Hollywood</dfn> lines but had English eccentricities writ large. In their script for <cite>The Lady Vanishes</cite> (1938), written before <cite class="party">Alfred Hitchcock</cite> was assigned to direct, they established the characters of Charters and Caldicott, two imperturbable Englishmen abroad who proved popular enough to be resurrected in a number of other films.</p> <p><cite class="party">Edward Black</cite> at <cite class="party">Gainsborough Studios</cite> gave the team their first chance to direct. Both jointly wrote and directed <cite>Millions Like Us</cite>, an unusually lively and vivid portrait of Home Front life. Gilliat's first solo project as writer-director, <cite>Waterloo Road</cite> (1945), displayed the same beady eye for ordinary wartime lives, compromised slightly by the demands of melodrama.</p> <p>But in <cite>The Rake's Progress</cite> (1945), made through the team's own company <cite class="party">Individual Pictures</cite>, <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> shook off popular conventions to write and direct his most distinctive film: a sharp, sometimes touching social comedy about the escapades of an upper-class cad who finally finds a niche fighting in the Second World War. The role was perfectly pitched to the acting style of <cite class="party">Rex Harrison</cite>, its lead performer. <cite>Green for Danger</cite> (1946), adapted from <cite class="party">Christianna Brand</cite>'s thriller about murder stalking a wartime hospital, was a less personal project, but <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite>'s handprints stayed visible in the sardonic tone, the expert blending of laughter and fear, and the proud parade of <cite class="party">Alistair Sim</cite>'s eccentricities as the fallible Inspector Cockrill.</p> <p>With <cite class="party">Powell-Pressburger</cite>'s <cite class="party">The Archers</cite>, <cite class="party">David Lean</cite>, <cite class="party">Ronald Neame</cite> and <cite class="party">Anthony Havelock-Allan</cite>'s <cite class="party">Cineguild</cite>, <cite class="party">Individual Pictures</cite> formed part of <cite class="party">Independent Producers</cite>, a high-profile group sheltering inside the <cite class="party">Rank Organisation</cite>.</p> <p>When relations with <cite class="party">Rank</cite> soured, <cite class="party">Launder</cite> and <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> joined the exodus towards <cite class="party">Alexander Korda</cite>'s <cite class="party">London Films</cite>. <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite>'s first film for <cite class="party">Korda</cite>, the crisply paced chase thriller <cite>State Secret</cite> (1950), was based on another strong original script; his passion for detail helped enormously in creating the setting, an imaginary Central European country. There was less opportunity to put a personal mark on <cite>The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan</cite> (1953), a lavish musical biography that had its incidental pleasures but never came to heel.</p> <p>During the 1950s, inside and outside <cite class="party">Korda</cite>'s domain, <cite class="party">Launder</cite> and <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> enjoyed box-office success with the St Trinian's farces, beginning with <cite>The Belles of St Trinian's</cite> (1954). But these high-spirited romps were <cite class="party">Launder</cite>'s chief concern: <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> himself experienced less success finding outlets for his larger ambitions. <cite>The Constant Husband</cite> (1955) reunited him with <cite class="party">Rex Harrison</cite> for a sophisticated comedy about an amnesiac sufferer who discovers he has six wives; but compared to <cite>The Rake's Progress</cite>, the film's social observations remained on the surface. The thriller <cite>Fortune Is A Woman</cite> (1957) and the political comedy <cite>Left Right and Centre</cite> (1959) offered further polished, but relatively mild, entertainment.</p> <p>Once <cite class="party">Launder</cite> and <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> ascended into management with the Boulting brothers on the board of the <cite class="party">British Lion Film Corporation</cite> in 1958, chances to practice film-making themselves began to shrink. However, <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> achieved substantial critical and popular success with <cite>Only Two Can Play</cite> (1962), adapted by <cite class="party">Bryan Forbes</cite> from <cite class="party">Kingsley Amis</cite>'s novel <em>That Certain Feeling</em>. <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> charted the progress of <cite class="party">Peter Sellers</cite>' philandering Welsh librarian with mordant wit, fine timing, and an appropriate regard for the sordid side of domesticity.</p> <p>As the 1960s advanced, upheavals in the industry increasingly kept <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> chained to a desk at British Lion, but he emerged to direct scenes in <cite>The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery</cite> (co-d. Launder, 1965). Other planned productions fell by the wayside - one was <cite>Modesty Blaise</cite>, subsequently filmed by <cite class="party">Joseph Losey</cite> (1966); but in 1971 he managed to direct <cite>Endless Night</cite> (1972), an elegant version of an <cite class="party">Agatha Christie</cite> thriller, unfairly mauled by the contemporary press.</p> <p><cite class="party">Launder</cite> and <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> resigned from <cite class="party">British Lion</cite> in 1972, and no other film project stirred <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> sufficiently to emerge from retirement; his chief participation in <cite class="party">Launder</cite>'s <cite>The Wildcats of St Trinian's</cite> (1980) was in offering the advice that it should not be made. Much of his time was spent writing a meticulously researched comic novel <em>Catch Me Who Can</em>, set against the railway frauds of the 19th century; it was almost finished at his death on 31 May, 1994.</p> <p><em>Bibliography</em><br /> Babington, Bruce, <em>Launder and Gilliat</em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002)<br /> Brown, Geoff, <em>Launder and Gilliat</em> (London: British Film Institute, 1977)<br /> Gilliat, Sidney, interviewed by Macdonald, Kevin, 'The Early Life of a Screenwriter II', in John Boorman and Walter Donohue (eds), <em>Projections 2. A Forum for Film-Makers</em> (London: Faber and Faber, 1993)</p> <p class="bricksrc">Geoff Brown, Reference Guide to British and Irish Film Directors</p> <img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="10" border="0" alt="" /> </td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2"></td></tr> </table></td>  <td width="1" class="verticaldots"><img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" /></td> <td width="312" valign="top"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr><td colspan="2"><img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" alt="" width="312" height="20" border="0" /></td></tr> <tr><td><img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" alt="" width="3" height="1" border="0" /></td><td><p class="smg">More information</p></td></tr> <tr><td class="underline" colspan="2"><img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" /></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="rh-item"> <tr> <td valign="top" 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