Dallas Bower

Dallas Bower (25 July 1907 – 18 October 1999) was a British director and producer active during the early development of mass media communication. Throughout his career Bower's work spanned radio plays, television shows, propaganda shorts, animations and feature films, with his most notable projects consisting of Alfred Hitchcock’s first film in sound Blackmail, the British Broadcasting Company's radio play Julius Caesar (1938), the Dunkirk evacuation propaganda short Channel Incident (1940), the feature film Henry V (1944), and an Anglo-French adaptation of Lewis Carroll's children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland entitled Alice au pays des merveilles (1949). He later produced some of the earliest British television commercials.

Biography

Personal life Dallas Bower was born on 25 July 1907, in apartment 34 of Kensington Hall Gardens, London. Throughout his childhood Bower frequently visited the Old Royalty Cinema with his uncle, where they saw motion pictures such as The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), which Bower would later cite as a significant early influences that would inspire his future involvement in the film industry. Bower was educated at Willington Preparatory School in Putney,

Radio career Bower was first introduced to radio by an older student at St John's College who had been working on a small valve set. The pair would soon after establish an amateur radio station based in Bower's grandfather's house in Putney. Following his graduation from St John's College, Bower was employed by the Marconi Scientific Instrument Company, while at the same time he was selected to edit the radio theory and design journals Modern Wireless in 1925 and Experimental Wireless in 1926.

As a prominent figure in the developing British radio industry he was invited to the Radio Society of Great Britain in 1926, where Bower personally heard Campbell Swinton lecture on the topic of cathode ray oscillography, the theory on which modern television transmissions are predicated on. Bower stated that the lecture made a ‘profound impression on him, directly leading to his collaborations with the British developer and radio physicist Robert Watson-Watt. Bower's meetings with Watt convinced him to enter the world of cinema, as the newfound technological advancements of the 1920s made the type of ambitious projects Bower envisioned feasible.

Early cinematic career In 1927 Bower was hired as a sound recordist for British International Pictures (BIP), located in Elstree, London. In this position Bower recorded audio for a multitude of the company's projects, the most notable inclusions being Harry Lachman’s Under the Greenwood Tree (1929) and Alfred Hitchcock’s first movie filmed with dialogue, Blackmail (1929). However, Dallas was forced to leave BIP the same year due to the Great Depression and the BPI's efforts to make the division more economical.

Involvement with the British Broadcasting Corporation In May 1936 Dallas Bower and Stephen Thomas were appointed as senior producers of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) by Gerald Cock, the first Director of Television for the BBC. Bower, who worked with Cock at BIP, was tasked with adapting ‘high culture’ to the developing mediums of mass communication, in the form of radio plays, short films and television shows.

In addition, he was responsible for the production of the radio play Alexander Nevsky’ (1941), a project which was commissioned in correlation with the Soviet’s entry into WWII, as well as Columbus, another radio play to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the European's arrival in America.

Over the course of the conflict Bower continued to work and reconfigure the script for Henry V, creating a more traditional appropriation. The final script was bought by Filippo del Giudice in 1944, causing Bower to resign from the Ministry to attach himself to the project.

Bower directed two more films: The Second Mrs Tanquerary (1952), which was filmed over the course of eight days in the Adelphi Theatre for under £25,000, and Doorway to Suspicion. Both films received negative reviews and had a minimal impact at the box office.

Later career and death After retiring from the director's chair, Bower began work on the production of the earliest television commercials under the company TV Advertising. Over this period Bower produced 80 commercials, directing 12 of them. He found the new avenue of work taxing, leading to his retirement in the mid-1960s.

In the case of Alice in Wonderland, fifty years after the film's initial release, the Museum of Modern Art in New York restored the film, which had been damaged due to negligent storage.

Selected filmography Director The Path of Glory (1934) Rope (TV movie) (1939) Alice in Wonderland (1949) The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1952) Doorway to Suspicion (1957)

Soundman Blackmail (1929) Under the Greenwood Tree (1929)

Editor Q-Ships (1929) Dick Turpin (1933)