Films – Ancestors

I have been enjoying some exciting discoveries in the Wood family. In the box of documents I inherited from my Nan, Ailsa Joyce Kelly nee Wood, are many notes about the family tree. So many notes that it has been a bit overwhelming. I remembered reading something about people in the film industry who were in some way related but then could not find it again. Until last week….

So I was expecting to have to do some research into some obscure part of British film making, way back when… oh how wrong I was ….

So here is the context. The notes were from my Manx family. My Nan’s paternal grandmother was from Lezayre in the Isle of Man. Nan’s grandmother’s older sister, Alice Corlett, married William Quayle. They had a daughter Alice Maud Mabel Quayle known as Maud who married another Quayle, Robert. They moved to London and had two daughters Alicia and Thora.

These two daughters ran a restaurant in Elstree called ‘The Manx Cat’ before the outbreak of WWII. It became a favourite with the film industry and the rooms upstairs were rented out to various directors and actors. It was here that the two sisters met their future husbands.

Often an extended lunch would be taken at a restaurant known as the Manx Cat, about a half a mile from the Studio.

Source: Straight from the Horse’s Mouth: Ronald Neame, an Autobiography

Just for clarity Alicia and Thora are my (and my cousins) second cousins twice removed. For my dad’s generation they are second cousins once removed. Another couple of points of information’ Quayle and Corlett are very Manx surnames and Elstree (and neighbouring Borehamwood) was where the major film studios were in England from 1914 through to the 1980s.

Alicia Quayle and Frank Launder

The eldest sister married Frank Launder in 1931 when she was 20 years old. They had two children but were divorced by 1950 when Frank Launder married the actress Bernadette O’Farrell.

Frank Launder (1906-1997) was a British writer, film director and producer who made more than 40 films, many in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat. He was working as a screenwriter in the 1930s when he met my cousin. He wrote screenplays with Sidney Gilliat including Oh, Mr Porter 1937 and the Hitchcock classic The Lady Vanishes 1938.

Pause … yes … my second cousin’s twice removed’s husband cowrote the Hitchcock classic The Lady Vanishes….

They founded their own production company Individual Pictures. They were best known for comedies including The Happiest Days of Your Life 1950 and most famously the St Trinians series.

Thora Quayle and Edward Michael Smedley-Aston

Alicia’s younger sister married Edward Michael Smedley-Aston in 1935. They did stay together until death did them part. They were married for 70 years until Michael’s death in 2006 and had one son Brian Smedley-Aston; a film editor. The Smedley-Aston’s and Launder’s were close, often living in the same or neighbouring houses from the 1930s through to 1950.

E M Smedley-Aston was known as Michael Smedley-Aston or Smed in the film industry. He was working as an assistant second director when he first met Thora and later became a film producer. According to Ronald Neame, his friends doubted his ability to ‘get a girlfriend’ and were plotting to intervene…

But as the saying goes ‘Watch out for the quiet ones.’ Smed in his own inimitable, upper-crust style had already discreetly found himself a girlfriend, whom he later married without assistance or interference from his chums.

Michael went to Elstree at age 18. At the beginning of his career, Michael Smedley-Aston worked with Alfred Hitchcock and was assistant director on Dance Band, Royal Cavalcade and Drake of England all in the same year he married Thora. In 1939 he worked on Goodbye, Mr Chips. During the war he was stationed in Canada in the RAF and Thora accompanied him there. After the war he worked on the production of David Lean’s Great Expectations.

With Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, he was brought in to oversee the newly formed British Lion Films Ltd in 1955 after Alexander Korda could not pay back a loan taken out for the British Lion Film Corporation. They produced a large number of films including I’m Alright Jack in 1959.

Michael Smedley-Aston was known for giving aspiring actors their first break including Michael Caine, Oliver Reed, Peter Sellers, Glenda Jackson and Sean Connery.

He was born in 1912. His father William Smedley-Aston 1868-1941 was a leading photographer in the Arts and Crafts movement. He was also instrumental in encouraging and financing early moving films or ‘Biographs’ through his firm the British Biograph Company.

Michael and Thora’s son Brian was a film producer and editor working on movies including Tom Jones and Rollerball. He encouraged his children to go into the City, however, stating there’s no money in films.

Michael and Thora retired to the Isle of Man and she set up the Pets Aid League in 1975. She remained president of the charity until her death.

Thora lived to 102 and died in January 2016 in Ramsay in the Isle of Man just two months before her 103rd birthday.

Source: Lancashire Evening Post