John Taylor

Personal Info

Known For Director

Gender Male

Birthday 1914-10-05

Deathday 1992-09-15 (77 years old)

Place of Birth Kentish Town, London, England, UK

Also Known As Джон Тейлор

John Taylor

Biography

John Elston Taylor (5 October 1914 – 15 September 1992) was a British documentary filmmaker. Born in Kentish Town, London, on 5 October 1914, John Taylor had originally set his sights on a career in carpentry; however, shortly after finishing school he was offered a job by his sister's husband, documentary filmmaker John Grierson. Taylor started work as a film assistant at the Empire Marketing Board and in the years that followed he tried his hand at such jobs as camera operator, assistant director and production assistant. Along with working on Grierson's works, Taylor also had the fortune of working alongside some of his colleagues, such as Basil Wright (Song of Ceylon, 1934), Robert Flaherty (Man of Aran, 1934) and Alberto Cavalcanti on several of his travel documentaries, such as Men of the Alps (1937). By the end of the 1930s, Taylor was directing films himself, including Smoke Menace (1937) and Londoners (1939). In the 1940s, Taylor began producing films which helped to expose and improve social issues: Margaret Thomson's Clean Milk (1943) helped improve the Scottish dairy industry; Alex Strasser's Your Children's Eyes (1945) showed how a child's squint could easily be corrected with a minor operation; Daybreak in Udi (d. Terry Bishop, 1949) followed the construction of a maternity hospital in a village in Eastern Nigeria. In 1952, Taylor and Leon Clore set up Countryman Films, a company which made natural history documentaries. Their greatest achievement was probably The Conquest of Everest (d. Thomas Stobbart, 1953), a record of the successful British Everest expedition of 1953 accomplished by John Hunt, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Taylor was involved in a vast number of documentary films that became classics of the genre. He continued working up to the 1980s, producing quality documentaries on themes of social welfare and conservation.

Known For

Director

1965
Rail Report 5

as Director

1965
Wild Wings

as Director

1964
Southampton Docks

as Director

1957
Holiday

as Director

1957
Lancashire Coast

as Director

1957
1952
1952
1952
1942
A Seaman's Story

as Director

1940
1937
Air Outpost

as Director

1937
The Smoke Menace

as Director

Camera

1959
An Artist Looks at Churches

as Director of Photography

1937
Air Outpost

as Director of Photography

1936
Message from Genova

as Director of Photography

1935
Housing Problems

as Director of Photography

1934
Air Post

as Director of Photography

1934
1933
Cable Ship

as Director of Photography

Producer

1953
1945
French Town...

as Producer

1942
Dustbin Parade

as Producer

1942
Newspaper Train

as Producer

1940
They Also Serve

as Producer

1929
Drifters

as Production Assistant