Andrew CruickshankFilmography

Puccini

Actors: Robert Stephens, Virginia McKenna, Judith Howarth

Synopsis: The acclaimed Tony Palmer helmed this 1984 biopic on 19th and early 20th century Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, here portrayed by Robert Stephens. Palmer opts to focus not on the whole gestalt of Puccini's life, but on a devastating scandal that transpired in 1909, when Giacomo's wife, Elvira Read More

Wagner

Actors: Richard Burton, Vanessa Redgrave, Laszlo Galffi, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson

Synopsis: Originally a nine-hour British miniseries, this film on the last four decades in the life of Richard Wagner may have taken its long-winded cue from the lengthy operas of the famous 19th-century German composer and musical theorist -- the Ring des Nibelungen is 14-15 hours in itself, divided into Read More

Murder Most Foul

Actors: Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, Charles "Bud" Tingwell, Andrew Cruickshank, Megs Jenkins, Dennis Price, Ralph Michael, James Bolam, Stringer Davis, Francesca Annis, Alison Seebohm, Terry Scott

Synopsis: Murder Most Foul represented Margaret Rutherford's third appearance as Agatha Christie's spinsterish sleuth Miss Marple. The film opens with Marple serving on a murder-trial jury. She forces a mistrial because she considers the accused to be innocent; to prove her theory, she traces the trail of Read More

Come Fly With Me

Actors: Dolores Hart, Hugh O'Brian, Karl Heinz Böhm, Pamela Tiffin, Karl Malden

Synopsis: The lives and loves of a trio of airline hostesses is the whole story in this piece of fluff from MGM. Each of these perky women have cute and cuddly romances from an assortment of wealthy men as they offer coffee or tea on a flight from New York to Paris. Dolores Hart is searching for a rich Read More

Live Now Pay Later

Actors: Ian Hendry, June Ritchie, John Gregson, Liz Fraser, Geoffrey Keen

Synopsis: One of the minor comedy-dramas to come out of Britain, this story by director Jay Lewis and scripter Jack Trevor Story is about an unscrupulous salesman, Albert (Ian Hendry), who is beset by a whole series of problems, all of his own making. In order to advance his career, Albert makes a habit of Read More

We Are in the Navy Now

Actors: Kenneth More, Lloyd Nolan, Joan O'Brien, Mischa Auer, Jeremy Lloyd

Synopsis: This was the last film for British director Wendy Toye whose special interests were always comedies and fantasies. In this light farce, the talented Kenneth More is Lt. Commander Bodger, a man with a penchant for honesty in moments when silence is much more diplomatic. Bodger offends the Navy Read More

El Cid

Actors: Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, Raf Vallone, Gary Raymond, Ralph Truman, John Fraser

Synopsis: When French playwright Pierre Corneille wrote El Cid, a fanciful version of the life of 11th-century Spanish hero Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, aka "El Cid", an attempt was made to honor the "classic unities" and to compress the whole story into a single day! Be assured that the 1961 film version of El Read More

Greyfriars Bobby: The True Story of a Dog

Actors: Donald Crisp, Laurence Naismith, Alex Mackenzie, Kay Walsh, Andrew Cruickshank

Synopsis: Disney's Greyfriars Bobby is a remake of A Challenge to Lassie; both are based on the same novel by Eleanor Atkinson, and both feature Donald Crisp in a major role. A true story, set in Edinburgh around 1875, the Disney version stars Alex McKenzie as the shepherd Old Jock, the owner of a loyal Read More

There Was a Crooked Man

Actors: Norman Wisdom, Alfred Marks, Andrew Cruickshank, Reginald Beckwith, Susannah York

Synopsis: In this British comedy, an amiable demolitions expert finds himself entangled with a band of criminals masquerading as doctors. In this guise, the thieves attempt to build a tunnel between the hospital and the bank next door. The expert successfully blows open the vault, and the criminals escape Read More

Kidnapped

Actors: Peter Finch, James MacArthur, Bernard Lee, Niall MacGinnis, John Laurie

Synopsis: Disney produced this historical adventure of old Scotland, based on the classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. James MacArthur stars as David Balfour, a wealthy lad cheated out of his inheritance and sold into servitude by his duplicitous and greedy uncle, Ebenezer (John Laurie). Aboard the ship Read More

The Stranglers of Bombay

Actors: Guy Rolfe, Allan Cuthbertson, Andrew Cruickshank, George Pastell, Marne Maitland

Synopsis: Loosely based on a cult of assassins in early 19th-century India known as "thaga" (pronounced "tahg"), the villains in this routine, part-horror, part suspense story are causing problems in the East India Company and throughout Bombay. It seems that someone is stealing cargo from the company, and Read More

The 39 Steps

Actors: Kenneth More, Taina Elg, Brenda de Banzie, Barry Jones, Reginald Beckwith

Synopsis: This remake of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller does not have his flair for suspense, but director Ralph Thomas keeps the action moving, offers some comic highlights, and the story itself carries the 90-minute running time. Richard Hannay (Kenneth More) is at a vaudeville show when a shot rings out Read More

A Question of Adultery

Actors: Julie London, Anthony Steel, Basil Sydney, Donald Houston, Anton Diffring

Synopsis: In this drama, a couple experiences marital turmoil because the husband is a hot-tempered race-car driver with a jealous streak. The woman then gets pregnant and begins hoping that a baby will bring them back together. Unfortunately, the two get into a terrible accident, she loses the baby, and Read More

Innocent Sinners

Actors: June Archer, Brian Hammond, Flora Robson, David Kossoff

Synopsis: Based on the Rumer Godden novel An Episode of Sparrows, Innocent Sinners stars June Archer and Christopher Hey as the title characters. Neglected by her mother, contentious little Lovejoy (Archer) runs off to an abandoned London building, where with the help of several street urchins she begins to Read More

The Story of Esther Costello

Actors: Joan Crawford, Rossano Brazzi, Heather Sears, Lee Patterson, Ron Randell

Synopsis: Story of Esther Costello is the cinematic equivalent of eating a whole box of potato chips; you may hate yourself, but you'll relish every bite in the meantime. Joan Crawford plays a well-meaning woman who throws herself whole-hog into every charitable cause that comes down the pike. She is Read More

Pursuit of the Graf Spee

Actors: John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, Peter Finch, Ian Hunter, Jack Gwillim, Bernard Lee

Synopsis: Widely regarded as one of the best and most intelligent British war dramas of the 1950s, The Battle of River Plate is the story of Britain's first significant naval victory in WW2. John Gregson heads the cast as Captain Bell, skipper of the Exeter, one of several vessels engaged in pursuit of the Read More

The Secret Tent

Synopsis: A fine upstanding wife finds it difficult to keep her sordid past as a criminal a secret from her husband and neighbors. The trouble begins when someone robs a neighbor. As the wife suddenly vanishes thereafter, the police immediately label her the prime suspect. Meanwhile, her husband searches Read More

Richard III

Actors: Cedric Hardwicke, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Nicholas Hannen, Claire Bloom, Ralph Richardson, Alec Clunes

Synopsis: Laurence Olivier was the director, co-screenwriter (with Alan Dent), and star of this robust adaptation of Shakespeare's drama, which, as Bruce Eder has written, "was the final, crowning glory of the British studio system and the end of the great cycle of British films aimed at international Read More

John and Julie

Actors: Colin Gibson, Lesley Dudley, Noelle Middleton, Moira Lister, Peter Sellers

Synopsis: Scads of color stock footage from the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth was strategically deployed in John and Julie. The story involves two little provincial children (Colin Gibson, Lesley Dudley) whose parents have no plans to attend the Coronation. Left to their own devices, John and Julie run Read More

John Wesley

Actors: Leonard Sachs, Keith Pyott

Synopsis: The life of the founder of modern Methodism is dramatized in John Wesley. Originally intended for church assembly showings, the film stars Leonard Sachs in the title role. The screenplay charts the Methodist Movement from its inception in 18th century England to the present day. Produced by the Read More

The Cruel Sea

Actors: Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, John Stratton, Denholm Elliott, Stanley Baker

Synopsis: In this seagoing military drama set in World War II, Lt. Comdr. Ericson (Jack Hawkins) is made captain of a British corvette, a small escort vessel used to guide and protect convoys traveling through the Atlantic. Ericson had his confidence severely shaken during his last command, in which he lost Read More

The Reluctant Widow

Actors: Jean Kent, Guy Rolfe, Kathleen Byron, Paul Dupuis, Lana Morris

Synopsis: The Reluctant Widow in this muted British comedy is young 19th-century governess Elinor, played by Jean Kent. Inadvertently inheriting a vast estate, Elinor is bedeviled by both British turncoats and French espionage agents, who hide out in the mansion while preparing to steal Lord Wellington's Read More

Ivory Hunter

Actors: Anthony Steel, Dinah Sheridan, Harold Warrender, Meredith Edwards, William Simons

Synopsis: Anthony Steel plays a humane British game warden who sets up an African wildlife preserve. Ivory poachers sign up for the preserve's safari tour in hopes of bagging a few pachyderms. Steel and his wife Dinah Sheridan foil the villains, whose leader (Harold Warrender) is shot by the police while Read More

The Angel with the Trumpet

Actors: Eileen Herlie, Basil Sydney, Norman Wooland, Anthony Bushell, Maria Schell

Synopsis: Eileen Herlie, a German girl of Jewish heritage, is in love with Norman Wooland, but at her family's insistence marries Basil Sydney. Wooland's reaction is swift and decisive: he commits suicide. Years later, Hitler comes to power. Once more, Herlie's fate is in the hands of others. This time Read More

Forbidden

Synopsis: In this drama, a medicine seller falls for an ice cream vendor. Unfortunately, his wife won't grant him a divorce. In order to help her change her mind, he slips her some pills in an attempt to give her a coronary. It works and so he buries her. As he does, he finds the extra pills. She had died Read More

Eye Witness

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Leslie Banks, Felix Aylmer, Patricia Wayne, Andrew Cruickshank

Synopsis: The fourth directorial effort of actor Robert Montgomery, Eye Witness was lensed on location in England. Montgomery plays an American attorney whose British pal (Michael Ripper) has been accused of murder. Ripper insists that he spent the evening of the crime with a woman, who has seemingly Read More

Paper Orchid

Synopsis: A heated rivalry between two newspapers provides the basis for this mystery. The trouble begins when a corpse is discovered in the gossip columnist's apartment. It is a puzzling mystery until a rival reporter confesses that he killed the fellow in a drunken rage and hid the body in the columnist's Read More

Idol of Paris

Actors: Sybilla Binder, Campbell Cotts, Andrew Cruickshank, Genine Graham

Synopsis: The Idol of Paris is based on Paiva, Queen of Love, a novel by Alfred Schirokauer. Set in the mid-19th century, the film traces the rags-to-riches story of a girl named Theresa (Beryl Baxter). Sleeping her way to the top, she becomes a highly sought-after Parisian courtesan, one worthy of the Read More

The Mark of Cain

Actors: Sally Gray, Eric Portman, Patrick Holt, Dermot Walsh

Synopsis: In this costume drama, a woman finds herself the prize in a battle between two jealous brothers. Eventually she marries the suave one, but finds that he is most displeased by her inability to behave in a matter he deems appropriate for a woman of her station. The sad wife takes her troubles to the Read More

Auld Lang Syne