Cy Endfield(1914-1995)
- Director
- Writer
- Producer
The son of a struggling businessman, Cy Endfield--born Cyril Raker
Endfield--worked hard to be admitted to Yale University in 1933. While
completing his education he became enamored with progressive theatre
and appeared in a New Haven production of a minor Russian play in 1934.
He was also profoundly influenced by such friends as writer
Paul Jarrico, who was in Hollywood and who
advocated liberal and leftist views. For several years Endfield worked
as a director and choreographer with avant-garde theatre companies in
and around New York and Montreal. He led his own repertory company of
amateur players in performances of musicals and satirical revue at
resorts in the Catskills.
Endfield had another string to his bow, having established a not
inconsiderable reputation as master of the art of micro magic,
particularly card tricks. In a circuitous way this brought him to
Hollywood in 1940. There have been conflicting stories as to how he
came to the attention of Orson Welles, who
was known to have a long-standing fascination with magic. Endfield
first met Welles in a magic shop, but it was his producer and business
manager Jack Moss, himself a magician,
who hired Endfield for the Mercury Theatre as a "general factotum".
Moss wanted to enhance his own skills in order to confound Welles, who
had engaged him in the first place as a tutor for performing magic on
stage. In return for his expertise, Endfield was permitted to sit in on
the making of
Journey Into Fear (1943) and
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942),
learning valuable lessons in the process. By 1942 he was ready with his
first film, a 15-minute-long documentary about the danger of rampant
capitalism, entitled Inflation (1943).
The witty little piece was a subtle attack on corporate greed and
corruption and featured well-known actor
Edward Arnold as a devil in
businessman garb. An outspoken social critic, who had flirted briefly
with the Young Communist League back in his days at Yale, Endfield was
from the outset on a collision course with the establishment. The U.S.
Chamber of Commerce banned his film as "excessively anti-capitalist"
and kept it from public view for half a century.
Following wartime service, Endfield wrote several scripts for radio and
television. He directed a number of short documentaries for MGM in
1946, and followed this with his motion picture debut,
Gentleman Joe Palooka (1946),
based on a popular comic strip character, shot in eight days at
"Poverty Row" studio Monogram Pictures. He also directed a B-mystery,
The Argyle Secrets (1948),
from his own earlier radio play, followed by one of the better entries
in the "Tarzan" series,
Tarzan's Savage Fury (1952).
Unfortunately, the picture did poorly at the box office. The reason for
this, producer, Sol Lesser suggested later,
was because Lex Barker (as "Tarzan")
had been given too many lines to speak and "nearly talked himself to
death". It was not until Endfield's harrowing indictment of mob rule,
The Sound of Fury (1950), that
he "arrived" as a director of note. That same year he helmed another
independently produced minor masterpiece (on a budget of $500,000), the
stylish and moody film noir
The Underworld Story (1950).
In this scathing attack on unscrupulous journalism, with the lead
character being inherently unsympathetic, Endfield elicited one of the
finest performances of his career from
Dan Duryea.
The ideas and sentiments expressed in these films were ill-timed, in
that they drew the attention of HUAC--The House Un-American Activities
Committee, which was tasked with rooting out Communists and other
"subversives" in the entertainment industry--which particularly
denounced "Sound of Fury" as being un-American. Though never a
card-carrying member of the Communist Party, Endfield found himself
"named" as a sympathizer. Preferring to leave the country rather than
inform on others to the FBI, he settled his affairs and left for a new
career in Britain in December 1951. To avoid problems with distribution
in the US, for the first few years he worked under pseudonyms (such as
"Hugh Raker") and on two occasions allowed a friend of his, director
Charles de la Tour, to act as a 'front'. He used his own name again for
the offbeat action film
Hell Drivers (1957). This
uncompromisingly tough working-class melodrama featured
Stanley Baker, with whom Endfield
formed a production company in the 1960s. Baker eventually starred in
six of Endfield's films, including the routinely scripted drama
Sea Fury (1958) about tugboat sailors
and the rather over-the-top
Sands of the Kalahari (1965).
From the late
1950's, Endfield became also increasingly involved in
turning out television commercials. He also worked in the theatre again, directing Neil Simon's
play "Come Blow Your Horn" at the West End.
Certainly the most visually impressive and successful of Endfield's
films is Zulu (1964), the epic story of the
Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879 between a small contingent of British
troops and a vastly superior force of Zulu tribesmen. The original
story was penned by military writer
John Prebble and Endfield had
written the screenplay as early as 1959. After several abortive
attempts, he was able to parlay his way into the offices of producer
Joseph E. Levine in Rome and was
finally given the go-ahead. Enhanced by
John Barry's rousing score, "Zulu" is
a supremely well-choreographed "battle ballet"--the battle scenes
constitute well over half the screen time), with numerous lateral
tracking shots of the main protagonists, which effectively draw the
audience into the heart of the action. The social element is concerned
with British imperialism and class structure, as two officers from
different backgrounds are forced to pull together in order to stay
alive. As the supercilious upper-crust Lt. Bromhead,
Michael Caine, then relatively
unknown, began on his path to fame with an excellent performance,
alongside Stanley Baker. Historical incongruities apart, "Zulu"
succeeded as pure spectacle, much in the same way as the big-budget
Hollywood epics of the same period.
Endfield lost interest in filmmaking after shooting the anti-war movie
Universal Soldier (1971). This
was in part due to the fact that most of his films had failed to make
much money. After the death of his friend Stanley Baker in 1976,
Endfield devoted himself to his "technical period". He manufactured a
gold-and-silver chess set as commemoration for a famous match between
grand masters Bobby Fischer and
Boris Spassky in 1972 (only 100 were ever
produced). In 1980 he invented the first pocket word processing system,
the "MicroWriter", which had re-chargeable batteries and a 14-character
LCD display.
In 1955 Endfield had co-authored a very successful book, "Cy Endfield's
Entertaining Card Magic" (with Lewis Ganson), which had been
well-received by amateur and professional magicians alike. In fact, one
of his admirers, and occasional collaborators, was the famous micro
magician Dai Vernon. Many of the
sleight-of-hand routines in the book were developed by Endfield himself
and related to the reader in a manner befitting a consummate
storyteller. Endfield's passion for performing magic remained with him
to the end. The multi-talented polymath resided in Britain until his
death in April 1995.
Endfield--worked hard to be admitted to Yale University in 1933. While
completing his education he became enamored with progressive theatre
and appeared in a New Haven production of a minor Russian play in 1934.
He was also profoundly influenced by such friends as writer
Paul Jarrico, who was in Hollywood and who
advocated liberal and leftist views. For several years Endfield worked
as a director and choreographer with avant-garde theatre companies in
and around New York and Montreal. He led his own repertory company of
amateur players in performances of musicals and satirical revue at
resorts in the Catskills.
Endfield had another string to his bow, having established a not
inconsiderable reputation as master of the art of micro magic,
particularly card tricks. In a circuitous way this brought him to
Hollywood in 1940. There have been conflicting stories as to how he
came to the attention of Orson Welles, who
was known to have a long-standing fascination with magic. Endfield
first met Welles in a magic shop, but it was his producer and business
manager Jack Moss, himself a magician,
who hired Endfield for the Mercury Theatre as a "general factotum".
Moss wanted to enhance his own skills in order to confound Welles, who
had engaged him in the first place as a tutor for performing magic on
stage. In return for his expertise, Endfield was permitted to sit in on
the making of
Journey Into Fear (1943) and
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942),
learning valuable lessons in the process. By 1942 he was ready with his
first film, a 15-minute-long documentary about the danger of rampant
capitalism, entitled Inflation (1943).
The witty little piece was a subtle attack on corporate greed and
corruption and featured well-known actor
Edward Arnold as a devil in
businessman garb. An outspoken social critic, who had flirted briefly
with the Young Communist League back in his days at Yale, Endfield was
from the outset on a collision course with the establishment. The U.S.
Chamber of Commerce banned his film as "excessively anti-capitalist"
and kept it from public view for half a century.
Following wartime service, Endfield wrote several scripts for radio and
television. He directed a number of short documentaries for MGM in
1946, and followed this with his motion picture debut,
Gentleman Joe Palooka (1946),
based on a popular comic strip character, shot in eight days at
"Poverty Row" studio Monogram Pictures. He also directed a B-mystery,
The Argyle Secrets (1948),
from his own earlier radio play, followed by one of the better entries
in the "Tarzan" series,
Tarzan's Savage Fury (1952).
Unfortunately, the picture did poorly at the box office. The reason for
this, producer, Sol Lesser suggested later,
was because Lex Barker (as "Tarzan")
had been given too many lines to speak and "nearly talked himself to
death". It was not until Endfield's harrowing indictment of mob rule,
The Sound of Fury (1950), that
he "arrived" as a director of note. That same year he helmed another
independently produced minor masterpiece (on a budget of $500,000), the
stylish and moody film noir
The Underworld Story (1950).
In this scathing attack on unscrupulous journalism, with the lead
character being inherently unsympathetic, Endfield elicited one of the
finest performances of his career from
Dan Duryea.
The ideas and sentiments expressed in these films were ill-timed, in
that they drew the attention of HUAC--The House Un-American Activities
Committee, which was tasked with rooting out Communists and other
"subversives" in the entertainment industry--which particularly
denounced "Sound of Fury" as being un-American. Though never a
card-carrying member of the Communist Party, Endfield found himself
"named" as a sympathizer. Preferring to leave the country rather than
inform on others to the FBI, he settled his affairs and left for a new
career in Britain in December 1951. To avoid problems with distribution
in the US, for the first few years he worked under pseudonyms (such as
"Hugh Raker") and on two occasions allowed a friend of his, director
Charles de la Tour, to act as a 'front'. He used his own name again for
the offbeat action film
Hell Drivers (1957). This
uncompromisingly tough working-class melodrama featured
Stanley Baker, with whom Endfield
formed a production company in the 1960s. Baker eventually starred in
six of Endfield's films, including the routinely scripted drama
Sea Fury (1958) about tugboat sailors
and the rather over-the-top
Sands of the Kalahari (1965).
From the late
1950's, Endfield became also increasingly involved in
turning out television commercials. He also worked in the theatre again, directing Neil Simon's
play "Come Blow Your Horn" at the West End.
Certainly the most visually impressive and successful of Endfield's
films is Zulu (1964), the epic story of the
Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879 between a small contingent of British
troops and a vastly superior force of Zulu tribesmen. The original
story was penned by military writer
John Prebble and Endfield had
written the screenplay as early as 1959. After several abortive
attempts, he was able to parlay his way into the offices of producer
Joseph E. Levine in Rome and was
finally given the go-ahead. Enhanced by
John Barry's rousing score, "Zulu" is
a supremely well-choreographed "battle ballet"--the battle scenes
constitute well over half the screen time), with numerous lateral
tracking shots of the main protagonists, which effectively draw the
audience into the heart of the action. The social element is concerned
with British imperialism and class structure, as two officers from
different backgrounds are forced to pull together in order to stay
alive. As the supercilious upper-crust Lt. Bromhead,
Michael Caine, then relatively
unknown, began on his path to fame with an excellent performance,
alongside Stanley Baker. Historical incongruities apart, "Zulu"
succeeded as pure spectacle, much in the same way as the big-budget
Hollywood epics of the same period.
Endfield lost interest in filmmaking after shooting the anti-war movie
Universal Soldier (1971). This
was in part due to the fact that most of his films had failed to make
much money. After the death of his friend Stanley Baker in 1976,
Endfield devoted himself to his "technical period". He manufactured a
gold-and-silver chess set as commemoration for a famous match between
grand masters Bobby Fischer and
Boris Spassky in 1972 (only 100 were ever
produced). In 1980 he invented the first pocket word processing system,
the "MicroWriter", which had re-chargeable batteries and a 14-character
LCD display.
In 1955 Endfield had co-authored a very successful book, "Cy Endfield's
Entertaining Card Magic" (with Lewis Ganson), which had been
well-received by amateur and professional magicians alike. In fact, one
of his admirers, and occasional collaborators, was the famous micro
magician Dai Vernon. Many of the
sleight-of-hand routines in the book were developed by Endfield himself
and related to the reader in a manner befitting a consummate
storyteller. Endfield's passion for performing magic remained with him
to the end. The multi-talented polymath resided in Britain until his
death in April 1995.