Francis Searle

Francis Searle was one of the more prolific of British directors. He started his career in 1936, making one-reel shorts, and graduated to two-reel documentaries and low-grade "B" pictures. In the 1970s he turned out a string of 30-minute comedies. His original career was as a layout artist in the advertising industry, but in the '30s he was hired at Highbury Studios as a camera assistant. He worked on dozens of the one-reel "Cinemagazine" shorts, then moved over to Gaumont Studios where he made documentaries. His first feature film as a director, A Girl in a Million (1946), was also the only "A" picture he ever did. Searle could turn out films on time and under budget, which endeared him to second-tier producers and guaranteed him plenty of work. He made a few films over his career that garnered somewhat respectable critical reviews, such as The Man in Black (1950), The Rossiter Case (1951) and Cloudburst (1951), but the majority of his rather extensive output was run-of-the-mill "B"--and below--dramas, action pictures and thrillers.