Roy Boulting

Roy Alfred Clarence Boulting (21 December 1913, Bray, Berkshire — 5 November 2001, Oxford) was a prolific British filmmaker best known for extensive collaboration with his twin brother, John Edward Boulting (1913—1985). They primarily worked as The Boulting Brothers production-direction team, but Roy was more prolific as a director with over 30 film credits. He was divorced five times and had seven children, all sons, including identical twins from his third wife, Enid Munnik, née Grünewald. Roy is the father of film director Laurence Boulting (from Roy's second wife) and musician Crispian Mills (from his fourth marriage with actress Hayley Mills). He is also the uncle of Jody Boulting and great-uncle of Jordan Stephens. Technically "younger," Roy was born half an hour after John; both twins attended the Reading School in Berkshire, where they established a school film society. Roy moved to Canada as a teenager, working as a shop clerk; circa 1933, he returned home on a cattle freighter ship. Following his debut as an assistant director on Apron Fools comedy quickie in 1936, John and Roy established the Charter Film Productions company and began making short films. Boultings came to prominence with Pastor Hall, their 1940 biopic of anti-nazi German pastor Martin Niemöller directed by Roy and produced by John, based on Ernst Toller's eponymous play. It became a critical and commercial breakthrough for aspiring brothers, nationwide and overseas, where James Roosevelt distributed Pastor Hall via United Artists, screened with Eleanor Roosevelt's prologue denouncing the Nazis. In 1942, the duo solidified their success with Thunder Rock drama starring Michael Redgrave, again directed by Roy and produced by John for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. During the Second World War, Roy Boulting made several military documentaries with the Army Film Unit, including Desert Victory (1941), which earned him the Academy Award. In 1947, Roy and John had one of their biggest box-office hits so far, a crime drama Brighton Rock based on Graham Greene's novel and starring Richard Attenborough. Roy made several Hollywood movies independently from John, starting with the Sailor of the King with Jeffrey Hunter, produced in 1953 for 20th Century Fox. They collaborated on another WWII naval epic for MGM, Seagulls over Sorrento (1954) with Gene Kelly, which was far less prominent. In 1956, Boultings presented the first in a series of acclaimed satirical comedies focused on various British societal issues, Private's Progress dedicated to military dysfunction. With a star cast of Richard Attenborough, Terry-Thomas, and Ian Carmichael, it became the second most successful film at the UK box office. The sequel I'm All Right Jack in 1959 portrayed corrupted trade unions and added Peter Sellers to the cast, topping the British cinema charts that year. In 1966, Roy directed The Family Way, a northern comedy with Paul McCartney's soundtrack produced by John, starring John Mills and his 20-year-old daughter Hayley Mills. The movie became a notable critical and financial success, albeit marred by a minor controversy, as Roy began dating Hayley, a former Disney child star 33 years younger, on the movie set; conservative British press unsurprisingly deemed this couple inappropriate. They married in 1971, and Hayley became Roy's fourth wife. They had one son together, Crispian Mills, and divorced in 1976. His final movie, The Last Word (1979) comedy, was a commercial flop. After John died of cancer in 1985, Roy stopped making films.