British filmmaker Roy Ward Baker died 5 October 2010. Born Roy Horace Baker in London, England, on 19 December 1916, he may be best remembered for directing A Night to Remember (1958), the black-and-white rendering of the sinking of the Titanic (based on Walter Lord’s book).
He started working in film in 1934, with a job at Gainsborough Pictures, where he worked his way up from gofer to assistant director on Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938).
The New York Times calls his work “technically deft and sylistically without affect.” He “trained in the classic, collaborative style of studio filmmaking, working for studios in England and the United States. His career included serving as an assistant director to Alfred Hitchcock on The Lady Vanishes in 1938; directing Marilyn Monroe in an early starring role, as an emotionally unstable baby sitter in a noir drama, Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), with Richard Widmark and Anne Bancroft; and later making kitschy horror flicks and directing episodes of television shows like The Avengers and The Saint.” He was credited as Roy Baker until the 1960s, when he added the “Ward” as he started making horror films.
Genre films and television programs he directed include: Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (1984), The Monster Club (1980), The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (1974), —And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973), The Vault of Horror (1973), Asylum (1972), Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971), Scars of Dracula (1970), The Vampire Lovers (1970), Moon Zero Two (1969), Journey to the Unknown (1969), two episodes of The Champions (1969), two episodes of My Partner the Ghost (1969), Journey to Midnight (1968), Five Million Years to Earth (1967), and I’ll Never Forget You (1951). He also appeared on-screen in The Vampire Interviews (1994), and was a runner on 1934’s Chu Chin Chow.