Kay Mander in "The Herald" 16 July 2010
Boxed-set tribute to groundbreaking female film-maker
Published on 16 Jul 2010 - Kay Mander - Exclusive: Brian Pendreigh
In the 1960s Kay Mander led a glamorous life, rubbing shoulders with Sean Connery, David Niven, Kirk Douglas and many other Hollywood stars.
She worked as a "continuity girl" on the second James Bond film From Russia With Love and other big-budget movies.
But it is her earlier work as a documentary director in the 1940s that is now attracting attention among critics and film historians.
Mander, in her nineties and living in a nursing home in Kirkcudbrightshire, is the subject of a new DVD boxed-set that should cement her position as one of British cinema’s most important early female film-makers.
"She developed new techniques in film-making and she led the way on social issues," said Russell Cowe, who runs Panamint Cinema, a small Scottish video company that specialises in old documentaries.
Mander’s films were made with passion - despite warnings she should remain emotionally detached from her subjects.
She also pioneered the concept of drama-documentary on a film about a pilot health service scheme in the Highlands and Islands.
Not content with filming doctors and nurses on their rounds, she wrote her own storyline and recruited actors to play it out.
Mander was born in Hull, Yorkshire, in 1915, but grew up partly in France and Germany.
She was hired to serve as a translator on the film Conquest Of The Air (1936), with a young Laurence Olivier, because the film had a German cameraman.
She gained further experience as a production secretary, publicist and continuity girl.
During the Second World War, Mander got her chance to direct, beginning with a seven-minute film instructing apprentices on how to file metal.
The new boxed-set One Continuous Take takes its name from a documentary about her, which is included in the set.
In the documentary she is amused to hear herself referred to as a "virago".
She clearly set high standards. Making a film about malaria, she let a mosquito bite her and used "microphotography" to film it filling up with her blood.
It was her reputation for being prepared to tackle anything that brought her the commission for Highland Doctor, a film about a medical emergency shot in the Western Isles.
It came out in 1943 as momentum was gathering behind the idea of a National Health Service.
Homes For The People (1947) is highly regarded for the way in which ordinary, working-class women speak direct to camera.
She directed one modest feature film, The Kid From Canada (1957), about a Canadian boy in Scotland.
Her left-wing views and membership of the Communist Party apparently resulted in her being placed on the infamous Hollywood blacklist, but she found her post-war career thwarted more by prejudice against women in senior positions than by politics, and she returned to work as a continuity girl.
Interviewed several years ago at her home in Castle Douglas, she revealed she had an affair with Kirk Douglas when they worked together on the war film "The Heroes Of Telemark" (1965).
"He had this awful reputation," she said. "He flew his ladies in first-class, kept them there for a long weekend, and sent them back tourist."
Her greatest regret was that she did not get the chance to fully develop her career as a writer and director.
Cowe’s interest in Mander began when he released one of her films as part of a series on Britain in the 1940s.
He said the retrospective would help restore the recognition Mander deserved.
"One Continuous Take: The Kay Mander Film Book" is released by Panamint on Monday, priced £24.99.
Kay Mander films
Director:
- How To File (1941): Instructional short for metalwork apprentices.
- Highland Doctor (1943): Dramatisation of a medical emergency.
- Homes For The People (1945): Exposé on housing for Labour’s 1945 election campaign.
- A Plan To Work On (1948): A town planner takes his assistant round Dunfermline.
- Mardi And The Monkey (1950): Children’s Film Foundation (CFF) short filmed on Java.
- The Kid From Canada (1957): Mander’s only feature - for CFF.
Continuity girl:
- From Russia With Love (1963)
- The Heroes Of Telemark (1965)
- Tommy (1975)
- The Professionals TV series (1977-78)
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