John Bryan

John Bryan

Birth : 1911-08-12, London, England, UK

Death : 1969-06-10

History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia John Bryan (12 August 1911 – 10 June 1969) was an art director and film producer. John Bryan was born in London, England. He won the Oscar for Best Art Direction for the film Great Expectations in 1946. He was nominated twice more, for Caesar and Cleopatra in 1947 and for Becket in 1964. Bryan also won a BAFTA for Becket. In 1959, he was a member of the jury at the 9th Berlin International Film Festival.

Profile

John Bryan

Movies

Great Catherine
Production Design
When British Capt. Charles Edstaston arrives at the court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, Russia, he is stunned by the palace's disorderly condition. The severely intoxicated Prince Potemkin concludes that the handsome Edstaston would be a suitable lover for Catherine, and he coerces the bewildered visitor into her bedchamber. Edstaston manages to escape, but he is repeatedly recaptured and delivered to the mischievous Catherine.
After the Fox
Producer
A criminal mastermind sets up a phony film production as part of a plan to smuggle stolen gold.
Becket
Production Design
King Henry II of England has trouble with the Church. When the Archbishop of Canterbury dies, he has a brilliant idea. Rather than appoint another pious cleric loyal to Rome and the Church, he will appoint his old drinking and wenching buddy, Thomas Becket, technically a deacon of the church, to the post. Unfortunately, Becket takes the job seriously and provides abler opposition to Henry.
The Girl on the Boat
Producer
Norman Wisdom does to P.G. Wodehouse in Girl on the Boat what Jerry Lewis did to Gore Vidal in Visit to a Small Planet. The zany Wisdom, put in charge of his aunt's cottage during an English summer in the roaring twenties, decides to invite several of his friends to his posh new digs. Among the invitees is the title character, played by the delightful comedienne Millicent Martin. All sorts of slapstick chaos ensues, but Wisdom manages to save the day before things get hopelessly out of hand. Like Jerry Lewis, Norman Wisdom is an acquired taste, but he's worth sampling at least once. ...The Girl on the Boat
The Horse's Mouth
Producer
Gulley Jimson is a boorish aging artist recently released from prison. A swindler in search of his next art project, he hunkers down in the penthouse of would-be patrons the Beeders while they go on an extended vacation; he paints a mural on their wall, pawns their valuables and, along with the sculptor Abel, inadvertently smashes a large hole in their floor. Jimson's next project is an even larger wall in an abandoned church.
Windom's Way
Producer
A doctor's sophisticated wife joins him at his remote Asian practice to try and patch up their marriage. Increasingly violent friction between local rubber plantation workers and the authorities force both parties to make decisions.
The Secret Place
Producer
British Melodrama and crime thriller that follows a group of jewel robbers after a major heist. The film makes extensive use of bombed out areas of London.
The Spanish Gardener
Producer
British diplomat Harrington Brande takes up his new lowly post in Spain accompanied by his son Nicholas. That his wife had left him seems to have affected his career. Nicholas sees it all as something of an adventure and soon becomes friends with the new gardener, Jose. As Nicholas begins to spend more time with Jose, his father takes offense and is concerned at the boy's loss of affection for him. It leads him to bar Nicholas from even speaking to the gardener. And soon tensions mount.
The Spanish Gardener
Writer
British diplomat Harrington Brande takes up his new lowly post in Spain accompanied by his son Nicholas. That his wife had left him seems to have affected his career. Nicholas sees it all as something of an adventure and soon becomes friends with the new gardener, Jose. As Nicholas begins to spend more time with Jose, his father takes offense and is concerned at the boy's loss of affection for him. It leads him to bar Nicholas from even speaking to the gardener. And soon tensions mount.
The Purple Plain
Producer
A RAF airfield in Burma in 1945, during World War II. Canadian bomber pilot Bill Forrester is a bitter man who lives haunted by a tragic past. He has became a reckless warrior, and is feared by his comrades, who consider him a madman. Dr. Harris, the squadron physician, is determined to help him heal his tormented soul.
The Million Pound Note
Producer
An impoverished American sailor is fortunate enough to be passing the house of two rich gentlemen who have conceived the crazy idea of distributing a note worth one million pounds. The sailor finds that whenever he tries to use the note to buy something, people treat him like a king and let him have whatever he likes for free. Ultimately, the money proves to be more troublesome than it is worth when it almost costs him his dignity and the woman he loves.
The Magic Box
Production Design
Now old, ill, poor, and largely forgotten, William Freise-Greene was once very different. As young and handsome William Green he changed his name to include his first wife's so that it sounded more impressive for the photographic portrait work he was so good at. But he was also an inventor and his search for a way to project moving pictures became an obsession that ultimately changed the life of all those he loved.
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Production Design
Pandora Reynolds is a woman who has never fallen in love – but one who men kill and die for. When she meets dashing and mysterious ship's captain Hendrik van der Zee, he pushes her to commit the ultimate act of love.
Madeleine
Set Decoration
The middle-class family of a young woman cannot understand why she delays in marrying a respectable young man. They know nothing about her long-standing affair with a Frenchman.
Golden Salamander
Production Design
An archaeologist stumbles into the territory of an evil crime syndicate and struggles to set things right.
The Passionate Friends
Set Designer
A woman is torn between the love of her life, who is married to someone else, and her older husband.
Blanche Fury
Production Design
Penniless governess Blanche Fullerton takes a job at the estate of her rich relations, the Fury family. To better her position in life, Blanche marries her dull cousin, Laurence Fury, with whom she has a daughter. But before long, boredom sets in, and Blanche begins a tempestuous romance with stableman Philip Thorn. Together, they hatch a murderous plan to gain control of the estate.
Take My Life
Production Design
When her husband is wrongly accused of murder, an opera singer sets out to find the real culprit.
Great Expectations
Production Design
In this Dickens adaptation, orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.
Caravan
Art Direction
During the last half of the 19th century writer Richard Darrell saves Don Carlos from two robbers, and is entrusted by Don Carlos to take a valuable necklace to Spain. Richard leaves his fiancé, Oriana, and starts the trip. He meets Wycroft, a henchman for Sir Francis Castteldow, an aristocrat out to steal Oriana from Richard. The latter is assaulted, robbed and nearly killed and, as a result, loses his memory. He marries a gypsy girl, Rosal, while Oriana, thinking him dead marries the dastardly Sir Francis. Everybody will meet again. Complications will arise.
Caesar and Cleopatra
Art Direction
The aging Caesar finds himself intrigued by the young Egyptian queen. Adapted by George Bernard Shaw from his own play.
The Wicked Lady
Art Direction
A married woman finds new thrills as a masked robber on the highways.
Love Story
Art Direction
After discovering that she has only a short time left to live, concert pianist Lissa travels to Cornwall for the final fling of her life. While there, she falls in love with young mineral prospector Kit, a man whose dark secret prevents him from fighting in the War. Unbeknownst to Lissa, however, Kit's affections are also much in demand from a rival of hers.
Two Thousand Women
Art Direction
During the Second World War, three downed English airmen hide out with women's internment camp in France.
Time Flies
Art Direction
The Professor (Felix Aylmer) is showing Susie (Evelyn Dall) around his time machine when it accidently takes off with Tommy (Tommy Handley) and Bill (George Moon) also on board. They are transported to Elizabethan England where they come across Walter Raleigh, William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth 1, Captain John Smith and Pocohontas. Will our time travellers return?
Fanny by Gaslight
Art Direction
Returning to 1870's London after finishing at boarding school, Fanny winesses the death of her father in a fight with Lord Manderstoke. She then finds that her family has for many years been running a bordello next door to their home. When her mother dies shortly after, she next discovers that her real father is in fact a well-respected politician. Meeting him and then falling in love with his young advisor Harry Somerford leads to a life of ups and downs and conflict between the classes. Periodically the scoundrel of a Lord crosses her path, always to tragic effect.
The Adventures of Tartu
Art Direction
British Captain Terence Stevenson (Robert Donat) accepts an assignment even more dangerous than his everyday job of defusing unexploded bombs. Fluent in Romanian and German and having studied chemical engineering, he is parachuted into Romania to assume the identity of Captain Jan Tartu, a member of the fascist Iron Guard. He makes his way to Czechoslovakia to steal the formula of a new Nazi poison gas and sabotage the factory where it is being manufactured.
Dear Octopus
Art Direction
Three generations of a family gather together to celebrate a golden wedding anniversary, while the family secretary has the unenviable task of smoothing out all the deep-set hostilities and jealousies.
Millions Like Us
Art Direction
Millions Like Us is a 1943 British propaganda film, showing life in a wartime aircraft factory in documentary detail. It stars Patricia Roc, Eric Portman, Megs Jenkins, and Anne Crawford, was written by Sidney Gilliat, and directed by Gilliat and Frank Launder. It was filmed at Gainsborough Studios. When Celia Crowson (Roc) is called up for war service, she hopes for a glamorous job in one of the services, but as a single girl she is directed into a factory making aircraft parts. Here she meets other girls from all different walks of life, and begins a relationship with a young airman.
On the Night of the Fire
Art Direction
A barber gives in to temptation and steals some money, leading to blackmail and murder.
Inspector Hornleigh
Art Direction
When a landlady finds one of her tenants murdered, Inspector Hornleigh is sent to investigate. Inspector Hornleigh's assistant, Sergeant Bingham, soon finds an attaché case that had been stolen from the murdered man. When Hornleigh examines the case, inside it he finds a bag that was used to carry important government documents. The documents have been taken, and to make things even more confusing, a duplicate of the stolen bag soon turns up.
Pygmalion
Art Direction
When linguistics professor Henry Higgins boasts that he can pass off Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle as a princess with only six months' training, Colonel George Pickering takes him up on the bet. Eliza moves into Higgins's home and begins her rigorous training after the professor comes to a financial agreement with her dustman father, Alfred. But the plucky young woman is not the only one undergoing a transformation.
Stolen Life
Art Direction
Adapted from the best-selling novel by K. J. Benes, A Stolen Life serves as a tour de force for German actress Elizabeth Bergner, whose husband Paul Czinner directed the film. Bergner stars as identical twins Sylvina and Martina, whose mild sibling rivalry intensifies when one of the girls tricks the other's sweetheart Alan McKenzie (Michael Redgrave) into proposing to the wrong twin.
The Captain's Table
Art Direction
A passenger is murdered on board an ocean going liner and suspicion falls all too neatly upon her husband.
Sunshine Ahead
Art Direction
'Producer stages outside broadcast despite jealous critic.' (British Film Catalogue)
Colonel Blood
Art Direction
'1670. Irish patriot caught stealing Crown Jewels talks his way to pardon.' (British Film Catalogue)