A.W. Watkins

Birth : 1895-12-01, Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England, UK

Death : 1970-01-01

Movies

Captain Nemo and the Underwater City
Sound Supervisor
Survivors of a sinking ship are rescued by Captain Nemo and his submarine crew. They are taken to an underwater city where they may spend the rest of their lives.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Recording Supervision
Academy Award-honoree Peter O'Toole stars in this musical classic about a prim English schoolmaster who learns to show his compassion through the help of an outgoing showgirl. O'Toole, who received his fourth Oscar-nomination for this performance, is joined by '60s pop star Petula Clark and fellow Oscar-nominee Michael Redgrave.
Hot Millions
Recording Supervision
A con artist gains employment at an insurance company in order to embezzle money by re-programming their "new" wonder computer.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Sound Supervisor
Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.
Battle Beneath the Earth
Recording Supervision
Government officials discover a horrible plot: the Chinese are tunneling their way to the United States.
The Hill
Recording Supervision
North Africa, World War II. British soldiers on the brink of collapse push beyond endurance to struggle up a brutal incline. It's not a military objective. It's The Hill, a manmade instrument of torture, a tower of sand seared by a white-hot sun. And the troops' tormentors are not the enemy, but their own comrades-at-arms.
Operation Crossbow
Recording Supervision
Allied agents infiltrate the Nazi rocket complex at Peenemunde in order to obtain their secrets and sabotage the plant.The film alternates between German developments of the V-1 missile and V-2 rocket (with a German cast speaking their own language) and discovery by British Intelligence of the weapon.
The Truth About Spring
Sound Recordist
Tommy Tyler, a lazy Caribbean sailor, and his tom-boy daughter, Spring, are out to search for a buried treasure. Tommy brings aboard William Ashton, a young lawyer, to help with the search. Ashton turns out to be handy when they encounter dangerous rivals. Tommy also tries to play match maker between Ashton and Spring – a difficult task indeed.
The Yellow Rolls-Royce
Recording Supervision
One Rolls-Royce belongs to three vastly different owners, starting with Lord Charles, who buys the car for his wife as an anniversary present. The next owner is Paolo Maltese, a mafioso who purchases the car during a trip to Italy and leaves it with his girlfriend while he returns to Chicago. Finally, the car is owned by American widow Gerda, who joins the Yugoslavian resistance against the invading Nazis.
Murder Most Foul
Recording Supervision
A murderer is brought to court and only Miss Marple is unconvinced of his innocence. Once again she begins her own investigation.
Murder at the Gallop
Recording Supervision
Miss Marple and Mr. Stringer are witnesses to the death by heart attack of elderly, rich Mr. Enderby. Yet they have their doubts about what happened. The police don't believe them, thus leading Miss Marple to yet again investigate by herself.
Follow the Boys
Recording Supervision
Four women create mayhem as they follow their Navy partners around the Riviera.
The Inspector
Sound Supervisor
At the end of WW2, a compassionate Dutch policeman helps smuggle a Jewish woman into British Palestine.
A Matter of WHO
Recording Supervision
Health officials from the World Health Organization link a smallpox outbreak in Europe to oil drilling in the Middle East.
Murder She Said
Sound Supervisor
Miss Marple believes she's seen a murder in a passing-by train, yet when the police find no evidence she decides to investigate it on her own.
Libel
Sound Recordist
A California commercial pilot sees a telecast in London of an interview with Sir Mark Lodden at his home. The Canadian is convinced that the baronet is a fraud, and he is actually a look-alike actor named Frank Welney.
Tom Thumb
Recording Supervision
A boy, no bigger than a thumb, manages to outwit two thieves determined to make a fortune from him.
I Accuse!
Recording Supervision
Alfred Dreyfus, a German-Jewish captain serving in the French Army, is falsely accused of treason and made a scapegoat for military espionage in an act of institutional anti-Semitism. Sent to prison, he becomes a cause célèbre for the novelist Émile Zola, who dubs it the "Dreyfus Affair." Eventually, Dreyfus is pardoned when the military cover-up is made public, and he returns to France. But his name is forever tarnished by the accusations of treason.
The Little Hut
Recording Supervision
Sir Philip Ashlow (Stewart Granger), his neglected wife, Lady Ashlow (Ava Gardner) and his best friend Henry Brittingham-Brett (David Niven) are shipwrecked on a desert island. This potential ménage à trois where the two men compete for the lady's attention is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a fourth inhabitant of the island.
Mogambo
Sound Director
Victor Marswell runs a big game trapping company in Kenya. Eloise Kelly is ditched there, and an immediate attraction happens between them. Then Mr. and Mrs. Nordley show up for their gorilla documenting safari. Mrs. Nordley is not infatuated with her husband any more, and takes a liking to Marswell. The two men and two women have some difficulty arranging these emotions to their mutual satisfaction, but eventually succeed.
Ivanhoe
Recording Supervision
Sir Walter Scott's classic story of the chivalrous Ivanhoe who joins with Robin of Locksley in the fight against Prince John and for the return of King Richard the Lionheart.
Calling Bulldog Drummond
Recording Supervision
Bulldog Drummond leaves retirement to help a Scotland Yard Sergeant catch thieves armed with radar.
Under Capricorn
Sound Designer
In 1831, Irishman Charles Adare travels to Australia to start a new life with the help of his cousin who has just been appointed governor. When he arrives he meets powerful landowner and ex-convict, Sam Flusky, who wants to do a business deal with him. Whilst attending a dinner party at Flusky's house, Charles meets Flusky's wife Henrietta who he had known as a child back in Ireland. Henrietta is an alcoholic and seems to be on the verge of madness.
Edward, My Son
Recording Supervision
Following the death of his only son, a ruthless businessman reflects on his life, his unhappy marriage and his questionable parenting skills.
The Gentle Sex
Sound Recordist
During the War seven women from very different backgrounds find themselves together in the Auxiliary Territorial Services. They are soon drilling, driving lorries, and manning ack-ack batteries.
The Day Will Dawn
Sound Supervisor
Sports journalist Colin Metcalfe is picked for the job of foreign correspondent in Norway when Hitler invades Poland. On the way to Langedal his boat is attacked by a German U-Boat, however when he tells the navy about it they do not believe him and, to make matters worse, he is removed from his job. When German forces invade Norway, Metcalfe returns determined to uncover what is going on and stop the Germans in their tracks.
49th Parallel
Sound Supervisor
In the early days of World War II, a German U-boat is sunk in Canada's Hudson Bay. Hoping to evade capture, a small band of German soldiers led by commanding officer Lieutenant Hirth attempts to cross the border into the United States, which has not yet entered the war and is officially neutral. Along the way, the German soldiers encounter brave men such as a French-Canadian fur trapper, Johnnie, a leader of a Hutterite farming community, Peter, an author, Philip and a soldier, Andy Brock.
'Pimpernel' Smith
Recording Supervision
Eccentric Cambridge archaeologist Horatio Smith takes a group of British and American archaeology students to pre-war Nazi Germany to help in his excavations. His research is supported by the Nazis, since he professes to be looking for evidence of the Aryan origins of German civilisation. However, he has a secret agenda: to free inmates of the concentration camps.
A Call for Arms!
Sound
"What a life for a couple of nudes!" Two dancers find a new way of doing their bit for the boys in this frothy wartime propaganda short. Lord Kitchener's famous finger persuades Joan and Ireen, dancers in a 'Non Stop Nudes' revue (not that we see anything that warrants that title), to make a radical career change. Swapping their skimpy costumes for dowdy munitions factory overalls, they join a growing domestic army of women keeping the machines rolling. Belfast-born Brian Desmond Hurst was essentially a feature film director, whose best-remembered work is the Dickens adaptation Scrooge, but whose credits also included the war films Dangerous Moonlight (1941) and The Malta Story (1953). The Call for Arms was one of three propaganda shorts he made between 1940 and 1941, the most memorable being Miss Grant Goes to the Door, in which a pair of village spinsters outwit a Nazi paratrooper.
Miss Knowall
Sound
Short government film on the dangers of gossip in wartime.
The Thief of Bagdad
Sound Director
When Prince Ahmad is blinded and cast out of Bagdad by the nefarious Jaffar, he joins forces with the scrappy thief Abu to win back his royal place, as well as the heart of a beautiful princess.
Busman's Honeymoon
Sound Recordist
When Lord Peter Wimsey marries Harriet Vane, a crime author, they both promise to give up crime for good. As a wedding present, Peter purchases the old house where Harriet grew up, but when they try to move in the previous owner is nowhere to be found, until they start to clean the house and find his body in the cellar...
A Window in London
Recording Supervision
A man witnesses a murder that isn't a murder, only to get involved with the magician and his wife who created the illusion. The insanely jealous magician husband eventually kills his wife, making for complications in life of unhappily married man who is now involved more than he ever thought he would be.
Ten Days in Paris
Recording Supervision
Bob Stevens awakens in a hospital with a gunshot wound to his head, and is told that he has been in Paris for ten days. However, this cannot be true because he insists that he crashed his plane and has no recollection of being anywhere for ten days. Bob decides to follow a note found in his jacket, to the woman who wrote it, "Miss D", and get to the bottom of the whole strange situation.
Contraband
Sound Recordist
When a neutral Danish merchant ship is forced to put into port after trying to evade British wartime contraband control, its captain becomes involved in a beautiful British Naval Intelligent agent's efforts to capture a group of German spies operating from a London cinema.
An Englishman's Home
Sound Recordist
A German spy is dispatched to Britain to search out targets for a planned invasion.
21 Days
Sound Director
After Larry Darrent accidentally kills his lover's blackmailing husband, someone else is arrested for the crime. When he is found guilty, Larry and Wanda have just three weeks together before he must give himself up or let an innocent man go to the gallows.
The Arsenal Stadium Mystery
Recording Supervision
During a charity football match between Arsenal and touring amateur side Trojans, the Trojan's new star player collapses and dies. Inspector Slade of Scotland Yard is called in and declares it was murder. It takes all his ingenuity and another death before the motive is discovered and the killer revealed.
The Spy in Black
Sound Director
A German submarine is sent to the Orkney Isles in 1917 to sink the British fleet.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Sound
A shy British teacher looks back nostalgically at his long career, taking note of the people who touched his life.
This Man in Paris
Sound Recordist
A British reporter and his wife, on vacation in Paris, run into a gang of counterfeiters.
Q Planes
Sound Supervisor
An eccentric Scotland Yard inspector thinks something beamed from a spy ship is dropping planes.
The Citadel
Sound Recordist
Andrew Manson, a young, idealistic, newly qualified Scottish doctor arrives in Wales takes his first job in a mining town, and begins to wonder at the persistent cough many of the miners have. When his attempts to prove its cause are thwarted, he moves to London. His new practice does badly. But when a friend shows him how to make a lucrative practice from rich hypochondriacs, it will take a great shock to show him what the truth of being a doctor really is.
The Challenge
Sound Director
Dramatization of the first climbing of the Matterhorn in 1865.
A Yank at Oxford
Sound
A brash young American aristocrat attending Oxford University gets a chance to prove himself and win the heart of his antagonist's sister.
The Squeaker
Sound
London's jewel thieves are under the thumb of a mysterious fence, who ruthlessly exposes any thief who crosses him. Desperate, Scotland Yard re-hires ex-Inspector Barrabal who, as a known drunkard, is ideally suited to go undercover with a faked criminal record (which may spoil his chances with lovely Carol Stedman).
Knight Without Armour
Sound
British agent working in Russia is forced to remain longer than planned once the revolution begins. After being released from prison in Siberia he poses as a Russian Commissar. Because of his position among the revolutionaries, he is able to rescue a Russian countess from the Bolsheviks.
Action for Slander
Sound Director
A bankrupt officer, accused of cheating at cards, defends his honour with a writ.
Fire Over England
Sound Designer
The film is a historical drama set during the reign of Elizabeth I (Flora Robson), focusing on the English defeat of the Spanish Armada, whence the title. In 1588, relations between Spain and England are at the breaking point. With the support of Queen Elizabeth I, British sea raiders such as Sir Francis Drake regularly capture Spanish merchantmen bringing gold from the New World.
Storm in a Teacup
Sound Director
A local politician in Scotland tries to break the reporter who wrote a negative story about him, and who is also in love with his daughter.
Elephant Boy
Sound Director
Robert Flaherty and Zoltán Korda shared best director honors at the Venice Film Festival for collaborating on this charming translation of Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” story “Toomai of the Elephants.” A harmonious mix of the two filmmakers’ styles, Flaherty's adeptness at ethnographic documentary meeting Korda's taste for grand adventure, ELEPHANT BOY also served as the breakthrough showcase for the thirteen-year-old Sabu, whose beaming performance as a young mahout leading the British on an expedition made him a major international star.
Men Are Not Gods
Recording Supervision
Actor Edmund Davey becomes a star overnight when his wife and co-star teams up with the secretary of a noted stage critic to produce a glowing review of his 'Othello'.
Southern Roses
Sound
A musical comedy of false identities.
Dishonour Bright
Sound Director
A man is cited as the co-respondent in a divorce case, but is cheerfully unashamed when he appears in court.
The Man Who Could Work Miracles
Sound Director
An ordinary man, while vigorously asserting the impossibility of miracles, suddenly discovers that he can perform them.
Things to Come
Recording Supervision
The story of a century: a decades-long second World War leaves plague and anarchy, then a rational state rebuilds civilization and attempts space travel.
The Ghost Goes West
Sound Director
An American businessman's family convinces him to buy a Scottish castle and disassemble it to ship it to America brick by brick, where it will be put it back together. The castle though is not the only part of the deal, with it goes the several-hundred year old ghost who haunts it.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Sound Recordist
18th century English aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney leads a double life. He appears to be merely the effete aristocrat, but in reality is part of an underground effort to free French nobles from Robespierre's Reign of Terror.
The Rise of Catherine the Great
Sound
The woman who will become Catherine the Great marries into the Russian royal family when she weds Grand Duke Peter, the nephew of Empress Elizabeth. Although the couple has moments of contentment, Peter's cruel and erratic behavior causes a rift between him and Catherine. Mere months after Peter succeeds his aunt as the ruler of Russia, a revolt is brewing, and Catherine is poised to ascend to the throne as the country's new empress.
The Private Life of Henry VIII
Sound
Renowned for his excess, King Henry VIII goes through a series of wives during his rule. With Anne Boleyn, his second wife, executed on charges of treason, King Henry weds maid Jane Seymour, but that marriage also ends in tragedy. Not one to be single for long, the king picks German-born Anne of Cleves as his bride, but their union lasts only months before an annulment is granted, and King Henry continues his string of spouses.
These Charming People
Sound
A drama film directed by Louis Mercanton
The Sport of Kings
Sound
Algernon Sprigg, a horse-racing fanatic, is convinced that everyone is a gambler at heart. To prove his theory, he bets a friend that he can convert Amos Purdie, the puritanical head of an anti-betting association, into a punter within a week.
A Warm Corner
Sound Engineer
This early Gainsborough film is truly a lost treasure and easily one of the most daring and risque films ever made. At least half a dozen different tales seem to be going on at once all finally meeting in the end. The story starts in the Lido hotel where our "Pickles" remarks upon the fact that everyone in the register is called Smith. Hes trying to chat up Mimi so shell split up with her boyfriend as her boyfriends uncle has other plans for his nephew - alas what no one knows is that he and Mimi have already been married for a few months on the sly!