Leslie Halliwell
Robert James Leslie Halliwell (23 February 1929 – 21 January 1989) was a British film critic, encyclopaedist and television rights buyer for ITV, the British commercial network, and Channel 4. Halliwell's "Filmgoer's Companion" (1965) is a single volume film-related encyclopaedia featuring biographies (with credits) and technical terms. "Halliwell's Film Guide" (1977) is dedicated to individual films. For some years, Halliwell's books were the most accessible source for movie information, and his name became synonymous with film knowledge and research. Anthony Quinton wrote in the "Times Literary Supplement" in 1977: Immersed in the enjoyment of  these fine books, one should look up for a moment to admire the quite astonishing combination of industry and authority in one man which has brought them into existence. In his capacity as chief buyer for the ITV network, Halliwell was responsible for bringing to British television screens some of the highest rated shows of the 1970s and 1980s, including "The Six Million Dollar Man", "Charlie's Angels", "The Incredible Hulk", and "The A-Team", as well as the James Bond film series, "Jaws", and "Star Wars". Halliwell's promotion of the cinema through his books and seasons of 'golden  oldies' on Channel 4 won him awards from the London Film Critics' Circle, the British Film Institute and a posthumous BAFTA. Early life. Born in Bolton, Lancashire in 1929, Halliwell was captivated by films from an early age. He grew up during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the period when the big studios churned out movies and wide-eyed cinemagoers packed the dream palaces. Halliwell and his mother Lily went almost nightly to the cinema, which offered them an escape from the grim reality of life in a soot-covered mill town. In 1939, Halliwell won a scholarship to Bolton  School and after national service he studied English Literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. As a young man he was a cheerful, often ebullient individual who ran film societies, performed in amateur theatre productions and inspired those around him with his seemingly boundless enthusiasm for the cinema. The Rex Cinema, Cambridge. After graduating with a 2:1 honours degree, Halliwell worked briefly for "Picturegoer" magazine in London before returning to Cambridge to manage the Rex Cinema from 1952 to 1956. Under his management it became extremely popular with the Cambridge undergraduate community, showing classic and vintage films such as "The  Blue Angel", "Citizen Kane" and "Destry Rides Again". The "Cambridge Evening News" reported, 'students felt their periods at Cambridge were incomplete without the weekly visit to the Rex.' In 1955, after the British Censor had banned the Marlon Brando film "The Wild One", Halliwell arranged for Cambridge magistrates to assess the picture. They subsequently granted him a special licence and the Rex became the only cinema in Britain to show the film. Television career. Halliwell joined the Rank Organisation in 1956 on a three-year trainee course, after which he became a film publicist for the company. In 1958, he  joined Southern Television and was seconded to Granada Television a year later, where he remained for the next thirty years, at their offices in London's Golden Square. He married Ruth Porter in 1959 and they had one son. Initially appointed as Cecil Bernstein's assistant, Halliwell gained the role of Film Adviser to Granada's show "Cinema", which was the most popular arts programme on television during the 1960s. He was given responsibility for buying TV shows and in 1968 became the chief film buyer for the ITV network, a role he maintained throughout the 1970s and most of  the 1980s. Travelling to Hollywood twice a year to view the latest TV pilots and film offerings and to trade fairs in Cannes and Monte Carlo, Halliwell became a major player in the television industry. In 1982, at the invitation of Jeremy Isaacs, he became buyer and scheduler of US films for Channel 4. In keeping with the channel's intention to appeal to specialist audiences, Halliwell focused primarily on the 1930s and '40s. Over the next few years, the channel showed hundreds of vintage movies in seasons, with many titles introduced by film-makers such as Samuel Goldwyn Jnr , Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. Isaacs wrote that Halliwell had made an 'unsurpassed contribution' to the channel's success. The British Film Institute gave Halliwell an award in 1985 'for the selection and acquisition of films with a view to creative scheduling.' Author and film historian Jeffrey Richards wrote: For lovers of the golden age of the cinema like myself, Channel 4 became a source of unalloyed delight as time and again one encountered films one had only ever read about and never expected to see. In addition, Halliwell presented two television series celebrating the British wartime documentary movement: "Home  Front", for Granada in 1982 and "The British at War" for Channel 4 two years later. Both featured Ministry of Information productions such as "Listen to Britain", "Desert Victory" and "The True Glory". Encyclopaedias. Section::::"The Filmgoer's Companion". First published in 1965, "The Filmgoer's Companion" sold ten thousand copies on its first run, including four thousand in the United States. Many critics were appreciative of his work but others were less enthusiastic, detecting small slivers of subjectivity among the facts, as well as a bias towards older films. Halliwell edited nine editions of the "Companion". Gene Siskel wrote in  1975: There is a well-developed consensus among film scribes that Leslie Halliwell's "The Filmgoer's Companion" is the single most valuable reference book on film." Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote in 1979, "The referrer needs an iron will to look up only one fact." and TV presenter Denis Norden said ""The Filmgoer's Companion" is to films what "Wisden" is to cricket." Now known as "Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies". Section::::"Halliwell's Film Guide". First published in 1977, this book originally incorporated capsule information on some 8,000 English-speaking titles. By the  time of Halliwell's death in 1989, the "Film Guide" had doubled in size. He acknowledged his predecessors in the introduction to the first edition, I salute especially the work of Leonard Maltin, James Robert Parish, Denis Gifford, Douglas Eames and the unsung anonymous heroes who compiled the reviews of the BFI's "Monthly Film Bulletin" during the fifties and sixties. In addition to receiving much praise for his work, Halliwell came under fire from journalists and critics for his laconic comments and dismissive stance on later films. His devotion to the Golden Age of Hollywood left him increasingly out  of touch with modern attitudes. "Observer" film critic Philip French wrote that Halliwell "isn't a scholar, critic or cineaste, but rather a movie buff, a man who knows the credits of everything but the value of very little". Jim Emerson of the "Orange County Register" called Halliwell "something of a grumpy old English fuddy-duddy [who] rarely has anything good to say about any movie made after 1960". Section::::"Halliwell's Television Companion". Halliwell's third encyclopaedic work began life as the "Teleguide" in 1979. Disappointed with the first edition, Halliwell joined with "Sunday Telegraph" critic Philip Purser to produce  Halliwell's Television Companion, which ran for a further two editions in 1982 and 1986. The third edition, published by Grafton in 1986, included over 12,000 entries. Retirement and death. Halliwell retired from the television industry in 1986 but continued to edit his film guides. He wrote a regular TV article for the "Daily Mail" in 1987 and published a number of historical and critical works about the cinema; he also published three volumes of ghost stories inspired by M. R. James. Halliwell died of esophageal cancer at the Princess Alice Hospice in Esher, Surrey, a month before his 60th  birthday. Halliwell's favourite films. This list of Leslie Halliwell's favourite films was originally published in the fifth edition of the "Film Guide". Biography. A biography, "Halliwell's Horizon", written by Michael Binder, was published in 2011.