Queer Places:
Winchester College, College St, Winchester SO23 9NA, United Kingdom
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
All Saints Churchyard Sutton Courtenay, Vale of White Horse District, Oxfordshire, England
Anthony William Lars Asquith (9
November 1902 – 20 February 1968) was a leading English film
director. A bachelor known as "Puffin", he benefited from his
connections to the British aristocracy, but his homosexuality was
nonetheless extraordinarily obvious and uncensored.
Asquith collaborated successfully with playwright
Terence
Rattigan on ''The Winslow Boy'' (1948)
and ''The Browning Version''
(1951), among other adaptations. His other notable films include
''Pygmalion'' (1938), ''French Without Tears'' (1940), ''The Way to the Stars''
(1945) and a 1952 adaptation of Oscar Wilde's ''The Importance of Being Earnest''.
Born in London, he was the son of H. H. Asquith,
the Prime Minister during the
first two years of the First World War, and Margot Asquith who was responsible for
'Puffin' as his family nickname.[1] He was educated at
Eaton House[2],
Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford.
The film
industry was viewed as disreputable when Asquith was young, and
according to the actor Jonathan Cecil, a family friend, Asquith
entered his profession in order to escape his background.[3] At the end of the
1920s he began his career with the direction of four silent films the
last of which, ''A Cottage on Dartmoor'' established his reputation with
its meticulous and often emotionally moving frame composition. ''Pygmalion'' (1938) was based
on the George Bernard Shaw play featuring Leslie Howard and Wendy
Hiller.
Asquith was a
longtime friend and colleague of Terence Rattigan (they collaborated
on ten films) and producer Anatole de Grunwald. His later films
included Rattigan's ''The Winslow Boy''
(1948) and ''The Browning Version''
(1951), and Oscar Wilde's ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' (1952).
Asquith was an
alcoholic and, according to Jonathan Cecil, a repressed
homosexual. He died in 1968.
Anthony Asquith
by Paul Tanqueray
vintage bromide print, 1932
9 1/2 in. x 7 1/2 in. (241 mm x 191 mm)
Given by Paul Tanqueray, 1974
Photographs Collection
NPG x7245
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