Saturday, August 16, 2014

Book review - "Mr Towers of London" by Harry Alan Towers

The memoirs of Harry Allan Towers, who has a very long list of credits as a producer and writer, many of whom are not good - but the occasional classy pic snuck through (eg The Face of Fu Manchu). He is one of those filmmakers who have an aura of improbability about them - he's forever flying off to some exotic local to do a deal, make a movie; he also got involved in some weird case where he was charged by US police of living off his girlfriend's earnings as a prostitute. Towers writes about this in his book - he says he had no idea about his girlfriend's activities but then goes on to talk about prostitutes and madams with great familiarity in other chapters so maybe there was something to it.

Towers is one of those people who while reading their book you keep going "really? Is that the way it really happened?" Not to say he isn't telling the truth but he just feels like a slippery customer - I hope someone does a well researched biography on him one day. His films may have been mostly garbage but it was a colourful career and he worked with people such as Don Sharp and Orson Welles; he also produced an impressive number of radio shows, including the highly enjoyable Third Man spin off.

It's an entertaining, if odd, read - Towers skips over bits, launches into jokes, pitches current projects (including turning Detroit into a movie making mecca). Not bad.

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