Royal Air Force
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Harry Alan Towers (October 19, 1920 - July 31, 2009) was a London born radio and film producer and screenwriter, who produced over a hundred feature films and who continued to write and produce well into his eighties.
He sometimes used the pseudonym Peter Welbeck. The son of a theatrical agent he became a child actor, then became a prolific radio writer while serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II. In 1946 he and his mother Margaret Miller Towers started a company called Towers of London that sold various syndicated radio shows around the world, including The Lives of Harry Lime and The Black Museum with Orson Welles, The Secrets of Scotland Yard with Clive Brook, Horatio Hornblower in which Michael Redgrave played the famous character created by C.S. Forester, and a series based on the Sherlock Holmes stories, featuring Sir John Gielgud as Holmes, Sir Ralph Richardson as Watson, and Orson Welles as Professor Moriarty. Sir John's brother, Val Gielgud, directed several episodes. Many of these were sold to and played by Radio Luxembourg.
Based on his radio success, in the mid 1950s he produced television shows for ITV such as Armchair Theatre, The Golden Fleece, The Boy About the Place, Teddy Gang, The Lady Asks for Help, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Suicide Club, The Little Black Book, The New Adventures of Martin Kane, A Christmas Carol, 24 Hours a Day, Down to the Sea, Gun Rule, and many others.
Towers then went into producing and sometimes writing feature films beginning in 1962. Towers filmed in various countries such as South Africa, Ireland, Hong Kong, Bulgaria and others. A number of his films and scripts were based on the works of Sax Rohmer (Fu Manchu, Sumuru), Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None and the Miss Marple series) and the works of Edgar Wallace.
He collaborated with Jesus Franco during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was married to the actress Maria Rohm who appeared in many of his movies and survives him.
Lobster Magazine in 1983, ran an article citing many reliable sources, alleging Towers' links with (among others) Stephen Ward, Peter Lawford, the Soviet Union, and a vice ring at the United Nations. Hearst Corporation newspapers had already mentioned Towers' name in a 1963 article featuring coded references to a liaison between a pre-White House John F Kennedy and a known prostitute Mariella Novotny.
He died after a short illness in hospital in Canada on 31 July 2009.
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Further reading
The book Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984 (1994) by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs dedicates an entry to him.
Filmography
Director
- The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)
- The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966)
- Five Golden Dragons (1967)
- Rocket to the Moon (1967)
- The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967)
- Ruf der Wildnis (1972)
- Ten Little Niggers (1974)
- Zanna bianca (1974)
- Il richiamo del lupo (1975)
- Lightning - the White Stallion (1986)
- Ten Little Indians (1989)
- Return to the Lost World (1992)
- The Lost World (1992)
Producer
- The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)
- The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966)
- Five Golden Dragons (1967)
- Rocket to the Moon (1967)
- The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967)
- Count Dracula (1970) (?)
- Ruf der Wildnis (1972)
- Treasure Island (1972)
- Ten Little Niggers (1974)
- Lightning - the White Stallion (1986)