Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Cy Endfield
Cyril Raker Endfield (November 10, 1914 – April 16, 1995) was an American film director, who at times also worked as a writer, theatre director, and inventor. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he worked in the New York theatre in the late 1930s before moving to Hollywood in 1940.
After World War II, his film career was interrupted by the Hollywood blacklist. He resettled in London at the end of 1951. He is particularly known for The Sound of Fury (1950), Hell Drivers (1957) and Zulu (1964).
Cyril Endfield was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on November 10, 1914, the first of three children. His parents were first generation Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe; his father ran a fur business. A bright boy, Cyril developed an early interest both in chess and sleight-of-hand card magic, publishing a routine in a magicians’ magazine at the age of 16. In 1932 he won a scholarship to Yale, but delayed his arrival by a year because of the collapse of his father's business during the Depression. While in Scranton, he first met Israel Shapiro (Paul Jarrico), a politically conscious screenwriter-to-be who would become a life-long friend.[i]
In his two years at Yale, Endfield's attitude to his studies was ‘rather lackadaisical’ (his own description in a letter to Jarrico), although he read widely, and developed an extra-curricular interest in new science fiction.[ii] Much of his time in New Haven was devoted to the intertwined worlds of theatre and radical politics: he joined the local Unity Theatre and was an active member of the Young Communist League. Rather than graduate, Endfield left Yale in early 1936, moving to New York and taking classes at the leftist New Theatre League, supporting himself by taking acting jobs and contributing magic acts to new theatre movement revues.
At age 23 he joined the League as a teacher, before spending a year directing an amateur theatre group in Montreal, where he met writers and playwrights including – briefly – Clifford Odets. It was also here that he married actress Fanny Shurack (stage name Osborne).
In 1940, with a baby due, the couple moved to Hollywood, and Endfield looked for work in the studios. His first assignment, a short-lived engagement with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre unit at RKO, followed a random meeting with Welles at a Los Angeles magic shop. During this period, Endfield was one of the few people to view the original, uncut version of Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Eventually he secured a position with the short subject department at MGM. But his first film, Inflation (1943), a well-regarded propaganda short approved by the Office of War Information, was quickly withdrawn from distribution following criticism from the Chamber of Commerce.[iii] The United States' entry into World War II had made studios very sensitive to criticism.
Endfield remained at MGM until he was called up to a year of military service with the U.S. Army at Fort Crowder in Missouri. After the war he returned to the studio, before writing and directing several low budget Joe Palooka features (based on the comic strip) for Monogram. What he later called his first "auteur effort', The Argyle Secrets (1948), was made after nine days of shooting, from his own short1 radio play for the CBS Suspense series. Endfield's career revived in 1950, with the release of two well-received crime features, The Underworld Story and The Sound of Fury (Try and Get Me!).
In 1951 Endfield found his career derailed as a result of hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Screenwriter Martin Berkeley named him in September 1951 as known to have been involved with left wing political associations (at the New Theatre League in New York in the late 1930s, and in Hollywood in 1943). Endfield was called to testify and, while he was reluctant to plead the Fifth Amendment before the Committee, he found the option of ‘naming names’, so as to clear himself for further Hollywood film work, to be unacceptable. He made a hurried settlement with his wife, from whom he had separated, and sailed for England on the Queen Mary in December 1951. He slowly re-established his filmmaking career in London.
Hub AI
Cy Endfield AI simulator
(@Cy Endfield_simulator)
Cy Endfield
Cyril Raker Endfield (November 10, 1914 – April 16, 1995) was an American film director, who at times also worked as a writer, theatre director, and inventor. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he worked in the New York theatre in the late 1930s before moving to Hollywood in 1940.
After World War II, his film career was interrupted by the Hollywood blacklist. He resettled in London at the end of 1951. He is particularly known for The Sound of Fury (1950), Hell Drivers (1957) and Zulu (1964).
Cyril Endfield was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on November 10, 1914, the first of three children. His parents were first generation Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe; his father ran a fur business. A bright boy, Cyril developed an early interest both in chess and sleight-of-hand card magic, publishing a routine in a magicians’ magazine at the age of 16. In 1932 he won a scholarship to Yale, but delayed his arrival by a year because of the collapse of his father's business during the Depression. While in Scranton, he first met Israel Shapiro (Paul Jarrico), a politically conscious screenwriter-to-be who would become a life-long friend.[i]
In his two years at Yale, Endfield's attitude to his studies was ‘rather lackadaisical’ (his own description in a letter to Jarrico), although he read widely, and developed an extra-curricular interest in new science fiction.[ii] Much of his time in New Haven was devoted to the intertwined worlds of theatre and radical politics: he joined the local Unity Theatre and was an active member of the Young Communist League. Rather than graduate, Endfield left Yale in early 1936, moving to New York and taking classes at the leftist New Theatre League, supporting himself by taking acting jobs and contributing magic acts to new theatre movement revues.
At age 23 he joined the League as a teacher, before spending a year directing an amateur theatre group in Montreal, where he met writers and playwrights including – briefly – Clifford Odets. It was also here that he married actress Fanny Shurack (stage name Osborne).
In 1940, with a baby due, the couple moved to Hollywood, and Endfield looked for work in the studios. His first assignment, a short-lived engagement with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre unit at RKO, followed a random meeting with Welles at a Los Angeles magic shop. During this period, Endfield was one of the few people to view the original, uncut version of Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Eventually he secured a position with the short subject department at MGM. But his first film, Inflation (1943), a well-regarded propaganda short approved by the Office of War Information, was quickly withdrawn from distribution following criticism from the Chamber of Commerce.[iii] The United States' entry into World War II had made studios very sensitive to criticism.
Endfield remained at MGM until he was called up to a year of military service with the U.S. Army at Fort Crowder in Missouri. After the war he returned to the studio, before writing and directing several low budget Joe Palooka features (based on the comic strip) for Monogram. What he later called his first "auteur effort', The Argyle Secrets (1948), was made after nine days of shooting, from his own short1 radio play for the CBS Suspense series. Endfield's career revived in 1950, with the release of two well-received crime features, The Underworld Story and The Sound of Fury (Try and Get Me!).
In 1951 Endfield found his career derailed as a result of hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Screenwriter Martin Berkeley named him in September 1951 as known to have been involved with left wing political associations (at the New Theatre League in New York in the late 1930s, and in Hollywood in 1943). Endfield was called to testify and, while he was reluctant to plead the Fifth Amendment before the Committee, he found the option of ‘naming names’, so as to clear himself for further Hollywood film work, to be unacceptable. He made a hurried settlement with his wife, from whom he had separated, and sailed for England on the Queen Mary in December 1951. He slowly re-established his filmmaking career in London.