Tuesday 21 August 2012

Britain was once a country for and says "Goodbye" to and old Hollywood film director called Tony Scott


Tony, Hollywood film director, who has taken his life by leaping from a bridge into Los Angeles Harbour was 66 years old.

What you possibly didn't know about the young Tony living in the Britain which made him, that he :

*  was born, like the old Hollywood comedy actor Stan Laurel, in North Shields, Tyne and Wear (right), the youngest of the three sons of Colonel Francis Percy Scott, who served in the Royal Engineers, and his wife, Elizabeth who loved 'going to the pictures' and instilled a love of cinema in her sons.

* had two elder brothers in Ridley and Frank who was a sailor and is with Ridley in the photo.
* went to Grangefield  School, Stockton on Tees and studied for a fine arts degree at Sunderland Art School on the left.

* at 16, in 1965,  starred as a boy playing truant in the short black-and-white film, 'Boy and Bicyle', directed by Ridley.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19317209

* in 1969, directed his own short film, 'One of the Missing' in which brother Ridley played a Union officer in the American Civil War.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0cAi8LKXnM

* graduated from the Royal College of Art with the intention of becoming a fine artist but, with the success of his elder brother's fledging tv commercial production outfit, 'Ridley Scott Associates' with Ridley's famous Hovis bread advert of 1973 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mq59ykPnAE

* in the course of the next two decades, directed thousands of tv commercials for RSA, while also overseeing the company's operation during periods in which his brother was developing his feature film career.

* in 1975, directed an adaptation of the Henry James  story, 'The Author of Beltraffio'  for French tv, a job he landed by virtue of winning a coin-flip against his brother.

* after the considerable feature film successes of fellow British commercial directors like Alan Parker and his elder brother in the late 1970s and early 1980s, began to receive overtures from Hollywood in 1980 and left his career in Britain behind and embraced the USA.

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