Here’s my interview with director Gerry O’Hara from Screening the Past 30; as I note in the preface to the piece, “Gerry O’Hara is a true original, and if he never really got the chance to definitively climb out of the ranks of assistant directors into the realm of full-fledged feature directors, he nevertheless managed to carve out a solid career in the cinema working with such luminaries as Sir Laurence Olivier, Ronald Neame, Michael Powell, Sir Carol Reed, Anatole Litvak, Ken Annakin, Terence Fisher, Sidney Box, Otto Preminger and many more in his early years, before striking out on his own with several low budget sixties British films, the most memorable of which is The Pleasure Girls (1963, UK), recently re-released as part of the BFI’s “Flipside” series of lesser-known films that nevertheless deserve attention. Despite its unfortunate title, The Pleasure Girls is in reality a deeply moving feminist document of ’60s London, shot in a real apartment building, as four young women come to London to make their way in the world.”
And that’s just the beginning of his fascinating story; read it here.
Tags: Gerry O'Hara, Otto Preminger, Ronald Neame, Sir Carol Reed, Sir Laurence Olivier
