Lance Comfort Biography
Lance Comfort was born in Harrow in 1908, he entered the film industry around 1926 as an animator and cameraman on medical films. After several years in the camera department, he became a sound recordist at Stoll Studios in 1932. Then in 1934 he joined producer/director John Baxter's UK Films as technical supervisor. In later years Baxter would be a formative influence on Comfort and did much to further his career.
After directing a couple of documentaries and children's films, Comfort had the opportunity to direct his first feature film, a wartime propaganda piece, Penn Of Pennsylvania (1941). Unfortunately this wasn't the kind of subject that Comfort was passionate about and the result was a rather leaden biopic. By contrast, his next film, Hatter's Castle (1941), the darkly melodramatic story of a megalomaniacal businessman who terrorizes his family, provided him with exactly the kind of material he responded to. The dramatic focus is a group of selfish, conscienceless individuals who are ready to (and indeed relish) betraying and destroying anyone who gets in their way; as they meet the obligatory sticky end, the power of these characters is such that the nominal hero and heroine appear bland in comparison. In the 1940s Comfort directed a series of quality dramas such as Bedelia (1946), Temptation Harbor (1947) and Daughter of Darkness (1948) with equally amoral and tortured protagonists at their centre. When the box office failure of Portrait of Clare (1950) coincided with a major collapse in the British film industry, work dried up and he was only able to recover by agreeing to direct supporting programs and some early television series such as Douglas Regali Fairbanks .
Comfort subsequently never managed to shake off the B feature label and rise back to the first division despite the obvious quality of films like Tomorrow at Ten (1962). However, this quality, a consequence of his all-round technical competence, excellent organizational skills which allowed him to make the most of his limited time in the studio and an innate sensitivity for directing, ensured him a commitment almost until his death in Worthing. in 1966.
Perhaps what kept Lance Comfort out of the mainstream industry was not a lack of skill, but the bleakness of his personal vision that is expressed most clearly in melodramas and thrillers. The villains are more psychotic and the subsidiary characters are more likely to be murdered than the norm. Unlike his mentor John Baxter, his films avoid social messages; they are more interested in the individual than in society, presenting a picture of humanity in which evil is not simply an occasional aberration but an integral part.
