Alexander Mackendrick (September 8, 1912 – December 22, 1993) was an American-Scottish director and professor. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and later moved to Scotland. He began making television commercials before moving into post-production editing and directing films, most notably for Ealing Studios where his films include Whisky Galore! (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Maggie (1954), and The Ladykillers (1955).
Alexander Mackendrick (September 8, 1912 – December 22, 1993) was an American-Scottish director and professor. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and far along moved to Scotland. He began making television commercials before disturbing into post-production editing and directing films, most notably for Ealing Studios where his films include Whisky Galore! (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Maggie (1954), and The Ladykillers (1955).
After his first American film Sweet Smell of Success (1957), his career as a director declined and he became Dean of the CalArts School of Film/Video in California. He was the cousin of the Scottish writer Roger MacDougall.
He was born upon 8 September 1912 the by yourself child of Francis and Martha Mackendrick who had emigrated to the United States from Glasgow in 1911. His father was a ship builder and a civil engineer. When Mackendrick was six, his daddy died of influenza correspondingly of a pandemic that swept the world just after World War I. His mother, in desperate dependence of work, decided to be a dress designer. In order to pursue that decision, it was essential for Martha MacKendrick straightforward her on your own son on pinnacle of to his grandfather, who took youngster MacKendrick encourage to Scotland with he was seven years old. Mackendrick never saying or heard from his mother again.
Mackendrick had a depressed and lonely childhood. He attended Hillhead High School from 1919 to 1926 and later went upon to spend three years at the Glasgow School of Art. In the ahead of time 1930s, MacKendrick moved to London to feign as an art director for the advertising unmodified J. Walter Thompson. Between 1936 and 1938, Mackendrick scripted five cinema commercials. He progressive reflected that his doing in the advertising industry was invaluable, in unfriendliness of his extreme despise of the industry itself. MacKendrick wrote his first film script afterward his cousin and close friend, Roger MacDougall. It was bought by Associated British and highly developed released, after script revisions, as Midnight Menace (1937).