Walter Summers

Walter Summers (1892–1973) was a British film director and screenwriter. Born in Barnstaple to a family of actors, Walter Summers began his career in the family trade; his first contact with filmmaking was as an assistant to American director George Loane Tucker, who worked for the English London Films unit from 1914 to 1916. With the outbreak of war, Summers mobilised into the British Army, gaining experiences that would serve him well later as a filmmaker. At war’s end, Summers worked briefly for Cecil Hepworth, and then the Territorial Unit in India before making contact with producer/director George B. Samuelson. Samuelson hired Summers as a writer, primarily on films starring the popular actress Lillian Hall-Davis such as Maisie’s Marriage (1923). Summers co-directed a couple of pictures with Samuelson before directing solo for the first time with a drama, A Couple of Down and Outs (1923). Summers followed this up with Who Is the Man? a drama which received mixed reviews but is included on the "BFI 75 Most Wanted" list of missing British feature films and which launched the film career of John Gielgud. Summers fathered two children with his wife Dora Summers: Jill Summers, who also worked in the film industry and was head of make-up at the BBC before her retirement in the 1980s; and Jeremy Summers, who also became a film and television director. A plaque commemorating Summers appears on the wall of 10 Parkway in Welwyn Garden City, a house he occupied with his family for a period in the 1940s.