1. John Walter Hollis Raymond Longford was born in Hawthorn, a suburb of Melbourne, the son of John Walter Raymond Longford, a civil servant originally from Sydney, and his English wife, Charlotte Maria, nee Hollis, who married in 1870.
33 Facts About Raymond Longford
1. 2.
Raymond Longford became a sailor and spent his early life at sea.
3.
Raymond Longford started acting on the stage in India under the name Raymond Hollis Longford.
4.
Raymond Longford was a stage manager for the Liliam Meyers Dramatic Company.
5.
Raymond Longford often appeared alongside a young actress called Lottie Lyell, who would become Raymond Longford's key creative partner.
6.
Raymond Longford was an early member of the Australian actors union, a forerunner to Actors Equity.
7.
In 1907, Raymond Longford worked on a film produced by Cosens Spencer about the fight between Tommy Burns and Jack Johnson, probably the first movie Raymond Longford was involved in.
8.
Raymond Longford then began appearing in movies for Spencer as an actor under the direction of Alfred Rolfe such as Captain Midnight, the Bush King.
9.
Raymond Longford followed this up with several other play adaptations for Spencer including The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole, Sweet Nell of Old Drury and The Midnight Wedding ; Raymond Longford wrote an original for the screen The Tide of Death.
10.
Raymond Longford went to work for the Fraser Film Release and Photographic Company for whom he made a feature and a number of shorts they ended the contract after Longford became involved in a lawsuit following the making of the highly popular The Silence of Dean Maitland.
11.
Raymond Longford made another number of shorts for a variety of companies and taught film acting.
12.
Raymond Longford then made two films in New Zealand and became embroiled in another legal battle over The Church and the Woman.
13.
Raymond Longford had lifted the story from a book published in the 1880s.
14.
Raymond Longford's career revived towards the end of World War I when he helped establish the Southern Cross Feature Film Company in South Australia.
15.
Raymond Longford followed it with another hit, On Our Selection, from the stories of Steele Rudd.
16.
The popularity of these two movies saw Raymond Longford move away from melodramatic convention to more realistic treatment of subject matter.
17.
Raymond Longford says nothing, but she wipes the tears from her eyes, tears of real sympathy, indicative of pure appreciation, and for days thereafter, thinks, not of the construction of the plot, nor its cleverness, but of the varied experiences and emotions through which the hero and heroine have passed.
18.
In October 1925, Raymond Longford was appointed producer of Master Pictures.
19.
In 1926, it was announced Raymond Longford would serve on the board of the film company Phillips Film Productions Ltd, but little seems to have come of this.
20.
Raymond Longford gave evidence at the 1928 Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry in Australia, where he urged the introduction of a quota for local movies and complained about the influence of the Combine of Australasian Films and Union Theatres on local production.
21.
Raymond Longford appeared in bankruptcy court in 1929 but managed to tour Europe the following year, spending 18 months touring various filmmaking facilities.
22.
Raymond Longford returned to Australia in February 1930 and told Gayne Dexter that:.
23.
Raymond Longford said UFA were the most advanced studio he saw.
24.
Raymond Longford was unable to secure this and started lobbying for a quota for local films.
25.
Raymond Longford assisted Beaumont Smith with the direction of The Hayseeds and Splendid Fellows.
26.
Raymond Longford managed to direct another feature, The Man They Could Not Hang, although he missed the premiere due to an illness which required hospitalization.
27.
In 1939, Raymond Longford sued some Mastercraft executives for libel and settled out of court.
28.
Raymond Longford managed to stay employed in the film industry during the 1930s but found this impossible with the advent of World War II, which brought local production to an almost complete halt.
29.
Raymond Longford died on 2 April 1959 at the age of 80.
30.
Raymond Longford married Melena Louisa Keen at St Luke's Anglican Church, Concord, Sydney, on 5 February 1900.
31.
In 1933, Raymond Longford married for a second time, to Emilie Elizabeth Anschutz.
32.
Raymond Longford died on 2 April 1959 in North Sydney, at the age of 80.
33.
Raymond Longford is buried at Macquarie Park cemetery, North Ryde, alongside Lottie Lyell.