director, writer and producer, born 16 December 1922; died 22 January 2016
Simmons was born in West Ham, the fourth of five children – three boys and two girls – to parents of Polish extraction, Miriam (nee Corb) and Joseph Simmons (originally Anzulowsky), from a family of market traders. He was named Isidore but adopted the forename Anthony in his teens.
died aged 93, first real contact with film was in Rome watching the neorealists filming in the streets. never had any training as a film-maker. an outsider who never quite fitted into the slots of the British film industry.”Simmons worked across that industry, as a maker of documentaries and shorts, then feature films and, later, as a jobbing director on television dramas. the Venice film festival grand prix for his documentary Sunday By the Sea (1953), which captured working-class Londoners’ ritual of taking the train to Southend for a cheap and cheerful summer’s day out: Bow Bells (1953), an evocation of his own East End childhood These documentaries were shot by Walter Lassally and produced by Leon Clore, Simmons never became one of that community. His brand of socialism was more optimistic and less anti-establishmen. three significant feature films. Four in the Morning (1965) grew out of a planned documentary about the Thames, People of the River. The fictional story, about two couples connected to a young woman who is found drowned, benefited from the director’s authentic location shooting. Judi Dench, in her second cinema role, received a Bafta most promising newcomer award, as the frustrated wife to Norman Rodway’s angry young husband and Simmons won a Golden Leopard, top prize at the Locarno international film festival.The industrial riverside was also the setting for The Optimists of Nine Elms (1973), based on Simmons’s own 1964 novel. The tragicomic tale stars Peter Sellers as an ageing street busker befriended by two latchkey children and recalling his days in the music halls. Black Joy (1977), with Norman Beaton and Floella Benjamin as the worldly new acquaintances in London.
After attending West Ham grammar school, Simmons gained a law degree from the London School of Economics, where his course was interrupted by wartime army service. Although he practised as a barrister, he had ambitions to enter the film industry. The great documentary-makers Humphrey Jennings, Robert Flaherty and Joris Ivens were influences, along with Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Il Grido (1957).
On a trip to Bulgaria in 1947, a year after the country became part of the eastern bloc, Simmons made a documentary, Bulgarian Village, about a rural community he regarded as being part of a progressive society. However, he was unable to record his commentary, so the film was never released – until it was restored by the British Film Institute in 2011. on returning to Britain, formed Harlequin Films with Clore and the writer-director Jack Arnold.
he produced several low-budget feature films, including Time Without Pity (1957), directed by Joseph Losey in which Michael Redgrave investigates a young woman’s murder, for which his son (Alec McCowen) has been convicted and sentenced to death. the comedy, Your Money or Your Wife (1960), which he directed and which starred Donald Sinden, was poorly received.
One reason Simmons never became a fully paid-up member of the Free Cinema movement was that he also took funding from businesses and the Central Office of Information for sponsored documentaries. These included Blood Is Life (1957), encouraging the public to donate blood, From First to Last (1962), for the Ford motor company, and No Short Cut (1964), promoting the National Cycling Proficiency Scheme that had been created by the government in 1958. As he struggled to find money for new films, he also made commercials for Martini, Mothercare, Embassy cigarettes, Findus and others.
Later, he directed the film Little Sweetheart (1989), a thriller starring John Hurt, but much of his time was spent in television, making episodes of popular series such as The Professionals (1978-82), Inspector Morse (1989) and A Touch of Frost (1992).
His finest work on the small screen was On Giant’s Shoulders (1979), the International Emmy award-winning dramatisation of a real-life thalidomide victim’s story, starring Dench again, as the mother, and Life After Death (1982), a drama about bereavement, for the Play for Today series.
