| Notes |
- Obituary- The Telegraph
Saturday, July 7, 2018
5:09 PM
Clipped from: https://www.ancestry.com.au/mediaui-viewer/tree/6443230/person/-1232914285/media/ea40d643-2247-48c1-ad38-357598ae2e05?destTreeId=120819959&destPersonId=172020029461&_phsrc=VVZ10173&_phstart=default
ยท Margaret Thomson
12:01AM GMT 10 Jan 2006
Margaret Thomson, who died on December 30 aged 95, was a documentaryfilm maker well known for the series of public information films she madeduring the Second World War designed to help amateur gardeners and farmers maketheir contribution to the war effort; these included such titles as Making aCompost Heap (1942), Clamping Potatoes (1942) and Making Grass Silage (1943).
Margaret Thomson was born on June 10 1910 in Australia, but spentmost of her childhood in Wellington, New Zealand, where her father, AlanThomson, an eminent geologist and the first New Zealander to win a RhodesScholarship, was director of the Dominion Museum. At around the time hisdaughter was born, Thomson was invited to accompany Captain Scott's secondexpedition to the Antarctic, but was luckily prevented from going by a bout oftuberculosis. Later, the family moved to Christchurch.
Margaret took a master's degree in Zoology at Canterbury College,but, unable to find a job in New Zealand, moved to London in 1934. She beganteaching zoology at a grammar school, but the work did not suit her. Instead,inspired by an episode of Mary Field's Secrets of Nature educational filmseries, she applied to the production company Gaumont-British Instructional forwork. She took a job in their film library and, owing to her expertise inzoology, was later asked to make a series of six educational films about theecology and natural environment of Britain. Between 1936 and 1937 she directedfilms on Chalk Downlands, Meadowlands, Moorlands, Oakwoods, Salt Marshes andHeathlands.
After the series was completed, she worked in the editing room for atime, acquiring technical knowledge until a slump in the film industry broughther job to an end in 1938.
For the next three years she did a variety of jobs, includingediting at the Shell and Strand Film Units, making travelogues with MarionGrierson for the Trade and Industrial Development Association and teachingEnglish in Spain. In 1940 she began retraining as an electrician, but returnedto film making when offered a job at the Realist Film Unit, the most importantdocumentary film unit outside the GPO Film Unit, the following year.
She remained with the unit throughout the war and until 1947,gaining a reputation as an exceptional and prolific director of instructionalhorticultural, agricultural and medical films for wartime audiences. Films suchas Making a Compost Heap (1942), Hedging (1942), Clean Milk (1943) and TheSigns and Stages of Anaesthesia (1944) were characterised by their visualsimplicity and their ability to communicate complex information in a clear,unpatronising way. One film, Saving Your Own Seeds, was described as"excellent. A model instructional film" in a 1942 DocumentaryNewsletter.
After the war, Margaret Thomson made two recruitment films for theMinistry of Education, Children Learning By Experience (1946) and ChildrenGrowing Up With Other People (1947). In these, she filmed children playing onLondon's bombsites and in parks, trying to avoid intruding on the children'senvironment and to obtain a truer picture of their behaviour by allowing shotsto run longer than normal.
In 1948 she returned to New Zealand, where she directed severalnewsreels for the New Zealand Film Unit before coming back to Britain to workfor the Crown (formerly the GPO) Film Unit in 1950. After Crown closed in 1951,she went freelance.
Her only feature film, Child's Play (1954), was made for thegovernment-backed feature unit Group 3, but Margaret Thomson was not satisfiedwith it and did not enjoy the experience. She then worked as a casting directorat Pinewood Studios, finding children for feature film directors and coachingthem in their lines.
She was the children's coach on, among other films, Philip Leacock'sKidnappers (1953). The two children involved (Jon Whitely and Vincent Winter)were awarded honorary Oscars - Vincent being given a miniature statuette.
In the late 1950s Margaret Thomson established a production companywith her husband Bob Ash, directing industrially-sponsored films until sheretired in 1977.
An adventurous cook and an intrepid traveller, Margaret Thomsonclaimed, when asked by interviewers, that she had never experienced prejudiceand that it had never crossed her mind that women in the film industry were anydifferent from the men.
In 2002 she enjoyed a screening of some of her wartime informationfilms at the Imperial War Museum.
Margaret Thomson's husband predeceased her in 1987.
|
1910 - 2005
[2, 3, 4] 
