Roy Ward Baker was an English film director born in London on 19 December 1916. His best known film is A Night to Remember which won a Golden Globe for best foreign English language film in 1959. His later career was varied, and included many horror films and television shows. Baker's early career, from 1934 to 1939, was spent working for Gainsborough Pictures, a British film production company based in Islington, North London, famous for its prestige productions. His first jobs were menial - making tea for crew members, for example - but by 1938 he had risen through the ranks to work as assistant director on Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. He served in the army during World War II, until transferring to the Army Kinematograph Unit in 1943 in order to make better use of skills developed in his pre-war career producing documentaries and teaching materials for troops. One of his superiors at the time was novelist Eric Ambler. It was he who gave Baker his first big break directing The October Man, from an Ambler screenplay, in 1947. Ambler also adapted Walter Lord's A Night to Remember for Baker's 1958 screen version. During the early 1950s, Baker worked for three years in Hollywood where he directed Marilyn Monroe in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and Robert Ryan in 3D film noir Inferno (1953). He returned to the UK for the latter part of the decade, but defected to television in the early 1960s. He directed episodes of The Avengers, The Saint and The Champions - all adventure series created with an eye on the American market. The low-budget ethic of television production made him well-suited to his next career move into cheaply produced but lavish-looking British horror films. He directed, amongst others, Quatermass and the Pit (1967) The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Scars of Dracula (1970) for Hammer, and Asylum (1972) for Amicus. In the latter part of the 1970s he returned to television, and throughout the 1980s continued to work in Television.  He retired in 1992.

Filmography

• 1994Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror — Self, Thanks
• Saracen — Director
• Fairly Secret Army — Director
• 1984The Masks of Death — Director
• The Irish R.M. — Director
• Q.E.D. — Director
• The Flame Trees of Thika — Director
• 1981The Monster Club — Director
• Danger UXB — Director
• 1979Death Becomes Me — Director
• Minder — Director
• Return of the Saint — Director
• 1976The Switch — Director
• 1974Mission: Monte Carlo — Director
• 1974The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires — Director
• 1973And Now the Screaming Starts! — Director
• 1973The Vault of Horror — Director
• 1972Asylum — Director
• The Protectors — Director
• 1971Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde — Director
• Jason King — Director
• The Persuaders! — Director
• 1970Foreign Exchange — Director
• 1970Scars of Dracula — Director
• 1970The Vampire Lovers — Director
• Department S — Director
• 1969Moon Zero Two — Director
• Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) — Director
• 1969The Spy Killer — Director
• Journey to the Unknown — Director
• 1968The Anniversary — Director
• The Champions — Director
• 1968The Fiction Makers — Director
• 1967Quatermass and the Pit — Director
• The Baron — Director
• Gideon's Way — Director
• The Human Jungle — Director
• 1963Two Left Feet — Director, Screenplay
• The Saint — Director
• 1962The Valiant — Director
• 1961Flame in the Streets — Director, Producer
• The Avengers — Director
• 1961The Singer Not the Song — Producer, Director
• 1958A Night to Remember — Director
• 1957The One That Got Away — Director
• 1956Jacqueline — Director
• 1956Tiger in the Smoke — Director
• 1955Passage Home — Director
• 1953Inferno — Director
• 1952Don't Bother to Knock — Director
• 1952Night Without Sleep — Director
• 1951The House in the Square — Director
• 1950Highly Dangerous — Director
• 1950Morning Departure — Director
• 1949Paper Orchid — Director
• 1948The Weaker Sex — Director
• 1947The October Man — Director
• 1945Read All About It — Director
• 1945What's the Next Job? — Director
• 1940Night Train to Munich — Second Unit Director
• 1938The Lady Vanishes — Assistant Director
• 1936First Offence — Production Assistant
• 1936Tudor Rose — Production Assistant
• 1935Heat Wave — Production Assistant

Appearances as themselves (8)

• A History of Horror — Self
• Sodankylä Forever — Self
• 2008The Saint Steps In... To Television — Himself
• 2003Inside the Fear Factory — Himself
• 2002Von Werra — Self
• 2000A Profile of Hitchcock: The Early Years — Self
• 1994Hitchcock: Alfred the Great — Self
• 1975Fists of Fire — Self