THE Lumière brothers invented cinema in 1895. America’s Master of Film, Sean Aloysius O’Fearna, better known as John Ford, was born on February 1 1895 in Cape Elizabeth, USA.
Just days later, on February 12 1895, Hans Moore Hawthorn Hurst - later known as Brian Desmond Hurst - was born in east Belfast and went on to become Ireland’s Master of Film. Ford mentored Hurst and they became such good friends they referred to themselves as cousins.
Hurst’s entitlement to be Ireland’s Master of Film starts with Brian directing Ireland’s first feature length talkie Irish Hearts (1934 released in the USA as Norah O’Neale) and ends with him both producing and directing Belfast’s Christmas film gift to the world, that rarest of films and a classic of classics, Scrooge (1951, released in the USA as A Christmas Carol).
Not many films command a top four genre ranking in the land of film, the USA, nearly 75 years later. But there’s a lot more before, between and after these landmarks which underpin the title.
Brian ticks nearly all the boxes for the title as Ireland’s Master of Cinema. Let’s set them out. Pushing boundaries and taking risks. Bringing out the best of actors and crew members and helping propel them on. Storytelling mastery. Breadth and longevity of range. Irish born and bred and Irish output. If there’s a missing ingredient, it’s film awards and nominations. There were a few Bafta nominations but then again awards weren’t really Brian’s thing as you’ll see and Baftas only came about in 1948.
As Brian’s great, great nephew my research, publications, exhibitions, documentaries and speaking events build on the recognition that crystallised on a crisp dry anniversary 40 years ago, and also a Hurst birthday anniversary date, February 12 1985.
I was the kid with the Northern Irish accent who accompanied 90-year-old Brian on the short black taxi trip from his house in Belgravia across to Bafta on Piccadilly. I met his friends at his birthday party and just wish I had the confidence and knowledge to converse more fully with Sir John Mills, Sir Alec Guinness, Bond director and Hurst protégé Terence Young and, more locally, Bangor’s William ‘Bill’ MacQuitty, a co-founder of Ulster TV and producer of the Titanic epic A Night to Remember.
I handed Brian some apologies – telegrams from Roger Moore and Donald Pleasence and notes from Virginia McKenna and Joan Sims. I still have them.
Riotous Living
My mother is a Hurst (Brian’s great niece) and we’d all had years of what our family perceived as tall stories from Brian about James Bond, John Ford, Tinsel Town and life in Belgravia. But suddenly at Brian’s 90th birthday party it dawned on me that he really must have been a special man in the world of film.
Brian died intestate a year later on September 26 1986. Everything (and I mean everything) had been given away to admirers, chancers or good friends. “Here’s some money for some riotous living” was a frequent handout I’d heard from his friends as we talked about Brian in subsequent years.
The Rolls-Royce, Bentley, the Monet, the Picasso, the WB Yeats – all gone and scattered to the wind and our family brought him ‘home’ and scattered his ashes on my great grandfather’s grave (Brian’s beloved big brother who looked after him when he was an orphan).
Everything (and I mean everything) had been given away to admirers, chancers or good friends. The Rolls-Royce, Bentley, the Monet, the Picasso, the WB Yeats – all gone and scattered to the wind
A Hollywood Blockbuster of a Life
Roll on 25 years and I decided to ensure his name was not scattered to the wind. My research was showing that if you were to write a Hollywood blockbuster Brian’s life nails it. Orphan, eating bread off the street in east Belfast. Linen worker. Rifleman who survived the cruel slaughter of Gallipoli. Deserter who was not shot at dawn but rejoined under a new name, claiming to be five years younger so he could fight again. Leaving a war-ravaged Belfast during the War of Independence (“this was not what I fought for”).
Studying art in Canada, Paris and New York and acting and later directing plays and reviews which may have involved nudity. Moving to Hollywood and directing plays and painting and then, by luck, catching the eye of John Ford. Working in set decoration for Ford, then acting alongside John Wayne.
Elevated to an assistant director to Ford and bringing film to life in the glorious Ford silents era and the start of the talkies. Moving back to England with his new friend, who happened to be one of the richest young men in England. Settling in Belgravia and setting up a film production company with his rich friend.
Drinking with John Ford and John Wayne and dining in the Ritz or Dorchester. Converting from an Ulster Covenant-signing Protestant to Catholicism under the guidance of Ford.
Three decades of film directing made across three continents and over 30 films directed. Unashamedly bisexual with a preference for men and maintaining this flamboyantly whilst his friends were locked up for being gay. He had no fear and a mischievous twinkle in his eye – always.
Dying in a nursing home waiting for a friend to bring him another bottle of champagne for breakfast (Taittinger with a splash of freshly squeezed orange juice). Bread off the street was long off the menu.
The story had to be gathered and told. I formalised his estate in 2009, gathered together everything we could find on Brian in family and friend circles. Sixteen years later, and Brian is now a laureate of the arts commemorated in Belfast’s City Hall. On a much larger scale I have helped Brian by leading nominations for the naming of the Hurst Sound Stage in Titanic Studios, Belfast and several blue plaques around the city.
The pinnacle came in 2021 when I was able to publish the critically acclaimed book Hurst on Film 1928-1970, edited by my daughter Caitlin Smith who brought youthful vigour, visual impact and design skills, and Stephen Wyatt who helped Brian write his memoirs in 1976 and 1977; they were a dream team.
It combines Brian’s memoirs with his major writing in film journals (ranging from 1936 to 1970). It was the first detailed overview of his life and work, runs to over 600 pages and features extensive material including over 1,000 images drawn from the family archives that I had curated. I have made the book available on Amazon Kindle for £1.49 to ensure as wide as possible access for students and fans of film.
Pushing Boundaries and Taking Risks
Brian directed Ireland’s first feature length talkie, Irish Hearts (released in the USA as Norah O’Neale). The film is long lost and the Irish News helped me launch a campaign to find it in September 2024.
Some leads are developing and already a major film collector in Ireland, Paul Balbirnie, has shared with me a glorious collection of original stills from the film from 1934. More on this soon I hope – it looks a great film and must be found in its entirety.
Brian and his rich friend from England, Henry Talbot de Vere Clifton, took the risk of forming their own production company to create this first Irish ‘talkie’ and push the boundaries of Irish film-making.
Brian’s earliest published writing that I have uncovered came in a leading London cinema journal Kinematograph Weekly on December 17 1936. Significantly, this was just days after his Irish War of Independence film Ourselves Alone (a translation is ‘Sinn Féin’...) was banned by an Order of the Minister of Home Affairs for Northern Ireland on November 27 1936.
It had sold out and was held over for several weeks in both London and Dublin. Brian’s response in the Belfast Telegraph on December 19 1936 was to say that he was “frankly disappointed”.
His Kinematograph Weekly article was headlined, ‘The World’s Only New Art Form’, and said: “The theatre, literature and painting all have their limitations, but the camera, because of its portability and elasticity has none.
“It is not bound in by a proscenium, neither is it restrained to a mute canvas or restricted to the pages of a book. It can follow its story anywhere, down under the sea or up into the sky.
“Its scope is limitless, for it can envisage almost anything. It can take the other arts and weld these together in a manner that has been hitherto impossible.”
Hurst continued to push Irish and British film-making boundaries with his adaptation of Belfast’s FL Green’s On the Night of the Fire in 1939. Andrew Spicer, in his book European Film Noir, writes: “A riveting psychological study. With its sustained doom-laden atmosphere, Krampf’s expressive cinematography, its adroit mixture of location shooting and Gothic compositions and Richardson’s wonderful performance as a lower middle-class Everyman, On the Night of the Fire clearly shows that an achieved mastery of film noir existed in British cinema.”
Hurst was involved in another breakthrough breakthrough in 1945 when he was called in by Arthur Rank to help Gabriel Pascal direct the Vivien Leigh scenes in Caesar and Cleopatra. Filming in Technicolor, the production was reported to be the most expensive film ever made at the time. Hurst took no formal credit for his work, but the fee proved very handy.
Storytelling Mastery
Brian seems to have been at his best when he was given the most creative freedom to tell a story on the vast canvas of film. Scrooge (1951, released in the USA as A Christmas Carol) exemplifies this as he was both producer and director and had free rein.
IMDB, the authoritative database of film, places Hurst’s masterpiece at number 4 in its Top 100 Christmas movies of all time.
Hurst’s war and conflict films also show him at his finest. His shortest film, Miss Grant Goes to the Door, in 1940 prepared Britain for a German invasion with a run time of 7 minutes. Patrick Russell, curator of non-fiction at the British Film Institute, National Archive comments: “During the Second World War, the Ministry of Information commissioned hundreds of films, from the mediocre to the masterful.
“In the latter category, Hurst perfected the synthesis of officialdom’s need for propaganda and public information with the film industry’s powers of creative craftsmanship. I’ve seen Miss Grant Goes to the Door many times: a mini-masterpiece that always hits the spot.”
Read more: Winning the War - Hurst, Film & Propaganda
Or his A Letter From Ulster (1942) which poured calming waters on trouble emerging in 1942 between the GIs based in Northern Ireland and the locals and which caused Hurst to receive a commendation from President FD Roosevelt. You can judge yourself as we have remastered his documentary and placed it on YouTube on the Brian Desmond Hurst channel.
Bringing out the Best of Actors and Crew
Just as Ford mentored Hurst, it was Hurst who brought on some of our leading cinema talent. Hurst’s protégé was Terence Young. After graduating from Cambridge, Terence worked for Brian writing on films between 1939 and 1947 and then developing his own directing career.
Terence went on to launch the Bond film era directing Dr No, From Russia With Love and Thunderball.
Hurst spotted Roger Moore and gave him early roles and paid for him to attend Rada. Roger remained indebted to Brian for helping him break away from modelling for knitting patterns and becoming the film legend he truly was.
Hurst gave Sir Richard Attenborough his first full credited role in The Hundred Pound Window (1944) and Richard met his wife at one of Brian’s riotous parties.
Possibly his greatest achievement with acting talent was taking 120 battle hardened and weary Arnhem veterans to the scene of their defeat in 1945. Arthur Rank wanted to use some of his acting talent, but Hurst wanted authenticity and not a single actor appeared. Hurst said the result Theirs is the Glory (1946) was his favourite film as he was back working with soldiers.
It became the biggest grossing war film in the UK for a decade and is also my favourite film. I still wonder how Hurst persuaded his crew to enter heavily mined areas and persuade the local civilians to take part – maybe that’s why he was known as the ‘Human Blarney Stone’.
Breadth of Range and Longevity
Hurst began his film career in the Hollywood silents of the 1920s, directed over 30 films in three continents over the 1930s, the 1940s and the introduction of Technicolor, through the desolate 1950s when the film industry was on its knees and out of finance, and into the 1960s.
His output was incomprehensibly vast and includes war dramas, historical fiction, musicals and farce. The latter was His and Hers (1961), which featured Terry Thomas, many of the Carry On team, a young Oliver Reed and an even younger Francesca Annis. It was a flop and Brian was just taking the fee by this stage but is still worth seeing for the acting talent and is available on DVD.
All is set out in Hurst on Film 1928-1970, contextualised with over 1,000 images, as we believed that this is what Brian would have wanted – fewer words, more visuals (just like his films).
Irish Born and Bred and Irish Output
Born at 23 Ribble Street in east Belfast, he was educated in Hemp Street Public Elementary School. He first worked at the Bloomfield Linen Factory and joined the 6th Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles at the outbreak of the First World War in Belfast.
Returning from war he attended a college in Royal Avenue before emigrating. He returned to Ulster to visit family and friends for what he called a “spiritual bath”. Brian had a regal Ulster accent, and a rare recording of his voice can be heard towards the end of an RTE documentary I made called An Irishman Chained to the Truth which can be heard again on RTE Docs on One.
Brian Desmond Hurst’s Irish themed film output:
Irish Hearts (1934)
Synge’s Riders to The Sea
Ourselves Alone (1936)
A Letter From Ulster (1942)
Hungry Hill (1947)
Playboy of The Western World (1962)
Film Awards and Nominations
There were a few Bafta nominations. Bafta awards started in 1948. Hurst’s Simba (1955) received two nominations. Hurst, probably influenced by John Ford, didn’t seem overly concerned about award ceremonies. Ford did not show up to collect his first three Oscars.
Perhaps the words of John Gielgud also sparked some resonance: “I really detest all the mutual congratulation baloney and the invidious comparisons which they evoke.” For Brian it was just about the art, ‘The World’s Only New Art Form’ and the vast canvas he could paint on.
Keep up to date with Hurst news and events on the ‘Brian Desmond Hurst legacy’ Facebook page.
Allan Esler Smith administers the estate of his great, great uncle Brian Desmond Hurst. He has co-authored with David Truesdale, ‘Arnhem, Hurst and Conflict on Film’, published ‘Hurst on Film 1928-1970′ and has written, spoken and produced documentaries on Hurst. He is a forensic accountant, tax adviser and author of Retirement Planning Expert 2025
