Derek Ford
Encyclopedia
Derek Ford was an English
film director
and writer
, most famous for sexploitation
films such as The Wife Swappers
(1970)Keep it Up Jack! (1973) Sex Express (1975) (also filmed in a hardcore version), and What's up Superdoc! (1978).
Ford began as a writer in collaboration with his brother Donald Ford (died 1991), originally for radio before progressing to television (The Saint
, Adam Adamant Lives!
) and film (The Yellow Teddy Bears
, The Black Torment
, A Study in Terror
). Ford's first foray into directing, Los Tres Que Robbaran Una Banco, made in Spain in 1961 was an unhappy experience, around the same time Ford entered sexploitation when he was asked to re-edit and film additional sequences for a Swedish sex film called Svenska Flickor I Paris, eventually released as Paris Playgirls.
Ford's directing career began proper in the late sixties when he entered into partnership with producer Stanley Long
, resulting in three films including the massively successful The Wife Swappers
, released in America as The Swappers with the tag line "remember when all the guy next door wanted to borrow was your lawnmower?".
Ford's early seventies films were mainly shot in London and Maldon, Essex
where he lived, while hardcore scenes meant for the European versions of his films were shot in secret at his own house, with his then wife Valerie acting as assistant, wardrobe & makeup. Interviewed in the book, Keeping the British End Up, fellow director Ray Selfe referred to Ford as "a male nymphomaniac", and themes of swinging, wife swapping and outwardly respectable people living double lives run throughout Ford's work.
In the 1970s the two most well-known Ford films in America were Groupie Girl
(1970) and Sex Express, starring Heather Deeley, released as Diversions in 1976 Diversions premiered in the Kips Bay
area of Manhattan and was nominated for best foreign film by the Adult Film Association of America
.
In Italy he directed Erotic Fantasies (1978) aka Symphony of Loveand back in England he quit as the director of Don't Open Til Christmas (1984). In the mid-eighties after his divorce, Ford was left to bring up his two children on his own. At this time he attempted to find more mainstream work and dissociate himself from his past, but what little work came his way would drag him back to exploitation film. He directed For Members Only in Italy in 1985, in which (returning to the themes of The Wife Swappers) a group of Italian women join a 'dare club', and co-directed a Hills Have Eyes rip-off in Sweden called Blood Tracks which also features a brief cameo role from Ford as a location scout for a rock video (Ford's only other known acting role is as "Circus Santa Claus" in Don't Open Till Christmas). He was also involved in writing a never-made softcore sitcom called Park Lane. Ford's final film, The Urge to Kill, starring Peter Gordeno
& Sarah Hope-Walker has never been given an official release, although clips from it appear in the 2005 documentary The Wild, Wild World of Dick Randall, and several bootlegs of it have surfaced over the years.
At the close of the eighties Ford left the film business and attempted a second career as an author, writing two books. The two books he wrote were Panic on Sunset (1989), and The Casting Couch (1990) ("the true story of broken dreams, disillusionment and fallen idols"). Panic on Sunset concerns George Schapner, the stressed out manager/agent of Velma Torraine a vamp of the silent screen whose heavy Brooklyn accent spells the end of her career as the 'talkie' era approaches. A visit to a Hollywood whorehouse specializing in celebrity look-a-likes provides George with an unlikely solution to their problem. The Casting Couch was a collaborative effort with the late agent Alan Selwyn, and is credited under the joint pseudonym "Selwyn Ford". Confusingly the book portrays Selwyn Ford as an actual person. A non-fiction expose of early Hollywood à la Hollywood Babylon
, among the allegations in the book are that Joan Crawford once appeared in a stag film (in a chapter entitled "Joan Crawford - A Star is Porn"), and that Bella Darvi
had worked as a prostitute in a Parisian brothel of which Ford had "benefited from a conducted tour of in 1959". One of the final chapters "The Long Killing of Marilyn", alleges Marilyn Monroe
was murdered as a result of an affair with Robert Kennedy. Ford bases this assumption on a meeting "Selwyn Ford" had with the actor Peter Lawford
, in 1984 over a never made, Italian financed film called Bloody Mary, in which an actress is abducted and forced to have an abortion after having an affair with a powerful, married man. Upon reading the script Lawford is said to have remarked "are you crazy, do you want to get us all fucking killed", and walked off. Ford's conclusion was that Lawford had interpreted the script as having parallels with Monroe and Kennedy (something Ford denies in the book), and that Lawford's heated reaction validates his claims over Monroe's death. Recent evidence uncovered by filmmaker Philippe Mora
would appear to offer credibility to Ford's claim.
A third book Bella, about Darvi and Darryl Zanuck was never completed, Ford died after a heart attack in a branch of WH Smith.
Ford's 1975 film The Sexplorer aka The Girl From Starship Venus garnered a famous fan in director Quentin Tarantino
. Tarantino, who owns a private print of the film, commented; "Even as a kid I knew I would get things from The Girl From Starship Venus that I wouldn't get from the Hollywood films". It is regularly screened at "The Best of QT Fest" presented by the Austin Film Society and uStudio, where Quentin brings the best of his personal collection of movies. Tarantino is also set to show the film at the "LA Grindhouse Film Festival" taking place at the New Beverly Cinema in March/April 2007.
Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema by Simon Sheridan (fourth edition) (Titan Publishing, London) (2011)
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, most famous for sexploitation
Sexploitation
Sexploitation, or "sex-exploitation", describes a class of independently produced, low-budget feature films generally associated with the 1960s and serving largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films...
films such as The Wife Swappers
The Wife Swappers
The Wife Swappers is a 1970 drama film by British sexploitation director Derek Ford. The film was directed and written by Derek Ford, and stars James Donnelly, Larry Taylor, and Valerie St...
(1970)Keep it Up Jack! (1973) Sex Express (1975) (also filmed in a hardcore version), and What's up Superdoc! (1978).
Ford began as a writer in collaboration with his brother Donald Ford (died 1991), originally for radio before progressing to television (The Saint
The Saint (TV series)
The Saint was an ITC mystery spy thriller television series that aired in the UK on ITV between 1962 and 1969. It centred on the Leslie Charteris literary character, Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like adventurer with a penchant for disguise. The character may be nicknamed The Saint because the...
, Adam Adamant Lives!
Adam Adamant Lives!
Adam Adamant Lives! is a British television series which ran from 1966 to 1967 on the BBC. Proposing that an adventurer born in 1867 had been revived from hibernation in 1966, the show was a comedy adventure that took a satirical look at life in the 1960s through the eyes of an Edwardian .- Character...
) and film (The Yellow Teddy Bears
The Yellow Teddy Bears
The Yellow Teddy Bears is a 1963 British drama film directed by Robert Hartford-Davis and starring Jacqueline Ellis, Iain Gregory, Raymond Huntley and Georgina Patterson...
, The Black Torment
The Black Torment
The Black Torment is a 1964 British gothic horror film, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis and starring John Turner, Heather Sears and Ann Lynn. The film is set in 18th-century Devon and was scripted by brothers Donald and Derek Ford...
, A Study in Terror
A Study in Terror
A Study in Terror is a 1965 British thriller film directed by James Hill and starring John Neville as Sherlock Holmes and Donald Houston as Dr. Watson...
). Ford's first foray into directing, Los Tres Que Robbaran Una Banco, made in Spain in 1961 was an unhappy experience, around the same time Ford entered sexploitation when he was asked to re-edit and film additional sequences for a Swedish sex film called Svenska Flickor I Paris, eventually released as Paris Playgirls.
Ford's directing career began proper in the late sixties when he entered into partnership with producer Stanley Long
Stanley Long
Stanley Long , often known as Stanley A. Long, is a British Exploitation cinema and sexploitation filmmaker. He is a writer, cinematographer, editor, and eventually, producer/director of low-budget exploitation movies....
, resulting in three films including the massively successful The Wife Swappers
The Wife Swappers
The Wife Swappers is a 1970 drama film by British sexploitation director Derek Ford. The film was directed and written by Derek Ford, and stars James Donnelly, Larry Taylor, and Valerie St...
, released in America as The Swappers with the tag line "remember when all the guy next door wanted to borrow was your lawnmower?".
Ford's early seventies films were mainly shot in London and Maldon, Essex
Maldon, Essex
Maldon is a town on the Blackwater estuary in Essex, England. It is the seat of the Maldon district and starting point of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation.Maldon is twinned with the Dutch town of Cuijk...
where he lived, while hardcore scenes meant for the European versions of his films were shot in secret at his own house, with his then wife Valerie acting as assistant, wardrobe & makeup. Interviewed in the book, Keeping the British End Up, fellow director Ray Selfe referred to Ford as "a male nymphomaniac", and themes of swinging, wife swapping and outwardly respectable people living double lives run throughout Ford's work.
In the 1970s the two most well-known Ford films in America were Groupie Girl
Groupie Girl
Groupie Girl is a 1970 British drama film based around the music scene, directed by Derek Ford and starring Esme Johns, Donald Sumpter and the band Opal Butterfly. The film was written by Ford and former groupie Suzanne Mercer....
(1970) and Sex Express, starring Heather Deeley, released as Diversions in 1976 Diversions premiered in the Kips Bay
Kips Bay
Kips Bay is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Because there are no official boundaries for New York City neighborhoods, the limits of Kip's Bay are somewhat vague, but it is often considered to be the area between East 23rd Street and East 34th Street extending from...
area of Manhattan and was nominated for best foreign film by the Adult Film Association of America
Adult Film Association of America
The Adult Film Association of America, the AFAA, was the first American association of pornographic film producers. It fought against censorship laws, attempted to defend the industry against prosecution for obscenity, and held an annual adult film awards ceremony.It was founded in 1969 in Kansas...
.
In Italy he directed Erotic Fantasies (1978) aka Symphony of Loveand back in England he quit as the director of Don't Open Til Christmas (1984). In the mid-eighties after his divorce, Ford was left to bring up his two children on his own. At this time he attempted to find more mainstream work and dissociate himself from his past, but what little work came his way would drag him back to exploitation film. He directed For Members Only in Italy in 1985, in which (returning to the themes of The Wife Swappers) a group of Italian women join a 'dare club', and co-directed a Hills Have Eyes rip-off in Sweden called Blood Tracks which also features a brief cameo role from Ford as a location scout for a rock video (Ford's only other known acting role is as "Circus Santa Claus" in Don't Open Till Christmas). He was also involved in writing a never-made softcore sitcom called Park Lane. Ford's final film, The Urge to Kill, starring Peter Gordeno
Peter Gordeno
Peter Gordeno is a British songwriter and producer who in his time has also been a live and session musician, and has, since 1998, toured with Depeche Mode. He plays keyboard parts in lieu of departed Alan Wilder, and occasional backing vocals. He and Andrew Phillpott went as backing musicians...
& Sarah Hope-Walker has never been given an official release, although clips from it appear in the 2005 documentary The Wild, Wild World of Dick Randall, and several bootlegs of it have surfaced over the years.
At the close of the eighties Ford left the film business and attempted a second career as an author, writing two books. The two books he wrote were Panic on Sunset (1989), and The Casting Couch (1990) ("the true story of broken dreams, disillusionment and fallen idols"). Panic on Sunset concerns George Schapner, the stressed out manager/agent of Velma Torraine a vamp of the silent screen whose heavy Brooklyn accent spells the end of her career as the 'talkie' era approaches. A visit to a Hollywood whorehouse specializing in celebrity look-a-likes provides George with an unlikely solution to their problem. The Casting Couch was a collaborative effort with the late agent Alan Selwyn, and is credited under the joint pseudonym "Selwyn Ford". Confusingly the book portrays Selwyn Ford as an actual person. A non-fiction expose of early Hollywood à la Hollywood Babylon
Hollywood Babylon
Hollywood Babylon is a book by avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger which details the sordid scandals of many famous and infamous Hollywood denizens from the 1900s to the 1950s. First published in the US in 1965, it was banned ten days later and would not be republished until 1975...
, among the allegations in the book are that Joan Crawford once appeared in a stag film (in a chapter entitled "Joan Crawford - A Star is Porn"), and that Bella Darvi
Bella Darvi
Bella Darvi was a Polish-born French actress.-Biography:Darvi was born Bayla Wegier to Chaym Wegier, a baker, and his wife, Chaya . She had three brothers, Robert, Jacques Wegier, Jean-Isidore, and a sister, Sura. Robert died in a concentration camp.Jailed by the Nazis during World War II, she...
had worked as a prostitute in a Parisian brothel of which Ford had "benefited from a conducted tour of in 1959". One of the final chapters "The Long Killing of Marilyn", alleges Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
was murdered as a result of an affair with Robert Kennedy. Ford bases this assumption on a meeting "Selwyn Ford" had with the actor Peter Lawford
Peter Lawford
Peter Sydney Ernest Aylen , better known as Peter Lawford, was an English-American actor.He was a member of the "Rat Pack", and brother-in-law to US President John F. Kennedy, perhaps more noted in later years for his off-screen activities as a celebrity than for his acting...
, in 1984 over a never made, Italian financed film called Bloody Mary, in which an actress is abducted and forced to have an abortion after having an affair with a powerful, married man. Upon reading the script Lawford is said to have remarked "are you crazy, do you want to get us all fucking killed", and walked off. Ford's conclusion was that Lawford had interpreted the script as having parallels with Monroe and Kennedy (something Ford denies in the book), and that Lawford's heated reaction validates his claims over Monroe's death. Recent evidence uncovered by filmmaker Philippe Mora
Philippe Mora
Philippe Mora is a French-born Australian film director. Born in 1949 to a German Jewish father and a French Jewish mother, he began making films while still a child.- Career :...
would appear to offer credibility to Ford's claim.
A third book Bella, about Darvi and Darryl Zanuck was never completed, Ford died after a heart attack in a branch of WH Smith.
Ford's 1975 film The Sexplorer aka The Girl From Starship Venus garnered a famous fan in director Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
. Tarantino, who owns a private print of the film, commented; "Even as a kid I knew I would get things from The Girl From Starship Venus that I wouldn't get from the Hollywood films". It is regularly screened at "The Best of QT Fest" presented by the Austin Film Society and uStudio, where Quentin brings the best of his personal collection of movies. Tarantino is also set to show the film at the "LA Grindhouse Film Festival" taking place at the New Beverly Cinema in March/April 2007.
Further reading
X-Rated - Adventures of an Exploitation Filmmaker by Simon Sheridan (Reynolds & Hearn Books) (2008)Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema by Simon Sheridan (fourth edition) (Titan Publishing, London) (2011)