SAVILLE, VICTOR

SAVILLE, VICTOR (1897–1979), British film director and producer. Saville was born in Birmingham, the son of an Orthodox fine arts dealer, Gabriel Salberg. He was educated at King Edward VI School in Birmingham and was wounded in World War I. From 1919 Saville was a partner with michael balcon , another leading film producer, in Victory Motion Pictures, and from the late 1920s was one of Britain's leading filmmakers, producing or directing such movies as South Riding (1937), Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), and Green Dolphin Street (1947). In the 1950s he changed direction, producing several of Mickey Spillane's "hard-boiled" thrillers such as I, The Jury (1953). Saville's wife, Phoebe, was the niece of the prominent British film distributor and producer Charles M. Woolf (1879–1942). His son, SIR JOHN WOOLF (1913–1999), was also a major British film producer, responsible for such works as Lawrence Olivier's Shakespearean epic Henry V (1944) and, after the war, Moulin Rouge (1953), Richard III (1955), Room At the Top (1959), and the film version of the musical Oliver\! (1968), which won six Oscars. Woolf was also the cofounder of Anglia Television and was responsible for the series Tales of the Unexpected (1979–89) and other drama productions. He was knighted in 1975. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: ODNB online. (William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)