Tom Hutchinson: Film critic and author (Hampsted and Highgate Express obit)
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Steiger as a personal friend, has died at the age of 75.
Mr Hutchinson died peacefully in his sleep at the Royal Free Hospital
at 7am on Wednesday.
He was the Ham&High's film critic until last year but his fame as an
author, TV and radio presenter and scriptwriter spread way beyond
Hampstead.
Tom met his wife, Patricia, at the Sheffield Telegraph and Star
newspaper where she worked as an artist and he was a reporter.
They married in 1954 and came to London in 1956.
Apart from a short spell in Newcastle, when Tom worked as a TV
producer, the pair spent all their married life in a flat in Southwood
Lane, Highgate.
They had three children, Michael, now 47, Stephen, 45, and Janetta, 40,
and seven grandchildren.
Mrs Hutchinson, 75, said: "We had been together a very long time. We
celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary last year.
"We lived in Southwood Lane all that time because it has such a lovely
view out the back onto London."
Tom Hutchinson worked on the Picture Guide film magazine and become a
film critic for the Sunday Telegraph and Mail on Sunday.
He also worked for the Guardian and the Radio Times and various other
magazines.
He wrote a book on Marilyn Monroe and one of his best received works
was a biography of Rod Steiger.
Titled Rod Steiger: Memoirs of a Friendship, the book traced the story
of the star's life and work, bound with Mr Hutchinson's personal
reminiscences.
His son Michael said: "During his career he met all the Hollywood
greats, both actors and directors.
"He would reminisce about how he kissed Marilyn Monroe.
"He was witness to nearly half of the history of film. He was an avid
filmgoer by the age of 11.
"And because he was a film critic almost in an unbroken succession, he
will have seen more or less every movie ever made.
"He loved what we call film noir but, typical of my father, he didn't
accept the term. He loved Billy Wilder and Orson Welles.
"He tried to look for something praiseworthy in every film because he
always said a lot of people put a lot of effort into making it.
"He particularly loved writing for the Ham&High - he didn't have to
pull his punches. He felt it was like writing for a group of friends."
"He assembled his puns very early in life and didn't feel the need for
any new ones. He always joked that a good pun makes wincemeat out of
you."
Mrs Hutchinson said: "He was great fun. Everyone that met him liked
him. He was such a fun person and was good at jokes and puns.
"He didn't particularly help around the house but he would make a curry
now and again.
"We had a great social life, going to films in the private theatres in
Wardour Street.