Vivian Cox: film producer and schoolmaster
Hyfler/Rosner
June 2, 2009
Vivian Cox: film producer and schoolmaster
Viv Cox won respect, and some fame, producing films at
Pinewood Studios and for Rank. Among the better known actors
he worked with were Dirk Bogarde and Hattie Jacques. Spike
Milligan, the Goon Show comic genius, was another of his
contemporaries.
Cox's career in films began after demobilisation in 1946.
After working with Sydney, Muriel and Betty Box at Shepherd's
Bush Studios, he became associate producer to Betty Box and
then producer at Pinewood Studios.
Among his early films were So Long at the Fair (with Jean
Simmons and Dirk Bogarde, 1950), Father Brown (with Alec
Guinness, 1954) and Bachelor of Hearts (with Hardy Kruger
and Sylvia Syms, scripted by Cox's friends Leslie Bricusse
and Frederic Raphael, 1958).
From 1959 to 1967 Cox worked as an independent producer and
screenwriter for Rank Studios, producing such titles as
Watch Your Stern (with Spike Milligan, Leslie Phillips,
Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Connor, 1960) and We Joined the
Navy (with Kenneth More, 1962). Between 1960 and 1976 Cox
produced all the stage shows for the annual Royal Command
Film Performance and hosted the royal party.
His lifelong love of France and good food were cleverly
combined in a television series that he produced on French
regional cooking, in which he motored around France in a
powder-blue sports car, enjoying excellent fare and often
featuring in front of the camera as well as behind it.
Vivian Alexander Cox was born in 1915 in Bangalore, South
India, the second of five children of Winifred and Alexander
Cox. He was educated in Switzerland, then at Cranleigh
School and at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read
English.
He did well academically, on the stage and in sports. At
Cranleigh he starred under the direction of a young Michael
Redgrave, who briefly taught at the school, in John Milton's
Samson Agonistes, and Shakespeare's King Lear and Hamlet. At
Cambridge he acted in two Footlights reviews, and his
sporting prowess earned him a blue for hockey and four
England caps in 1937.
After three years as head of English and Drama at Aldenham
School, he joined the RNVR in 1940. He served on the
minesweeping trawler HMS Euclase, was commissioned as a
sub-lieutenant and selected to work in the Admiralty War
Room.
While there, he set up the floating map room for Winston
Churchill on HMS Duke of York, and accompanied the Prime
Minister to Washington where, at President Roosevelt's
request, he set up a similar map room in the White House.
Cox later recalled a late-night conversation when Churchill
said to Cox of Roosevelt: "It is a great mercy for all
mankind that he's been called to this great office at this
moment in history."
After a brief respite from the war in London, spending time
at Denham Studios with No�l Coward, Bernard Miles and John
Mills among others, in 1942 Cox was appointed Junior Staff
Officer (Flag Lieutenant) to Vice-Admiral Bruce Fraser and
served on HMS Anson.
The following year he sailed with Fraser, promoted Admiral,
on HMS Duke of York, witnessing the sinking of the
Scharnhorst. Other highlights of a remarkable war career
included entertaining King George VI for 90 minutes with
impersonations of naval characters, and being with Fraser
for the Japanese surrender.
At the invitation of General McArthur, he was one of the
first four Allied servicemen into Tokyo after the surrender,
riding shotgun in a jeep. Later he recalled: "Strangely,
people in the street didn't seem to see us. Whether they'd
been told to ignore us, I don't know."
In 1967 Cox returned to his first profession and his alma
mater, teaching English, French and Drama at Cranleigh
School. A gifted and inspiring teacher, he taught for eight
years, during which he also directed several plays,
including Hassan with Juliet Stephenson.
From 1975 until his retirement in 1982 he worked with Sir
Bernard Miles as administrator at London's Mermaid Theatre.
In 1977 he translated Henri de Montherlant's The Fire That
Consumes, winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New
Play. He subsequently translated two other plays from the
French, both performed in the US and directed by his friend,
Louis Fantasia.
Cox was president of the Old Cranleighan Society, and among
other donations gave the school the "Vivian Cox Theatre -
opened by Sir John Mills, and with a green-room facility
donated by his friend and US entrepreneur, Harry C.
Meyerhoff.
His wideranging experiences, memory and wit made Cox a
popular raconteur. To his boss, Bruce Fraser, he was "a
cross between Encyclopaedia Britannica and a court jester".
To his family and many friends, he was an ebullient
character with a great sense of humour, glittering lifestyle
and an unrivalled propensity to name-drop.
Cox did not marry.
Vivian Cox, film producer and schoolmaster, was born on July
21, 1915. He died on April 27, 2009, aged 93