Tim Hampton
By: Richard Anthony Baker Published 10:55am Friday, May 10, 2013 thestage.co.uk
From tea boy to managing director at 20th Century Fox – the stuff of which legends are made, but also the true-life story of the British film producer Tim Hampton. During a cinema career marked by success after success, he worked with such directors as Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.
He attended Bishop Wordsworth’s School at Salisbury in Wiltshire, where he was taught English by William Golding, who wrote Lord of the Flies and won the Nobel prize for literature. After leaving school at the age of 16, he worked as an estate agent for a time and then joined the film industry, delivering messages and making tea.
In 1969, he was appointed production manager on films that included the Peter Sellers movie There’s a Girl in My Soup (1970), an adaptation of Peter Nichols’ play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and Peter O’Toole’s hilarious The Ruling Class (both 1972).
Seven years later, Hampton was associate producer on the controversial Monty Python film Life of Brian, about a young Jewish man mistaken for Christ.
Made in Tunisia, some scenes needed to be filmed at night. On setting out, with warnings of flash floods ahead, the team met the drivers of lorries heading towards them and urging them to turn back. But Hampton was unfazed, the Pythons trusted him and the scenes were shot successfully.
Michael Palin said Hampton “kept a remarkably cool head… and he was damned good at his job too”, while Terry Jones, who directed the picture, remembered him as “so lively, so concerned and so capable”.
In that same year, at the age of 31, Hampton became managing director of Twentieth Century Fox Productions, based in London and overseeing all Fox productions made outside the US. He was closely involved with The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Chariots of Fire (1981), which won seven Oscars.
In 1983, he produced the Tom Cruise film Legend, during the course of which he was again required to keep a cool head, as the Pinewood set, which had been used for many James Bond films, was burnt to the ground.
Hampton was co-producer of the Polanski thriller Frantic (1988), and executive producer on A Dry White Season (1989), featuring Marlon Brando. His last production was the sci-fi movie Lost in Space (1998), starring Gary Oldman and William Hurt.
Tim Hampton, who was born on February 25, 1948, died on March 11, aged 65.
R.I.P. Tim Hampton
Whether they are behind the camera or in front of it, this is the place to discuss all filmmakers regardless of their role in the filmmaking process.
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