Billie Bristow
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5 January 1897
Billie Bristow | |
|---|---|
 Billie Bristow, from a 1921 publication. | |
| Born | Millicent Frances Bristow 5 January 1897 Cowes, Isle of Wight, England |
| Died | 14 March 1981 (aged 84) Cowes, Isle of Wight, England |
| Other names | Millicent F. Husband, Millicent Pleydell-Bouverie |
| Occupations | Screenwriter, publicist |
Millicent Frances Bristow (5 January 1897 – 14 March 1981) known as Billie Bristow and later as Millicent Pleydell-Bouverie, was a British screenwriter, press agent, and publicist, active during the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1940s and 1950s, she lectured and consulted on housing issues.
Bristow was born in Cowes on the Isle of Wight,[1] the daughter of Albert Guyton Bristow and Frances Susan Longworth Bristow. She attended Alexandra College in Southampton.[2]
Career
Film industry
Bristow began her career as a journalist and studio publicist.[3][4][5] She worked at or with several different agencies and studios, including George King Productions, Broadwest, Ensign Productions, PDC, and British Lion.[6][7][8]
Bristow wrote articles for The Motion Picture Studio magazine, "The Press Agent and the Star" (1921) and "Principles of Publicity" (1922).[9][10] In the 1920s, she headed the planning committees for the Kinema Club Carnival and the Kinema Garden Party,[11][12] industry events held in London to raise money for the Cinematograph Trade Benevolent Fund.[13][14]
Housing
Millicent Pleydell-Bouverie became an authority on housing during and after World War II. She compiled a book, The Daily Mail Book of Britain's Post-War Homes (1944),[15] based on input from women and trades organisations.[16] In 1947, she was a delegate to the International Conference of Women when it met in Philadelphia; she also gave lectures on British housing in Detroit,[17] Chicago,[18] and Los Angeles,[19] representing the Home Building Industry's Standing Committee of Great Britain.[20] In 1951 she was a delegate to the Building Research Congress in London.[21] She chaired the housing and rent reform committees of the National Council of Women in the 1950s.[22][23]
Selected filmography
Bristow often wrote her scripts with Charles Bennett (who wrote many of Alfred Hitchcock's earliest films).[6] Her films ranged in genre, from crime dramas and comedies to a musical,[24] and in settings from Loch Ness[25] to a Northern steelworks[26] to an unnamed South American country.[27]
- Night Mail (1935, crime drama)[6]
- Gay Love (1934, with Bennett and John Paddy Carstairs; a musical adapted from a play)[24]
- Warn London (1934)
- The Secret of the Loch (1934, a monster movie set in Scotland)[25][28]
- Tiger Bay (1934, a crime drama starring Anna May Wong)[27]
- The House of Trent (1933)
- Shepherd's Warning (1933)[8]
- Men of Steel (1932, with Douglas Newton and Edward Knoblock; set in a steel works)[26]
- Self Made Lady (1932)
- Deadlock (1931, crime drama set in a movie studio)[29]
- Leave it to Me (1930, with Patrick L. Mannock; detective story)[30]
- Too Many Cooks (1930, comedy short, with Laurence Olivier in his first film role)[6]
