Jimmy Sangster was a pivotal character in the success of Hammer.
James Henry Kinmel Sangster was born on the 2nd of December 1927,
He was a British screenwriter, author and film director.
He is most famous for his work on horror films made by Hammer Film Productions, being a regular collaborator between the years 1955-1972.
Sangster originally worked as a production assistant at Hammer Films, as well as being an assistant director, second unit director and production manager.
After Hammer's success with “The Quatermass Xperiment” (1955),
Sangster was approached to write “X the Unknown” (1956), to which he replied,
"I'm not a writer. I'm a production manager."
According to him, Hammer Films' response was:
"Well, you come up with a couple of ideas and if we like it, we'll pay you. If we don't like it, we won't pay you. You're being paid as a production manager, so you can't complain."
As it happened Jimmy had a lot of ideas that Hammer liked going on to pen 22 films for Hammer!
As well as 24 films that were not made by Hammer including,
The 1958 cult classic made by Tempean Films
“The Crawling Eye” and the very enjoyable Psyco-Biddy flick “Who Slew Auntie Roo?” (1971)
Sangnster also wrote episodes of American Television, His television screenwriting credits include episodes of, “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, “Ironside”, “The Six Million Dollar Man” and “Wonder Woman”.
He was also an author writing 9 spy/thriller novels,
The “John Smith Mystery” series “The Spy Killer” (1967) & “Foreign Exchange” (1968)
The “Katy Touchfeather Mystery” series “Touchfeather” (1968) & “Touchfeather, Too” (1970)
The “James Reed Mystery” series “Snowball” (1986), “Hardball” (1988) & “Blackball” (1987)
The books “Fireball” (2019) & “Fastball” (2020) being published posthumously.
His other books include the novel “Your Friendly Neighborhood Death Peddler” (1971),
The 1997 non-fiction memoir
“Do You Want it Good or on Tuesday?: From Hammer Films to Hollywood: A Life in the Movies”
and the 2003 screenwriting manual, “Screenwriting: Techniques for Success”
Jimmy Sangster passed away at his home in Kensington, London on 19 August 2011 at the age of 84.
