Peter Hammond. In Memoriam

With some delay the death of the actor and director Peter Hammond (1923-2011) has been reported. In the Daily Telegraph:

With looks reminiscent of the young James Stewart, Hammond made his screen debut in Waterloo Road in 1945 and went on to play boy-next-door types in several more films throughout the late Forties and early Fifties, most notably in the “Huggetts” series , popular light comedies in which he first appeared as Harry Huggett but later took the role of Peter Hawtrey. To promote the films he toured the Rank cinema circuit, performing a live-double act with his co-star Diana Dors.

Hammond went on to star in such early television series as The Buccaneers (as Lt Beamish) and The Adventures of William Tell (as Hofmanstahl), before embarking on a BBC television director’s course in the late 1950s.

Television camera techniques of the time, even in dramas, were wooden and rudimentary. Actors were lined up in a row, with one camera per face, and another in reserve for wide shots. Hammond helped to change all that. uring the 1960s, when he directed such series as The Avengers (for which he won a Director’s Bafta in 1965), Armchair Theatre and Out of the Unknown, he carved a reputation for his fresh and unusual work with camera angles, including clever mirror and window shots which added to the drama by heightening atmosphere and tension. If critics sometimes felt that he paid more attention to visual effects than the actors, his approach proved extremely popular with television viewers and had a huge influence on his profession. 

One of those series was the 1978 BBC adaptation of Wuthering Heights with Ken Hutchinson as Heathcliff and Kay Adshead as Cathy.

Another obituary can be read on The Times. EDIT: And Variety.