F. Maurice Speed (1911–1998) was an English film critic who created two innovative and long-lasting publications: the listings magazine What's On in London (which ran from 1935 until 2007) and later the "Film Review" annual which began in 1944 and in 2012 celebrated its 67th edition. Born in London on 18 October 1911, Frederick Maurice Speed began a lifelong devotion to filmgoing in the small cinemas around Hammersmith.

Career

According to a potted biography published in 1991, he "began his working life as an apprentice on the Harrow Observer. From early on, his work reflected an interest in the cinema, and he calculates that he has now spent well over seven years in all watching films."^[1]

Having been an assistant to Edward Martell, proprietor of The Sunday Referee, it was to Martell that Speed turned when he had the idea to set up the listings magazine What's On in London. First published in 1935, What's On was edited (and almost entirely written) by Speed, who titled his engaging editorials 'Round and About'. "During Coronation Year of 1937," recalled Denis Gifford, "Speed realised the vast appeal that George VI's coronation would have for visitors from abroad. 'Indispensable to Visitors' became the front-page subtitle from then on, replacing the original and less catchy 'Complete Arrangements for the London Week'."^[2] Speed made his last contribution to the magazine in 1996, while What’s On itself outlived its creator by nine years, eventually folding in 2007.

Speed's first book was a slim volume called Movie Cavalcade: The Story of the Cinema – Its Stars, Studios and Producers. Published in 1943, it boasted a foreword by Bob Hope. By this time, however, Speed had come up with another brilliant concept, one that was to prove even more influential than What’s On. It was based on his conviction that "What the ordinary moviegoer lacks is a more or less complete annual record, in picture and story, of his year's filmgoing. Ironically enough, it wasn't until the war came along, and I had been discharged from the Army, that I decided, as nobody else seemed so inclined, I might as well attempt to fill the void myself."^[3]

The idea came to fruition in 1944 as Film Review. As Speed recalled in the annual's 50th edition, "Several publishers ... were interested and prepared to publish as soon as paper ceased to be so strictly rationed. Macdonald, however, had some spare paper supplies and signed a contract to publish as soon as I could deliver the copy. That initial 1944-45 book sold some 80,000 copies to a book-starved public and the second annual reached a dizzy 250,000 print order (incidentally earning me enough in royalties to buy and lavishly furnish my first country cottage!)."^[4]

The book rapidly developed into an annual illustrated digest of all the films screened in the UK. The initial price, which Macdonald held to for a remarkable 18 years, was 12s 6d. The annual originally covered a complete calendar year, but in the early 1950s publishing deadlines forced Speed to alter this to an October to September arrangement. In 1957 this was adjusted again to July to June. The calendar year arrangement was finally restored, 14 years after Speed's death, with the 67th edition.

As time went on, Speed gathered together more and more outside contributors, among them Peter Noble, William K. Everson, Oswell Blakeston, Peter Cowie, Anthony Slide, Ivan Butler and Gordon Gow, as well as soliciting special articles by such film industry figures as James Mason, Michael Balcon, Cecil B. De Mille and Alfred Hitchcock. He also showed a keen interest in technical advances such as CinemaScope. "Personally, I have nothing against these screens of increased area, no matter what proportions they may be," he noted in 1954. "In fact, always within reason, I admit I'm prejudiced in their favour."^[5]

In 1963, for the 20th edition, Macdonald altered the annual's format, reducing it in size and doubling the price to 25s. ("With no further savings in production costs being possible," explained Speed, "the alternative we faced to raising the price was the discontinuance of the annual altogether."^[6]) This new look only lasted for three years after which Macdonald dropped the title. After a 12-month hiatus, Speed returned, now under the aegis of W.H. Allen, with a catch-up edition that covered a two-year period. This volume, published at the end of 1967, also inaugurated a distinctive 'landscape' re-design that lasted into the early 1980s.

As he turned 60, Speed found himself threatened by perhaps the most ironic fate that could befall a film critic. "This has been a happier cinematic and otherwise more satisfactory year for me than last – or, come to that, the several prior to it," he observed in Film Review's 1973 edition. "Last year's Film Review had to be completed as a sort of race against rapidly increasing blindness (in fact the actual completion of the book, all the proof reading, final checking and other important end work had to be done for me); but now, after a most happily successful operation, I can see further and clearer than I have done for years."^[7]

In the mid-1980s Speed, by then in his seventies, took on co-editor James Cameron-Wilson, who would eventually graduate to editing the book on his own before handing over to Michael Darvell and Mansel Stimpson in 2007. The annual was published in latter years by Columbus Books, Virgin Books, Reynolds & Hearn and, starting in 2011, Signum Books.

Speed's work was by no means confined to What's On and Film Review. In 1946, for example, he published The Londoner Annual as a spin-off from What's On, but this venture failed to initiate a series as Film Review had done. He edited The Western Film Annual from 1950 to 1956, then the retitled Western Film and TV Annual until 1962. With Cameron-Wilson, he also devised The Moviegoer’s Quiz Book in 1985. Among his earliest What's On pseudonyms were J. Lilywhite Haffner (for book reviews) and Frederick Deeps; he was still using the latter for shorter critiques in Film Review in the 1990s. And among his enduring bugbears as a film critic were films of inordinate length, foul language, and the increasingly inflated costs of film production.

Recognition

In March 1991 Speed was honoured by the London Film Critics' Circle. "I was considerably moved," he wrote in that year’s Film Review annual, "when, at a little ceremony at the Ritz Hotel in London, my fellow critics saw fit to present me with a special award for long service to the film industry. That award, now facing me as I write this, is something I shall always treasure."^[1]

Twice married, F. Maurice Speed died in London on 29 August 1998.

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