S.C. Browning

S.C. Browning (1898-1940) was a sound engineer.

(b. Mandalay, Burma, 17/12/1898 - d. English Channel, 29/05/1940). Sound engineer. Spence Colin Browning was born in Burma, where his father was an officer in the Indian Army. In fact, between 1906 and 1913, Lt.-Col. Herbert Arrott Browning was the Chief Commissioner of the Adaman and Nicobar Islands. However, according to the 1901 Census, S.C. Browning was then living in East Dawlish in Devon and by the time of the 1911 Census he was resident in Brighton. In 1923 Spencer C. Browing married Hilda M. Perrins in Exeter, but they were divorced in 1937.

In 1929 S.C. Browning travelled to South Africa. That was the same year that Joseph Albrecht returned from his mission to explore the new sound technology for African Film Productions and as Browning was employed by AFP as a sound engineer, it is likely that Albrecht recruited him. Amongst other films he is known to have worked on the shorts Sarie Marais (1931) and Moedertjie (1931), as well as on the documentaries The Smoke That Thunders (1932) and The Babel of the Kraal (1938), all of them filmed by G.F. Noble and directed by Albrecht. In 1938 he married Elizabeth Klenker in England.

After 1938 Browning disappears from the South African film scene, but during World War II 2nd Lieutenant S.C. Browning turns up in the Royal Horse Artillery and in 1940 Captain Spence Colin Browning is in the Royal Artillery and part of a sound ranging battery. During the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, he and a few others were sent out in the hope that they would locate the navy and be able to arrange a night time embarkation. It is thought that they succeeded in boarding a destroyer that was subsequently sunk with the loss of all hands. (FO)

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