S.C. Browning

S.C. Browning (b. Mandalay, Burma, 17/12/1898 - d. English Channel, 29/05/1940) was a sound engineer.

Biography

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 in the Bay of Bengal. 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. Browning married Hilda M. Perrins in Exeter, but they were divorced in 1937.

In November 1929 S.C. Browning came to South Africa on board the Carnarvon Castle. 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. This would have made him the country’s first professional film recordist. 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. During his time in South Africa he was also a keen horseman and polo player.

After 1938 Browning disappears from the South African film scene and that year he married Elizabeth Klenker in England. During World War II, Captain Spence Colin Browning was in the Royal Artillery and part of a sound ranging battery, responsible for determining the coordinates of a hostile battery using data received from the sound of its guns. During the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, he and a few others were sent out in the hope that they would be able to locate navy vessels and thus arrange for 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)