H. Lisle Lucoque

(b. Twyford, Berkshire, **/**/1887 – d. Fulham, London, **/11/1925). Director, producer, distributor. H. (Horace) Lisle Lucoque, the son of a tobacco and cigar merchant, came out to South Africa in January 1918 to direct first King Solomon’s Mines (1918) and then Allan Quatermain (1919) for African Film Productions. Early on he seems to have realised the cinematic potential of H. Rider Haggard's work, securing the motion picture rights to all of his books and having already co-directed a version of She (1916), starring Alice Delysia, and also Dawn (1917), based on the author's first novel. The opportunity to film Haggard ‘on location’ must have been enormously appealing.

Though King Solomon’s Mines was filmed in 1918, Lucoque had an earlier connection with African Film Productions. A poster for the film Gloria (1916), adapted from a novel by Charlotte Mansfield by Harold M. Shaw and directed by Lorimer Johnston, indicates that it was produced by AFP, but includes the name of Lucoque Films (93 & 95 Wardour Street, London). As Lucoque was also a distributor, it is likely that the firm handled the distribution of the film in England.

Amongst his most notable British productions are a version of Lorna Doone (1920) and Castles in Spain (1920), both starring actress Bertie Gordon (who had acted in his South African films) and both scripted by his wife Nellie Foster, whom he had married in 1911. His last film as director was Where the Rainbow Ends (1921). Though initially he had his own studio, first in London’s Ebury Street and then near Kew Bridge, over a period of time production fell off and when, in October 1925, the firm of Lucoque-Taylor went into bankruptcy, he committed suicide. He was only 38. (FO)