H. Lisle Lucoque

(b. Twyford, Berkshire, **/03/1887 – d. Fulham, London, **/12/1925). Director, producer, distributor. H. (Horace) Lisle Lucoque came out to South Africa to direct first King Solomon’s Mines (1918) and then Allan Quatermain (1919) for African Film Productions. He seems to have had a great admiration for the work of H. Rider Haggard, because prior to this he had already co-directed a version of She starring Alice Delysia (1916) and Dawn (1917), based on Haggard’s first novel. In fact, according to Stage & Cinema, at one stage he held all motion picture rights to the author’s books. The invitation to film Haggard ‘on location’ must have been enormously appealing. Amongst his most notable British productions are a version of Lorna Doone (1920) and Castles in Spain (1920), both scripted by his wife Nellie Foster, whom he 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 1925, the firm of Lucoque-Taylor went into bankruptcy, he committed suicide.

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 it also 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 and in this way came into contact with I.W. Schlesinger. (FO)