Britain's most prestigious director of the mid-1920s, Cutts lost his
place in the order of things after leaving Gainsborough, the company
he helped to found. But he made some big box-office successes during
his brief stay there, notably those which highlighted the magnetic visual
appeal of the Welsh-born matinee idol Ivor
Novello.
Cutts began his career as a marine engineer, but had become a film
exhibitor by 1909. He moved into direction in 1922 and, in his few years
at the top of the tree, was associated with some of the most prominent
figures in the industry at the time, notably Victor
Saville, Alfred
Hitchcock, Herbert Wilcox, Adrian
Brunel and Michael Balcon. His work
with the photogenic and delicately talented American actress, Mae Marsh,
in three films, Flames of Passion (1922), Paddy - the Next Best Thing
(1923) and The
Rat (1925), led to a revival of her popularity in Britain, where
she stayed for some years. The Rat (1925), which also starred Novello
as the scurrilous but loveable Apache dancer of Paris, gave rise to
two popular sequels, projecting Novello in Valentino-style light as
the skilful seducer who sometimes meets his match in spirited ladies
of the aristocracy.
These are expensive-looking productions designed to rival the best
romantic adventure stories of the time from Hollywood and Cutts handles
their sometimes exciting, sometimes wittily amusing developments with
considerable flair, making it surprising that he quickly became such
a pedestrian director when the 1930s came along. Cutts, it seems, was
not a popular man with his fellow-workers. In the words of one, 'he
was jealous of all other directors under contract to Gainsborough.
He seemed to see them as a threat' Hitchcock and Brunel were two to
suffer from this apparent attitude, although Hitchcock, once Cutts'
assistant, was soon in charge of his own films. Cutts, like another
prominent director of the 1920s, George Pearson,
ended his career making short documentary films.
