(5 May 1922 - 4 April 2020)
Launched in 1939, Adelphi Films was taken over in 1948 by Arthur Dent who made it a family company of independent British film producers and distributors. David Dent, who has died at the age of 97, was the son of the firm’s founder, Arthur Abrahams. He was born Cecil David Abrahams, but his father changed the family name to Dent after a village in Yorkshire he particularly liked. David trained as a lawyer and after the war worked for the barrister and novelist Henry Cecil. In 1949 he joined Adelphi, producing low-budget films, distributing them and titles from other sources, running the company with his brother Stanley (who died in 2012). The firm’s production arm, Advance Films, made over thirty films during the 1940s and ’50s, mostly comedies, featuring stars of the day. From 2009 the British Film Institute has been restoring them for DVD. As a producer David Dent was responsible for Skimpy in the Navy (1949), with Max Bygraves, Let’s Go Crazy with The Goons, My Death Is a Mockery with Donald Houston, My Wife’s Lodger and Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary?, both with Diana Dors, The Great Game, a football comedy with James Hayter, Intimate Relations, the first British ‘X’ film, based on Cocteau’s Les Parents Terribles, Don’t Blame the Stork with Ian Hunter, What Every Woman Wants with William Sylvester, The Happiness of Three Women with Petula Clark, You Lucky People! with Tommy Trinder, Fun at St Fanny’s with Fred Emney and Stars in Your Eyes (1956), a musical with Pat Kirkwood, Bonar Colleano, Nat Jackley and Dorothy Squires, David Dent’s last film production. One of his best pictures was The Crowded Day, depicting life in a department store with Joan Rice and Vera Day. David Dent was married to the TV producer Josḗ Crayson who died in 2015. They have a son, Jonathan, and two daughters, Carey and Louise. Adelphi Films is now managed by Arthur Dent’s granddaughter Kate Lees.
MICHAEL DARVELL
