A bright boy, Cyril developed an early interest both in chess and sleight-of-hand card magic, publishing a routine in a magicians’ magazine at the age of 16.

[i] In his two years at Yale, Endfield’s attitude to his studies was ‘rather lackadaisical’ (his own description in a letter to Jarrico), although he read widely, and developed an extra-curricular interest in new science fiction.

At age 23 he joined the League as a teacher, before spending a year directing an amateur theatre group in Montreal, where he met writers and playwrights including – briefly – Clifford Odets.

But his first film, Inflation (1943), a well-regarded propaganda short approved by the Office of War Information, was quickly withdrawn from distribution following criticism from the Chamber of Commerce.

Screenwriter Martin Berkeley named him in September 1951 as known to have been involved with left wing political associations (at the New Theatre League in New York in the late 1930s, and in Hollywood in 1943).

[ii] Endfield was one of a number of American filmmakers with left-wing associations who moved to Europe in the early fifties because of the blacklist (notably Joseph Losey, John Berry, Jules Dassin, and Carl Foreman).

It was in 1960, when he was offered the direction of Mysterious Islandby Columbia Pictures, that he decided that he needed to clear himself by appearing before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in Washington.

Yet some of his fellow American exiles were not impressed by his action, which allowed him to direct Mysterious Island (1961), at a time when he and Stanley Baker were working to try and set up an ambitious production of Zulu on location in South Africa.

This was a step up for directors such as Endfield, and followed in the tradition of the successful pictures associated with rising producer Stanley Kramer in the late forties, notably Champion (1949) and Home of the Brave (1949).

Endfield put heart and soul into the project, which was filmed on location in Phoenix, Arizona, and which starred Lloyd Bridges, Frank Lovejoy, Katherine Ryan and Art Smith.

There were disagreements over the script, but the story was a powerful one of a decent, family man (Lovejoy) whose desperation for work leads to an ill-fated, criminal alliance with a psychopath (Bridges).

[iii] Early in his time in London Endfield worked without credit for the American producer Hannah Weinstein, directing three pilot episodes for a television series called Colonel March Investigates, with Boris Karloff.

The subject, from a short story by John Kruse, concerned the trucking industry, and the short-haul transport of ballast, by a private company that stokes the ultra-competitive behaviour of its drivers.

A publicity still of the time described it as a ‘drama of men who battle for their livelihood in ten-ton trucks.’[iv] Stanley Baker plays the driver (and ex-con) Tom Yately, while the strong cast includes Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins, William Hartnell, and Wilfred Lawson, together with, in small but significant roles, emerging British actors Sean Connery and Patrick McGoohan.

Sea Fury drew on similar aspects of the world of work, in this case following the efforts of men on salvage boats off the coast of Spain; the action sequences attracted particular critical attention.

With a script by John Prebble, Endfield and Baker (co-producers of the film) eventually achieved financing from Joseph Levine, as well as from Paramount.

The resulting film uses the epic scenery of the Drakensberg Mountains and the Royal National Park, establishing the beleaguered colonial garrison and then elegantly depicting the hour-long battle.

For all the lack of historical context, and developed characters on the Zulu side, the film avoids jingoism, and presents the British officers as having a final sense of self-disgust at their survival.

His last film as a director was Universal Soldier (1971), with George Lazenby, while he wrote the screenplay (with Anthony Storey) for Zulu Dawn (d. Douglas Hickox, 1979), and a novel with the same title (also 1979).

[ix] The science fiction writer Brian Aldiss, who worked on several unrealised projects with the director, made his own comment: ‘I admired Cy.

In the UK he was involved as director of several theatrical performances, the most notable of which was the run, for over a year (1962–63), of Neil Simon’s play Come Blow Your Horn, in London’s West End.

The set was marketed to commemorate the World Championship match between Bobby Fischer of the United States and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, in Reykjavik in 1972.

Also, in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Endfield became intensely interested in devising, financing and marketing a hand-held mechanism that was essentially an early form of word processor.

[i] In 1964 Pierre Rissient, a French critic, cinėaste and sometime producer, drew more attention to the director’s work by organizing a partial retrospective of six of Endfield’s films at the Cinémathèque française.

But he had also received critical recognition there: Raymond Durgnat, a highly respected writer on British cinema, wrote positively of Endfield’s work in his A Mirror for England (1970).

He listed thirteen examples, released between 1947 and 1951, including films directed by Robert Rossen, Abraham Polonsky, Jules Dassin, John Huston, Joseph Losey and Cy Endfield.

[iii] Late in life Endfield gave a long interview to American writer Jonathan Rosenbaum, a film critic who was an early champion of the director’s work.

Rosenbaum referred to Endfield’s ‘remarkable noir efforts,’ and wrote of ‘a poetry of thwarted ambitions, dark, social insights, and awesomely orchestrated struggle.’[iv] Despite ill-health, Endfield accepted an invitation to attend the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado in 1992, where he was awarded the festival’s Silver Medallion and was interviewed by National Public Radio’s Howie Movshowitz about The Sound of Fury, Zulu and the effect of the blacklist.

Since Endfield’s death in Shipston-on Stour, in the UK, on April 16, 1995 (aged 80), a number of writers have continued to explore political and other aspects of film noir, and to credit his contribution.

[1] This profile draws on Brian Neve, The Many Lives of Cy Endfield: Film Noir, the Blacklist and Zulu (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015).