Sir John Henry Harris Davis CVO (10 November 1906 – 27 May 1993) was an English businessman and accountant.
[4] He was working as an accountant for a Welsh coal and steel company in Birmingham when he met Oscar Deutsch, a leading metal merchant based in the city who had begun to diversify into cinema ownership.
According to a 1952 book about Rank by Alan Wood: John Davis cannot be called a popular figure in the film industry.
[9]Wood went on to say "It is hard to imagine that anyone else could have matched the achievement of John Davis in straightening out and cutting down in the days when the Rank Organisation faced disaster.
[14][15][16] Lewis Gilbert said Davis was "a monster" who "made so many enemies" but he always kept his word and never cheated people out of profits or a deal.
Incidentally, JD never offered any opinion on scripts or anything like that but - this may be my imagination - it was my impression that, after he married Dinah Sheridan, he took more interest in production.
He was disliked intensely by almost everyone on the creative side of the British film industry because he was a bully who brought an accountant’s rationale to bear on every artistic decision.
As a result, the pictures lost their identity and, like the Europuddings of later years, became bland midAtlantic tosh that ended up pleasing no one.