Now starring in "Genevieve" at Pinewood Studios, he lists the cinema, reading, and theatre-going among his favorite pastimes. He is under contract to the J. Arthur Rank Organisation.

According to Ealing's publicity department, "When John Gregson appeared in the film 'The Titfield Thunderbolt,' he had never driven a car before! He drives a Morris Bull-nose in the 1952 comedy.

"He must have been a quick learner, as after filming finished, he went straight on to star in 'Genevieve,' all about the London to Brighton vintage car run. According to his daughter Mary, he didn't even possess a driving licence at the time!"

(This is at odds with other accounts which suggest Gregson had no driving experience whatsoever when "Genevieve" began filming.)

At the age of nine, Henry Cornelius was a frail, ethereal youth, and a leading light in school dramatics.

He was, par excellence, the talented interpreter of his favorite role - that of an angel in Christmas plays.

Two days before he was due to appear in what was to be a major production of this kind, he caught a severe cold, and his parents decided it would be wiser for him to stay in bed. 

Big, bluff and hearty, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, he is a man of satirical turn of mind who makes comedies (he declares) “…because life would be too depressing otherwise.”

“Things will never get you down,” theorizes Henry Cornelius, “if somewhere in the back of your mind, there is an image of the absurdity of most things made by man.” It is these incongruities which, puffed up, padded, coddled, stretched, rolled out and served up with a spicy sauce, make the main ingredients of his screen comedies.

Henry Cornelius’s professional career began at 18, when, as he put it, "for some extraordinary reason I was excepted by Max Reinhardt to study theater production - a special course of instruction for professional producers, and the first his academy ever gave."

Within two years he was the enfant terrible of the theatrical personalities in Berlin (where his family were living at the time). Soon he was actually producing the minor productions himself at Berlin's West End Schiller Theater. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly.

Then Hitler came, and Cornelius went - to France

An able linguist, he supported himself as a freelance journalist, and finally managed to get a start in the French film industry as an assistant cutter. But even France was a difficult country to live in, and particularly to work in, in those days. And so, since he held a South African passport, he decided to try his luck in England.

At the precise moment that Henry Cornelius landed at Dover, Alexander Korda was signing a contract with Rene Clair to make "The Ghost Goes West."

Rene Clair, master of the cinema, insisted upon having an editor who knew French and not much about the film industry - because he wanted someone who would take advice and not give it.

"Corny" decided that this was a job he must have, "…convinced that his enormous inexperience as a film editor fully qualified him for such a post." He applied and was engaged. After this suspicious start he subsequently worked with Korda on many of the big pictures at Denham and edited "Drums," "Four Feathers," etc., until just before the war, when he joined Cavalcanti in the highly progressive G. P. O. Film Unit.

This documentary experience was to prove of great value to Cornelius. For he spent the first three years of the war organizing much of South Africa's film effort and becoming in due course, Deputy Director of General Smut’s propaganda organization.

This was a fine assignment for a future director-producer. He wrote, directed, acted, produced an edited some fifteen films in English and Afrikans. In addition, he acquired a great deal of administrative experience and organized a network of non-theatrical distribution of films throughout the southern half of Africa which is still in use today.

In 1943 he accepted an offer from Ealing Studios to return to England and worked as one of Michael Balcon's Associate Producers on "Painted Boats," "Hue And Cry," and "It Always Rains On Sunday" (a subject on which he also shared screenplay credit).

At this point he wanted an opportunity to direct a feature film, and was given the assignment of the now-famous "Passport To Pimlico."

Soon he formed an independent production company with Mischa Danischewsky for which he directed and co-wrote "The Galloping Major." In his view, the financial success of the pictures was a vindication of the government’s policy of granting financial aid to independent producers. It was one of many successful ventures which would never have seen the light of day, but for the help but from the National Film Finance Corporation.

Incidentally, it was the success of "The Galloping Major" which made Henry Cornelius’s picture "Genevieve" a practical possibility. He returned the profit made from the earlier picture into production, and "Genevieve," which Cornelius both produced in directed, came to life.

The worldwide success of "Genevieve," which won the British Film Academy's award for the Best British Film of 1953, has now become legend. The picture has already made more than 100 percent profit in England alone, and has been booked and re-booked so many times all over Britain and the continent that it is referred to in the trade papers as the "Cinema’s Charlie's Aunt."

After the fabulous success of "Genevieve," Henry Cornelius looked round for another subject in the same category. He has got it in the Remus production "I Am A Camera." As a stage play "I Am A Camera" was a sensation on Broadway with star Julie Harris, who is now being directed by Cornelius in the film.

The exciting story of the film is based on the short stories by Christopher Isherwood, and known the world over as "The Berlin Stories." The script has a naughty flavor and could not be more to Henry Cornelius’s liking. It is a welcome sight to sit on the set and watch Cornelius directing his stars, Julie Harris, Laurence Harvey and Shelley Winters. They respond to his direction like a gently flowing brook which when it ripples over a stone, stops and get the idea that what is at the bottom of the man, is the right way. He also takes as much trouble with feature artistes and "crowd" artistes, that they all respond to the treatment, knowing full well that Cornelius does know what he's talking about.

The story is fascinating, particularly as it deals with Berlin in the 1930’s, which is the period in which he was attempting his first theatrical ventures.

"When I started directing pictures at the time of ‘Passport,’ I was always concerned with enormous crowds, and much to the dismay of my cameraman, there were never less than at least a dozen people on the screen at the same time - that was in the days of the past small screen. Since then, I have become bored and tired with ‘situation’ comedy and am more and more interested in stories dealing with human relationships. "Genevieve" was my first step in that direction. "I Am A Camera" is yet another step dealing mainly with two rather than four characters. So now that the screens have come wide and can hold scores of people comfortably, I am down to dealing with two characters!"

Sometime in 1955 Henry Cornelius hopes to make a picture based on some of John Collier's short stories. Collier wrote the screenplay for "I Am A Camera" and these two brilliant man collaborated successfully and happily in their work, which is an added incentive to do more together in the interest of British films.