Robert Hartford-Davis

Did You Know?

• He began his career as an electrician and clapper boy in a South London film studio.
• He changed his name from William Henry Davis to avoid confusion with the poet William Henry (W. H.) Davies.

Career

Robert Hartford-Davis began his career in the 1950s directing short films before moving into talent representation, counting Roy Rogers among his clients in England. His first feature as a director was the crime film Crosstrap (1962), based on a John Lymington novel. The movie stirred controversy due to its violent content but performed well commercially. For many years it was believed lost and appeared on the BFI 75 Most Wanted list until it resurfaced in the 2010s and received a home media release.

Another of his films, Nobody Ordered Love (1971), remains missing and is still on that list as of 2026. Hartford-Davis built a career in B-movies, often writing his own scripts and drawing inspiration from current events. As one observer noted, he could tackle any provocative subject and produce a genre piece. He himself believed that even the most outlandish story could find commercial success.

He started with crime films but later moved into horror, directing Corruption (1968), Incense for the Damned (1971), and The Fiend (1972). He also worked in comedy and sexploitation. Hartford-Davis claimed he only lost money on a single project in his entire career, and when the industry slowed in the early 1970s, he began self-financing his films. In 1972, he went to the United States to direct the blaxploitation film Black Gunn, adapting a script he had originally set in London.

Its success led him and producer John Heyman to make another blaxploitation film, The Take, starring Billy Dee Williams. He eventually relocated to the U.S. permanently, directing episodes of the television series Dog and Cat and Family.

Personal life

In 1943, Robert Hartford-Davis married Betty Hale, with whom he had three daughters—Jean, Marian, and Penelope—over the following decade. Betty co-wrote the play I'm Not Bothered and an experimental work about Christ’s trial, We the Guilty. The couple divorced in 1957. Hartford-Davis later married three or four more times. He also had a son, Scott Hartford-Davis, born in the late 1950s. On June 12, 1977, he died of a stroke while three days into directing the TV movie Murder in Peyton Place (1977); another director finished the film.