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Val Guest Biography

Val Guest

Biography

When his acting career fell into decline, Londoner Val Guest worked as a journalist in England, then moved to Hollywood, where he wrote his own columns and hacked away as a tipster for Walter Winchell. Returning to London, he churned out scripts for such comic talents as Will Hay, the Crazy Gang and Arthur Askey, developing a talent for combining laughs with thrills. He made his directorial bow in 1942, subsequently producing and writing many of his own efforts. Guest was an accomplished trend-follower, directing girl-filled musicals, science fictioners, spy melodramas and even such sexploitationers as The Au Pair Girls (1972) Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1973). One historian has commented that Guest the director was far more talented than Guest the screenwriter, an assertion borne out by the fact that his best films--especially The Creeping Unknown (1955), Enemy From Space (1957) and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)--were penned by others. On the other hand, Guest did a commendable job adapting and directing his own novel, 80,000 Suspects. Val Guest is married to actress Yolande Donlan, who starred in several of her husband's films ( Mr. Drake's Duck, They Can't Hang Me etc.) - Hal Erickson, Rovi

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