Maurice Ostrer was born in 1896 in the East End of London, the youngest
of the five sons of Nathan Ostrer, a jeweller's salesman who had left
the Ukraine to escape anti-Semitic persecution in the 1870s. In the
1920s, the Ostrers, brothers Maurice, Mark and Isidoee, were responsible
for a number of company flotation’s, the most important of which
was the Gaumont-British Picture
Corporation in 1927. Having created a circuit of over 350 cinemas,
the Ostrers turned their hand to film production. The old Gaumont studio
at Lime Grove, Shepherd's Bush, was rebuilt and Michael
Balcon was appointed to carry out an ambitious production programme.
In October 1941 the Ostrers sold their shares to J.
Arthur Rank, though it was not until 1944 that the conflicting interests
in the corporation were sufficiently reconciled for Rank to assume complete
control of the Gaumont-British empire.
Maurice's role in the corporation was hazy, but by the mid-1930s he
was active on the production side at Shepherd's Bush. Balcon left for
MGM in December 1936, but it was not until 1939 that Maurice assumed
the credit `In Charge of Production' on Will Hay's Ask
a Policeman (1939).Ostrer’s greatest success was The
Wicked Lady (1945), but afterwards its director Leslie
Arliss was lured away by Alexander Korda
to continue his collaboration with Ted Black.
Val Guest, Frank
Launder and Sidney Gilliat had already
gone, and Ostrer was now dangerously dependent on two men who were outstanding
cameramen but less competent as directors: Arthur Crabtree and Bernard
Knowles.
Rank were uncomfortable with the responsibility for a series of salacious
films which sat ill with his Methodist principles and his reputation
for moral responsibility and a successor to The Wicked Lady (1945) was
vetoed, and little was done to promote the international distribution
of Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945). Rumours of Ostrer's increasing
discontent with the bureaucracy of the Rank Organization and Rank's
dissatisfaction at Gainsborough's low level of production were followed
in May 1946 by an announcement that Maurice Ostrer was to resign when
his contract ran out After Gainsborough R.J. Minney and the Ostrers
formed an independent production company, Premier Productions, and recruited
Leslie Arliss to direct Idol of Parts (1948) to the Gainsborough formula
of bodice-ripping flamboyance. It was produced for less than £100,000,
but the film failed to make enough to keep the company afloat. Maurice
Ostrer subsequently left the film industry to join Isidore in taking
control of the textiles conglomerate Illingworth Morris. There were
two lesser known brothers, David who was engaged in European sales and
scenario editor Harry.
