In 1963 he was associate producer for a big-budget Viking epic for Columbia Pictures, The Long Ships with Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier, and then came his involvement with the Beatles.ĭenis O’Dell, far left, at the Apple Corps offices with Paul McCartney, John Lennon and other staff members in 1968.
It was clearly the inspiration for Carry on Sergeant (1958), the film that started the franchise. He was appointed assistant director to Brian Desmond Hurst on Scrooge (1951), starring Alastair Sim, an innovative film with its use of dissolves and overlaps.Īfter working on several features, O’Dell became the associate producer for the comedy Carry on Admiral (1957) with David Tomlinson. He instead became an engineer and was seconded to the New Zealand air force.Īfter the second world war O’Dell became a chauffeur for film executives and used the opportunity to learn about the business. This was not possible because of his colour blindness. On leaving school he worked as a teaboy on the film The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939) and then joined the RAF, hoping to train as a pilot. He was one of nine children, and although he won a scholarship to Kingston grammar school, his parents could not afford to buy the uniform. O’Dell was born in Kensington, London, to Elizabeth (nee Gills) and John O’Dell. “I had seen Lester use multiple cameras and I suggested that.” The film was wrapped up relatively quickly with O’Dell skilfully persuading John Hurt to return to the set even though his patience had been stretched to the limit. “It wasn’t difficult,” he told me in 2002. O’Dell secured that location and demonstrated how the shoot there could be reduced from 12 days to five. Furthermore, his preferred location, the Sheldonian theatre in Oxford, had turned him down. The director Michael Cimino needed another $5m as he wanted to film a lavish ball. United Artists had the bargain of a lifetime, but O’Dell had a harder task in 1980 when the costs of its epic western Heaven’s Gate were spiralling out of control and he was asked as executive producer to rein it in. Paul and Linda McCartney, and Denis O'Dell. “Bud Ornstein told me: ‘These guys won’t last and we want to do it as cheaply and quickly as possible.’ I said I wasn’t interested, but my kids said: ‘Are you serious?’ I immediately took to Richard Lester as he liked taking chances: we shot moving scenes on a train rather than use back projection.” “I didn’t want to make a pop film as usually they are just a vehicle for making money,” he recalled. When the film company United Artists asked him to work with the director Richard Lester on A Hard Day’s Night, initially O’Dell was not keen. Best known for his association with the Beatles, he worked on their first film, A Hard Day’s Night (1964), and was the producer on their television film Magical Mystery Tour (1967). He did not mind that others took the glory that he had made possible. Working in the film industry, Denis O’Dell, who has died aged 98, was a fixer, usually credited as an associate producer or assistant director and ensuring that everything was in place to make the film within budgetary constraints.
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