When the British Film Institute launched its British Filmography website in 2017, my friend Renée Glynne, who has died aged 95, was its poster girl. With a career as a “continuity girl” spanning 60 years, and involvement in around 150 films and television programmes, she was delighted to take centre stage as one of the most prolific women in the British film industry.
John Humphrys interviewed her for the Today radio programme, and the public finally discovered what film enthusiasts had known for years – that Renée was a walking history of British cinema. In her continuity role she sat close to the director making detailed notes on what was in vision – so that scenes could be matched across cuts.
Born in London, to Jacob Galler, a factory manager and ladies’ tailor, and Esta Raitz, a housewife, Renée went to the Skinners’ Company’s school for girls in north London. She started in the film industry in 1943, working as assistant continuity (uncredited) on the film Brief Encounter (1945) before being employed as a production secretary by the producer Gabriel Pascal. One of her jobs for Pascal was visiting George Bernard Shaw to deliver notes during the production of Caesar and Cleopatra (1945).
In the late 1940s she became a continuity girl (she rejected the term “script supervisor”) and was very much, as she put it, “one of the boys”.
She did continuity for the documentary company Verity Films and worked on features for Alliance Film Studios before joining Hammer Film Productions, with whom, between 1949 and 1954, she was kept busy on the company’s brisk noirish second features, signing off with the first of the company’s many horror films, The Quatermass Xperiment, to start a family.
She returned to the film business in the late 50s and worked on continuity there intermittently into the 70s, most notably on the 60s shockers Fanatic and The Nanny, with the Hollywood stars Tallulah Bankhead and Bette Davis respectively.
Renée was rarely out of work, as her efficiency and good humour kept her much in demand. She worked with, among others, Michael Powell on The Boy Who Turned Yellow and James Ivory on Heat and Dust and A Room with a View. Her final credit was on the horror film Room 36 in 2004, after which she taught the craft of continuity for Skillset, a film trainee programme, for several years.
Retirement did not slow her down; an accomplished artist working in various media, she sold her paintings on Bayswater Road in London, right up until last summer. She also regularly attended film festivals and conventions, always accompanied by her dog Spartacus, where she would regale attendees with her often racy tales from film sets.
Renée was adored by everyone who met her. She was warm, witty and remarkably generous with her time, and hundreds of people regarded her as a friend.
Her 1947 marriage to Teddy Glynne ended in divorce, although she and Teddy remained on good terms. She is survived by their two sons, Anthony and Mark, and a granddaughter, Karina.
