Biography

British director Walter Forde started his show-business career on the stage of the music halls of northern England. He entered the film business as a screenwriter but became an actor in 1920, in a series of two-reel comedies he wrote himself. He spent some time in Hollywood, but not much happened and he came back to Britain in 1925. He went to work for Gainsborough and began directing. The studio was impressed with the results, and began to hand him its "A"-list projects. Several of his films, such as The Ghost Train (1931) and The Gaunt Stranger (1931), were well received by critics. He worked in a variety of genres, mostly comedies, but he turned out the occasional thriller or mystery. His star began to wane during the war years, and his postwar films didn't live up to his pre-war ones. He made his last film in 1949.

He died in 1987 at age 84 in Los Angeles, California.
- IMDb mini biography by: frankfob2@yahoo.com

Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, he was the son of repertory actors and showed no inclination for acting until he became a music hall comedian. Attracted to films in 1919, he made a short film for Zodiac Films, followed by a series of six two-reel comedies for Windsor Studios in Catford in 1921. There, he developed a slapstick type character called Walter, whose trademark were Oxford bags (trousers) and a straw hat. Walter's Wining Ways (1921) was considered the best of these, but it wasn't until later years that his comedy talent was recognised. He went to America between 1923 and 1925, making film comedies for Universal. He soon tired of American methods and returned to England where he made more two- reelers and two feature films, Wait and See and What Next (both with Mabel Poulton), with scripts written by himself and which he also directed. When talkies arrived, he became exclusively a director, making some 30 films, the last being Cardboard Cavalier, starring comedian Sid Field. In 1947, he directed what many considered to be his finest film, Master of Bankdam, shot on location at Marsden, near Huddersfield, and starring Tom Walls, Jimmy Handley, David Tomlinson, Stephen Murray and Dennis Price.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tonyman 5