Geoffrey Malins

En route Malins gave evidence to the Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry in Australia and “watched D.W. Griffiths [sic] at work directing scenes in an old Spanish setting”. He also shot extensive footage of the trip and gave a series of lectures. Malins published an account of the motorcycle journey in 1931 entitled 'Going Further'. In the 1930s Malins settled in South Africa.

He was a director and writer, known for London Melody (1930), The Girl from Downing Street (1918) and The Scourge (1922). He was married to Phyllis Ward, Ena Beaumont and Caroline Saywell.

In November 1926, Malins commenced an attempt to journey round the world by motorcycle and sidecar accompanied by Charles Oliver. The pair rode bikes Malins nicknamed 'Pip' and 'Squeak'. Malins described the objects of the expedition as being “to create a record for, and demonstrate the reliability of British Motor Cycles, to investigate the position of British films in the various countries traversed; and to secure a film of the whole trip”. Together with Jimmy Baxter, the pair set out from London travelling through Europe, the Middle and Far East, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii and San Francisco to New York. The team returned successfully to London in December 1927.

In 1922 Malins was involved in an attempt to fly around the world, in a team including Wing Commander Norman Macmillan and led by Major Wilfred Blake. The group flew successfully as far as India but no further. A follow up attempt the following year was also unsuccessful.

Malins published an account of his wartime filming in 1920 entitled How I Filmed the War. The book conveys the extremely dangerous conditions under which Malins worked (though it also omits reference to McDowell). In it Malins described his own feelings towards the Battle of the Somme's initial reception in Britain:

In January 1919, Malins founded the Garrick Film Company. The company produced at least three films, directed by Malins: Patricia Brent, Spinster (depicting a German air attack on London and promoted as 'the air raid film'), The Greater Love and The Golden Web. The Golden Web had a plot based around the discovery of a gold mine, but the film failed, and the company went into liquidation in August the following year. Malins made at least half a dozen features and several more shorts with London-born actress Gladys Mary Peterkin Mitchell (1892-1986; “Ena Beaumont”), a partner at Garrick to whom he was briefly married.

In June 1918, Malins was awarded an OBE. The citation commended his work as official photographer “in circumstances of great difficulty and danger.”

The pinnacle of the footage shot by Malins and his assistant John McDowell in 1916 is represented in the feature The Battle of the Somme. The huge success of the film led to the release of The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks but Malins' work at the front was hampered by increasing ill health. He was invalided out of the army in June 1918.

1915 saw the release of a number of song films shot by Malins. These were silent films based on well known tunes such as Abide with Me and On the Banks of Allan Water, designed to be shown with live singers providing a musical accompaniment. Late the same year Malins received a War Office appointment to act as an official cameraman. He was given an honorary rank and sent to the front with an assistant.

Prior to the outbreak of the First World War, Malins joined the British arm of the Gaumont Film Company. In the autumn of the 1914, the company sent him to Belgium to record footage of the Belgian army in action.

Malins was born in Hastings, Sussex, the son of a hairdresser. Starting his career as a photographer, he secured a position in 1910 with the Croydon-based Clarendon Film Company.

Geoffrey Malins was born on November 18, 1886 in Castle, Hastings, Sussex, England as Arthur Herbert Malins.