Film producer; Born October 19, 1920; Died on July 31, 2009 HARRY Alan Towers, who has died aged 88, was one of British cinema's most colourful producers. He made more than 100 films, including the popular Fu Manchu series with Christopher Lee in the 1960s.
He started in radio in partnership with his mother in the 1940s, making and selling series internationally, including one with John Gielgud as Sherlock Holmes, Ralph Richardson as Watson and Orson Welles as Moriarty.
As an independent film and television producer, he worked with other such figures as Vincent Price and Charlton Heston. Silver-tongued, Towers had a wide range of contacts and it is suggested links to John F Kennedy via Kennedy's brother-in-law, the actor Peter Lawford.
He was born in London in 1920, acted as a child and began writing for radio while in the RAF during the Second World War. After the war he and his mother, Margaret Miller Towers, set up their own company Towers of London, which became his launchpad for a career in film and television. They were in at the start of ITV and made numerous series, including the ground-breaking costume drama The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1955-56).
By 1965, Towers was a force in British films, writing and producing the Agatha Christie adaptation Ten Little Indians and The Face of Fu Manchu, the first of five films he made with Christopher Lee as the fictional oriental villain.
He relocated to Canada and managed to wring a few more pounds from franchises that seemed to have run their course, bringing Michael Caine back in two instalments of the Harry Palmer story - Bullet to Beijing (1995) and Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996).
Towers made no fewer than three different versions of Ten Little Indians, shooting a 1974 version in Iran with Richard Attenborough and Oliver Reed. Towers kept going while others faltered and he pioneered the use of cheap locations in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.
He is survived by his wife, the actress Maria Rohm, who appeared in many of his films.
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