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Vale John Howard Reid

John Howard Reid’s friends and associates are saddened to discover his death from prostate
complications, after a short hospitalisation. John had been part of the Australian movie
enthusiast scene for sixty years.
While getting his arts degree at Sydney University, he ran a film society which, among other
events, mounted an impressive, near complete retrospective of the work of Elia Kazan at a
time when the director’s stand on the HUAC hearings made him a controversial choice.
Giving up the security of a public service job, John operat-
ed a magazine retailing business which he expanded into
publishing. His glamour mags made him a front line battler
in the censorship battle and he was able to piggyback
Australian Film Guide his movie magazine on those, with
production values that the then proliferating litho publica-
tions could no way match. Never welcomed by the estab-
lishment, his criticism was still published in newspapers
and magazines locally and in the U.S., England, India and
France, notably covering the careers of directors Henry
Hathaway and Robert Aldrich.
John also produced the ambitious Film Index which got a
long way into documenting world production and was the
forerunner of his series of seventy Film Index books, some
of which he published under the name of Tom Howard, the
fictional police hero of his admired series of detective
novels. Those were at one stage under consideration for
filming with John Ewart.
We collaborated on “The Man Who Ate Films ; the Life & Films of Michael Curtiz” and
running Sydney Film Fair, for some years a focal point of movie enthusiast activity, with
off-shoots in Melbourne and Newcastle. He was never able to sell me his admiration for Maria
Montez and Alice Faye but he did reveal the gleaming nocturnal world of Dolores del Rio and
Mexican noir to me. John learned Spanish to explore those.
In with all this he and artist wife Margaret managed to raise daughters Joanne and Donna.
With the demand generated by DVD, John Reid’s widely circulated books made him one of
the most conspicuous figures in film writing in Australia and beyond. He will be missed.
Barrie Patterson

Laurie Taylor

It is with sadness that we record the death in July of Laurie Taylor, the result of a motoring
accident. Laurie resided in Rainbow Beach, Queensland, and would have been well-known
to many RD readers. He was a keen film collector and home showman, he was 82.

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