* STIRLING GILLESPIE (SCOTTISH 1908 - 1993),
TORWOOD, ROTHESAY
watercolour, signed
23cm x 30cm
Mounted, framed and under glass
Note: James Gillespie Jnr was one of four children brought up in a world of cinema. His father, James senior was a missionary, evangelist and tenor before joining JJ Bennell as a silent film commentator in Aberdeen the early 1900’s. Gillespie senior moved his family to Rothesay around 1913 to manage the island’s Palace Cinema, for whom he made topicals of local events and with religious and temperance undertones. One of his films starred his son James coming out of a shop with a bottle of whisky, followed by his younger sister who was laden with all the groceries that could be bought for the same cost as the alcohol. James Gillespie Jnr was one of four children brought up in a world of cinema. His father, James senior was a missionary, evangelist and tenor before joining JJ Bennell as a silent film commentator in Aberdeen the early 1900’s. Gillespie senior moved his family to Rothesay around 1913 to manage the island’s Palace Cinema, for whom he made topicals of local events and with religious and temperance undertones. One of his films starred his son James coming out of a shop with a bottle of whisky, followed by his younger sister who was laden with all the groceries that could be bought for the same cost as the alcohol. Stirling Gillespie (as he was known professionally) started in journalism first at the Rothesay Express, then the Daily Record, through which he met J Blake Dalrymple who was to bring Gillespie into his film company Elder Dalrymple Productions. Hired to cover the company’s literary and photographic concerns, Gillespie also became involved in the making of films. In 1936 J C Elder and Dalrymple decided to take the company out on Dalrymple’s yacht to make educational films around the world. Gillespie was to act as press correspondent for the Daily Record coverage of the trip. His cabin aboard the yacht was completely fitted out as a developing and printing studio. However, the trip was curtailed prematurely by the Spanish Civil War, so that the only substantial filming to be completed was of a later voyage to the Baltic. In 1937 Gillespie and Dalrymple undertook an overland expedition from Cape Town to Cairo making educational films as they went. Gillespie taking photographs and film, recorded the expedition in a book "Celluloid Safari" and with the film Land of the White Rhino (1939). After the Second World War was over, Gillespie was to make only one more film with Elder Dalrymple "Perchance to Sail" (1947) in which he starred as a young artist at sea. He was then, until his death, to pursue a highly successful career as a watercolour landscape painter.