Obituary

Ronnie Fox-Rogers, Camera Operator/DoP

We have received the following from the desk of Mike Fox:

It is with great sadness that I have to announce the death of my brother, Ronnie Fox-Rogers, who died of complications from a chest infection on Tuesday, January 30 last, at his nursing home in Pagham, West Sussex. He was 76.

Ronnie started in the business in the mid-Fifties as a clapper-boy working on, among others, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, Tiger Bay, and Tarzan's Greatest Adventure. As a 1AC he worked on many features and commercials with John Wilcox, Freddie Francis, and Dicky Dickinson, most notably Night Must Fall, Alfie, City of the Dead, The Black Torment and The Devil's Daffodil. He made his break as camera operator in 1968 with Walter Lassally on Joanna and continued with him on to The Adding Machine and Le Mans. During that period, by then well-established as an operator on commercials and 'semi-resident' with companies like Augusta Productions and James Garret & Partners, he was offered a job as the supervising producer for Five Cities Films, a prominent commercials and documentary outfit based in Bradford. But before the year was out, he was drawn back to London and the camera department. Later, he operated on The Kitchen Toto, When Dinsosaurs Ruled the Earth, and several second-camera and action-unit engagements on The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Superman - The Movie, The Bride, Shaka Zulu, and Tai-Pan. His last film as operator was with Vernon Layton on McVicar.

In the early Eighties, at that time DP'ing documentaries for Sunset & Vine Productions, Ronnie took advantage of an opportunity as resident DoP for Gough-Nurock Productions, a top commercials-producing company in Johannesburg. He stayed in the city for a year, compiling a comprehensive showreel of quality product, and then returned to England. However, he found the industry was changing beyond recognition, and not at all to his liking. So he chose early retirement - to Bognor Regis, of all places, where he lived contentedly selling antique bric-a-bracs and shooting the occasional commercial and 2nd-units, until he developed the ominous symptoms of Alzheimer's. After a year or two his condition worsened considerably, until there was no alternative but to put him into a nursing home. Truth be told, he mightn't even have been much aware of it. Having developed a chest infection just after Christmas, he succumbed to it in the afternoon of January 30 last.

Ronnie was one of the industry's unique characters. Darkly attractive, a cool dresser with a superb physique - which he never lost - he married in 1957 in an on-again-off-again marriage that lasted for fifty-one years. He was also blessed with an extraordinary sense of humour and the ability to charm the pants off anyone - particularly any attractive female cavorting about in front of the camera. Whenever he jumped into his ever-present sports car, a Healey or a Triumph usually, his Clouseau hat clamped firmly on against the slipstream, I always thought of him as a cross between Toad of Toad Hall and Errol Flynn. However, he suffered thankfully short bouts of depression and at times like that offered an antagonist a very short fuse. But most of the time, a talented operator insisting on the highest standards that he worked to himself, he was totally loyal to his crews; and if nothing else he was fun to work with and always kept us laughing.

Having begun to specialise in underwater filming, he was famous for fighting and killing an attacking shark with a bowie-knife - in full view of the unit shooting in the West Indies. Another time, still filming underwater, he rescued a well known macho commercials director who, having lost his breathing apparatus, had panicked. Wrestling him, screaming and kicking, to the dive-boat, Ronnie helped him to a full recovery. Of course, he was never forgiven for it and was never invited to work for the man again.

I know Ron would want to be remembered to a lifeload of his dearest friends in the industry, among them Ray Andrews, Ken Coles, Colin Corby, Jimmy Devis, Frank Elliot, Dennis Fraser, Ginger Gemmell, Renee Glynne, Stuart Harris, Walter Lassally, Vernon Layton, Denis Lewiston, Peter MacDonald, Peter Newbrook, Chris Pinnock, Nic Roeg, Jeremy Sandler, and Jimmy Stilwell. Please forgive any omissions.

My brother will be cremated at a private ceremony in Bognor, and the family requests no calls, donations or flowers. Just that you remember him with a smile.

Ronnie is survived by his wife, Yvonne, daughter, Rochelle, treasured son-in-law, George, three grandchildren, myself, and his devoted nieces, Michele (Plummy) and Danielle.

Mike Fox