Andrew Mollo

Andrew Mollo entered the movie business by accident rather than through any career plan, and became a co-director and co-producer on his first film project. Born in England in 1930, he displayed a keen interest in military history and uniforms during childhood, and later became an art student. In 1956, Mollo was approached by aspiring filmmaker Kevin Brownlow for assistance on a proposed feature film entitled It Happened Here. Brownlow planned to make a movie depicting what life in England would have been like had Germany successfully invaded the country in 1940. Mollo was supposed to advise Brownlow on matters of costume design, but proved so fascinated with and enthusiastic over the project that he ended up as Brownlow's collaborator, sharing the director and producer credits on the movie (as well as appearing in it), which took eight years to complete. When It Happened Here was finally shown in the mid-'60s, it was praised for many of its elements, including Mollo's work in costuming and his staging of the military scenes. Mollo subsequently served as a technical advisor on the military aspects of David Lean's Doctor Zhivago. He later collaborated with Brownlow on the movie Winstanley, set in the wake of the English Reformation, but during the 1970s Mollo left the movie business to write and publish a series of books devoted to military uniforms and history. He did find time to serve as a technical consultant on John Sturges' World War II thriller The Eagle Has Landed (1977), but was otherwise absent from the field for more than ten years. He returned to films as a production designer during the 1980s on such pictures as Dance With a Stranger (1985) and No Surrender (1985), and later worked on the feature-length made-for-television productions of Sharpe's Enemy, Sharpe's Honour, etc., based on Bernard Cornwell's fictional British Army hero of the Napoleonic era. He was also the production designer on the late-'90s Horatio Hornblower series that was shown on A&E in America. Mollo served as a military consultant on the movies Conspiracy (2001), The Grey Zone (2001), and The Pianist (2002). His younger brother is the Academy Award-winning costume designer John Mollo.

~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide