Biography
William MacQuitty was a British film producer, writer and photographer. Born in Belfast in 1905, he began his career in banking before working for the Ministry of Information during the Second World War, where he produced documentary films including Out of Chaos (1944) and The Way We Live (1946).
After the war he co-founded London Independent Producers and made a series of feature films, among them Blue Scar (1949), The Beachcomber (1954), Above Us the Waves (1955) and The Black Tent (1956). He is best known for producing A Night to Remember (1958), the Rank Organisation film about the sinking of the Titanic, for which he drew on his childhood memory of seeing the ship launched in Belfast.
MacQuitty later helped establish Ulster Television and turned to writing and photography, publishing books on subjects including ancient Egypt and an autobiography, A Life to Remember (1991). He died in London in 2004.
