John and James Woolf - Appraisal

Appraisal

In 1971, film critic Alexander Walker wrote about James Woolf:

was a rarity in British films at the time, and would still be so if he was alive today: a man of taste and judgement who loved craftsmanship and supported a director instead of suffocating him or using him as a surrogate talent for the film he himself would have liked to direct had he dared... He was an obsessional filmmaker, loving the wheeling and dealing, relishing the juggling with human talents that it involved, and taking pleasure in spotting youthful proteges and promoting their careers, thereby gaining a vicarious satisfaction from their success that was lacking in his own basically lonely nature.

Filmmaker Bryan Forbes concurred:

He was a midwife for talent and smacked many of us into life... He had a quick mind than panned and found the nuggets before other prospectors on the trail had even arrived at the mine... Jimmy was a shield, quite fearless when tackling the front offices. He knew everybody and he was rich enough in his own right not to have to depend on the largesse of others when it came to getting a project off the ground. He had taste, taste in actors, taste in subject matter... There was a sadness about him at times because he had demons to fight, and in the end he died alone.