By Mark Cerulli
Tom
Johnson, noted Hammer Film expert and longtime friend of many a Hammer star,
passed away at his home in Shillington, PA on July 11th. He was 76.
Tom’s
best-known work was his 1995 book, Hammer Films – An Exhaustive Filmography
(co-written with Debra Del Vecchio) and exhaustive it was with over 400 pages
covering every film the studio made from the 1930s onward. He wrote other books like The Christopher
Lee Filmography (co-written with Mark A. Miller and Jimmy Sangster), The
Films of Oliver Reed (with Susan D. Cowie) and The Mummy in Fact and
Fiction (with Susan D. Cowie) and others. His 2015 tribute to Christopher Lee for Little Shoppe of Horrors –
“Christopher Lee – He May Not Have Been… Who You Thought He Was” won the Rondo
Award for Best Horror Article.
I
met Tom when I covered the 1997 Midnight Marquee Hammer Convention for
Cinemax. Along with spending time with
Caroline Munro, Freddie Francis and Jimmy Sangster, I got to know Tom. Very smart, with a dry wit and an
encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, he was easy to befriend. Tom was close to
many Hammer actors and filmmakers, most noticeably Christopher Lee and Peter
Cushing. I will forever be in his debt
for his getting Lee to sign my UK one-sheet to Scars of Dracula. Tom said when he unfolded it for the star,
Lee rolled his eyes and mumbled, “Oh my God.” The Count, it seems, was not a
fan of the film!
Along
with his literary efforts, Tom taught and coached high School track. (He was a
medal-winning runner himself back in the day.) An avowed Luddite, Tom didn’t own a computer,
never had an e-mail account and never once browsed the web. I remember telling
him how great it would be if he got an email address. His response? “Nah.” Old school to his core, he
would write his books by hand and his wonderful British writing partner Sue
Cowie would type them up and bring them into the 21st Century.
As
years went by, Tom’s health got worse and he seldom ventured far from his PA
home, but we would talk on the phone. He
took great delight in my collecting tales – the items that got away and also the
things I managed to get, especially anything expensive. Tom laughed uproariously when I told him about
buying a rather large helicopter model from You Only Live Twice sight
unseen and my wife’s less than enthusiastic reaction. He made ME laugh when he recounted buying an ultra-rare
window card for 1935’s Mad Love at an antique store, putting it under his
mattress to “straighten it out,” then FORGETTING it for years! When he finally removed it, the brittle paper
was in tatters. Ouch.
Tom
stoically faced his mounting health problems with his sense of humor and
curiosity unchanged. He was a kind and
gentle man who truly loved the art of filmmaking and was unrivalled in his
knowledge of the entire Hammer canon. He
leaves behind seven books, countless articles and an army of people who will
truly miss him. Thank you, dear Tom.
You
can buy Tom’s books at https://mcfarlandbooks.com/?s=Tom+Johnson&search_id=product&post_type=product
Photos
kindly supplied by Dick Klemensen at Little Shoppe of Horrors.