William Gerald Forbes Douglas, known to you and me as Bill, was born on April 17, 1934 in Newcraighall, a suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland. His early childhood years were spent under the care of his paternal grandmother. Following her death, he was raised by his father and his father's mother. After growing up in abject, bleak poverty in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Douglas joined the National Service and was posted to Egypt. It was there in 1955 that he met fellow film enthusiast Peter Jewell, forming a friendship that would last the rest of his life and profoundly influence it.
After some time in the 1960s working as an actor, Douglas enrolled in the London International Film School in 1969. While there, he made some student shorts and wrote the screenplay for an autobiographical film called "Jamie." He pitched his project--which would eventually become "My Childhood"--to Films of Scotland but his bid for funding was rejected on the grounds that his project failed to present Scotland as a forward looking nation. Fortunately, the newly-appointed head of production at the British Film Institute, Mamoun Hassan, took an interest in the project and "My Childhood" was filmed in 1972.
Douglas' reputation as a filmmaker is largely based on the excellent films that make up the trilogy. He was also an intensely-devoted collector of materials relating to the early history of cinema. Douglas died of cancer on June 18, 1991 at the age of 57 in Devon, England. His collection formed the basis of the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture, which was opened at Exeter University in 1997.
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