In peacetime he initially managed live theatres but then took charge of two run-down cinemas in Tottenham Court Road, London, renamed them the Berkeley and La Continentale, and ran them successfully as semi-art houses until they were closed in 1976 for redevelopment.Rive set up offices at the Berkeley to launch Gala Film Distributors in 1952 – the company name inspired by a Bolshoi Ballet picture, Gala Festival, one of a batch of Russian productions that he secured by visiting Moscow. One of his proudest achievements was buying Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour (1959), which became the opening attraction at his new art house in Bayswater, named the International Film Theatre – much to the irritation of the National Film Theatre, which also suffered the defection of its general manager, Frank Hazell, to oversee Rive’s new venture.Earlier, when the National Film Theatre drew huge crowds to see the banned Marlon Brando biker film The Wild One (1954), Rive started late-night Gala film clubs to show this and other banned or cut films, recruiting the censor, John Trevelyan, to support his efforts. Later, he called for the removal of Trevelyan’s successor, Stephen Murphy, for being too liberal. When it was pointed out that Gala were distributors of such Danish sex comedies as Seventeen (1965) and Bedroom Mazurka (1970), he replied that he was opposed to excessive screen brutality but “sex with a smile is permissible”.

“I would have bought Emmanuelle had I had the chance: that is the type of sex film that deserves the success it is having,” he said.Gala was by far the biggest British distributor of foreign films. Its line-up featured such Bergman films as The Silence (1963) and Cries and Whispers (1972), and most of Truffaut’s output, including Jules and Jim (1961). Rive’s skill in extracting the maximum box-office potential from foreign-language films persuaded American distributors to entrust him with the British release of Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women (1960) and Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963).As cinemas closed and attendances fell, it became increasingly hard to obtain a good return from foreign films in Britain. Rive went into partnership with BBC television for some acquisitions and, with the newly arrived Cannon Films, obtained Jean de Florette (1986), among many others.

As Gala Films his more recent releases included the newcomer Eric Zonka’s notable The Dream Life of Angels (1998).Allen Eyles. MAUDE STOREY was a nursing leader who brought a human face to nurses’ registration bodies as their chief officer and to the Royal College of Nursing as its president, and had an unlimited stock of Wigan jokes. She was an able, approachable administrator, a chocolate lover, very large – and a beautiful dancer; she urged nurses to widen their horizons by reading The Economist, the New Statesman and The Spectator. Maude Storey, nurse: born Wigan, Lancashire 24 March 1930; Registrar, GNC for England and Wales 1977-81; Registrar and Chief Executive, UKCC 1981-87; President, Royal College of Nursing 1986-90; CBE 1987; died Reading, Berkshire 29 March 2003
Maude Storey was a nursing leader who brought a human face to nurses’ registration bodies as their chief officer and to the Royal College of Nursing as its president, and had an unlimited stock of Wigan jokes. As a teenager she gave up being a typist to train as a nurse at St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester, because she had a crush on a boy who was working in Manchester But she never married. After completing her general training at Manchester and Lancaster Royal Infirmary, she went to London to qualify as a midwife.She returned to Wigan as a domiciliary midwife in 1953 and was theatre sister and clinical instructor at Wigan Infirmary from 1959 to 1968. A founder member of a local group to help the homeless in Wigan, she was a governor of a local school for mentally handicapped children and a member of Wigan Health Authority.Back in Manchester, she was one of the tutors on England’s first graduate course for nurses.