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British stage actor Adrian Brunel's singing ability did him little good in the silent-movie era, but he managed to keep busy in the industry, first as a film salesman, then as director of World War I propaganda short subjects. Brunel's first feature-film directorial job was 1917's The Cost of a Kiss. He continued to direct throughout the 1920s, occasionally taking small roles in his own productions. In 1920 he formed Minerva Films with actor Leslie Howard, a collaboration that resulted in several risible but forgettable satirical shorts. The best known of his many silent features were The Man Without Desire (1923) and the first film version of The Constant Nymph (1927). Most of Brunel's talkies were workman-like but pedestrian, few more so than the 1936 Buster Keaton "comeback" feature An Old Spanish Custom. Brunel remained a familiar figure on the British film scene if for no other reason than his reputation as an intellectual bon vivant. A dozen years after directing his final film, Adrian Brunel summed up his career in a witty autobiography, Nice Work (1952).