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| John Schlesinger | |||||||||||
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| Born | John Richard Schlesinger February 16, 1926 London, England |
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| Died | July 25, 2003 (aged 77) Palm Springs, California |
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John Richard Schlesinger, CBE (February 16, 1926 – July 25, 2003) was an Academy Award-winning English film director.
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Biography
Early life
Schlesinger was born in London into a middle class Jewish family,1 the son of Winifred Henrietta (née Regensburg) and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician.2 He went on to work in television as an actor after graduating from Uppingham School and Balliol College, Oxford.
Career
One of his first movies, the documentary Terminus (1960), earned him a Venice Film Festival Gold Lion and a British Academy Award. His first two movies, A Kind of Loving (1962) and Billy Liar (1963) were concerned with the life of characters based in the North of England. His third Darling (1965) described tartly the modern urban way of life in London and was one of the first films about swinging London. Schlesinger's next movie was Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's popular novel. Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969) was internationally acclaimed and it won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture.
His later films include Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Day of the Locust (1975), Marathon Man (1976), Yanks (1979), Pacific Heights (1990), A Question of Attribution (1991), The Innocent (1993) and The Next Best Thing (2000). Schlesinger also directed Timon of Athens (1965) for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the musical I and Albert (1972) at London's Piccadilly Theatre. From 1973 he was an associate director of the Royal National Theatre.
Openly gay, Schlesinger dealt with homosexuality in Midnight Cowboy, Sunday Bloody Sunday and The Next Best Thing.
Schlesinger also directed a notable party political broadcast for the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom general election, 1992 which featured Prime Minister John Major returning to Brixton in south London where he had spent his teenage years, which highlighted his humble (and atypical for a traditional Conservative) background.
The book and TV series The Glittering Prizes, writer Frederic Raphael, who won the Best Screenwriting Oscar for his work on Schlesinger's film Darling, feature a character believed to be based on Schlesinger.
Death
Schlesinger underwent a quadruple heart bypass in 1998, before suffering a stroke in December 2000. He was taken off life support at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs on July 24, 2003 by his life partner of over 30 years, photographer Michael Childers. Schlesinger died early the following day at the age of 77.
Filmography
- A Kind of Loving (1962)
- Billy Liar (1963)
- Darling (1965)
- Far From the Madding Crowd (1967)
- Midnight Cowboy (1969)
- Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
- The Day of the Locust (1975)
- Marathon Man (1976)
- Yanks (1979)
- Honky Tonk Freeway (1981)
- Separate Tables (1983) (TV)
- An Englishman Abroad (1983) (TV)
- The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
- The Believers (1987)
- Madame Sousatzka (1988)
- Pacific Heights (1990)
- A Question of Attribution (1991) (TV)
- The Innocent (1993)
- Cold Comfort Farm (1995) (TV)
- Eye for an Eye (1996)
- The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1998) (TV)
- The Next Best Thing (2000).
References
External links
- John Schlesinger at the Internet Movie Database
- Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
- John Schlesinger
| Awards and achievements | ||
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| Preceded by Carol Reed for Oliver! |
Academy Award for Best Director 1969 for Midnight Cowboy |
Succeeded by Franklin J. Schaffner for Patton |
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Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 12 November 2008, at 13:20.
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