Everything about Jack Clayton totally explained
Jack Clayton (
1 March,
1921 –
26 February,
1995) was a
British film director who specialised in bringing literary works to the screen.
Clayton started his career working for
Alexander Korda's Denham Studios and rose from tea boy to assistant director to film editor.
After service with the
Royal Air Force during
World War II, he became an associate producer on many of Korda's films, then directed the
Oscar-winning short
The Bespoke Overcoat (1956) based on
Wolf Mankowitz's theatrical version (1953) of
Gogol's short story
The Overcoat (1842). In this film Gogol's story is re-located to a clothing warehouse in the
East End of
London and the ghostly protagonist is a poor Jew.
His first feature was the internationally acclaimed
Room at the Top (1959), a harsh indictment of the British
class system, which won two
Oscars, earned Clayton a
Best Director nomination, and was credited with spearheading Britain's movement toward
realism in films.
Clayton followed with the classic ghost story
The Innocents (1961), based on
Henry James The Turn of the Screw, then laid back for several years, establishing a pattern he followed thereafter.
He directed
The Pumpkin Eater (1964),
Our Mother's House (1967), and then, seven years later, the high-profile American production of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby (1974).
Perhaps in response to its failure, he didn't take another assignment for nine years — the Disney studio production of
Ray Bradbury's
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), which was another disappointment.
His last feature film, the British-made
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), featured a superb performance by
Maggie Smith as a
spinster who struggles with the emptiness of her life; it won Clayton critical plaudits for the first time in many years. He reteamed with Smith in 1992 for a television film
Memento Mori, based on the novel by
Muriel Spark, for which he also co-wrote the screenplay.
When asked his religion, he replied: "ex-Catholic".
He was married to the
Israeli actress
Haya Harareet until his death.
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