1.
Guy Green (filmmaker)
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Guy Mervin Charles Green OBE BSC was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer. In 1946 he won an Academy Award as cinematographer for the film Great Expectations, in 2002 Green was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the BAFTA, and in 2004 he was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his lifetime contributions to British cinema. Green was born in Frome, Somerset, England and he began working in film in 1929 and became a noted film cinematographer and a founding member of the British Society of Cinematographers. Green became a director of photography in the mid-1940s, working on such films as David Leans Oliver Twist in 1948. In about 1955 Green switched to directing, and he moved to Hollywood around 1962, in addition to directing A Patch of Blue, Green also wrote and co-produced the film. After his death, his widow Josephine told AP that it was his proudest accomplishment, among his other films as director are The Angry Silence, The Mark (1961, Jacqueline Susanns Once Is Not Enough, and The Devils Advocate. Green died in his Beverly Hills home from kidney and heart failure, in addition to his wife of 57 years, he is survived by his son, Michael, his daughter, Marilyn Feldman, and two grandchildren
2.
Richard Attenborough
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Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, Kt, CBE was an English actor, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and politician. He was the President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, as a film director and producer, Attenborough won two Academy Awards for Gandhi in 1983. He also won four BAFTA Awards and four Golden Globe Awards, as an actor, he is perhaps best known for his roles in Brighton Rock, The Great Escape,10 Rillington Place, Miracle on 34th Street and Jurassic Park. He was the brother of David Attenborough, a naturalist and broadcaster, and John Attenborough. He was married to actress Sheila Sim from 1945 until his death, Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and studied at RADA. The sisters moved to the United States in the 1950s and lived with an uncle, during the Second World War, Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force. After initial pilot training he was seconded to the newly formed R. A. F, Film Unit at Pinewood Studios, under the command of Flight Lieutenant John Boulting where he appeared with Edward G. Robinson in the propaganda film Journey Together. Attenboroughs acting career started on stage and he appeared in shows at Leicesters Little Theatre, Dover Street, prior to his going to RADA, in 1949, exhibitors voted him the sixth most popular British actor at the box office. Early in his career, Attenborough starred in the West End production of Agatha Christies The Mousetrap. Both he and his wife were among the original cast members of the production and it was his first appearance in a major Hollywood film blockbuster and his most successful film thus far. His portrayal of the serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place garnered excellent reviews, in 1977, he played the ruthless General Outram, again to great acclaim, in the Indian director Satyajit Rays period piece The Chess Players. He starred in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street as Kris Kringle and he made his only appearance in a film adaptation of Shakespeare when he played the English ambassador who announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead at the end of Kenneth Branaghs Hamlet. His performance in The Angry Silence earned him his first nomination for a BAFTA, seance On A Wet Afternoon won him his first BAFTA award. His feature film debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical Oh. What a Lovely War, after which his acting appearances became sporadic as he concentrated more on directing and producing. He later directed two epic films, Young Winston, based on the early life of Winston Churchill, and A Bridge Too Far. He had been attempting to get the project made for 18 years and he directed the screen version of the musical A Chorus Line and the anti-apartheid drama Cry Freedom. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films and his later films as director and producer include Chaplin starring Robert Downey, Jr. as Charlie Chaplin and Shadowlands, based on the relationship between C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham
3.
Bryan Forbes
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Bryan Forbes, CBE was an English film director, screenwriter, film producer, actor and novelist, described as a Renaissance man and one of the most important figures in the British film industry. Best known as the director of the film The Stepford Wives, he wrote and directed several critically acclaimed films, including Whistle Down the Wind, Séance on a Wet Afternoon. He also scripted several films directed by others, such as The League of Gentlemen, The Angry Silence, Forbes was born John Theobald Clarke on 22 July 1926 in Queen Marys Hospital, Stratford, West Ham, Essex. A schoolfriend at West Ham was artist Albert Herbert, lionel Gamlin of the BBC took him on as the host of Junior Brains Trust, and invented Clarkes pseudonym of Bryan Forbes. Forbes trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from age 17 and he did four years of military service in the Intelligence Corps and Combined Forces Entertainment Unit, during which time he started to write short stories. After completing his service in 1948, following British Equity rules. Forbes began to act, appearing on stage and playing supporting roles in British films, in particular An Inspector Calls. He published a story collection in the early 1950s, which induced producer Cubby Broccoli to offer him screenwriting work on The Black Knight. He received his first credit for Second World War film The Cockleshell Heroes, while other early screenplays include I Was Montys Double, directed by Basil Dearden, Forbes also starred. The film recounted a bank heist carried out by ex-army officers, in 1959, he formed a production company, Beaver Films, with his frequent collaborator Richard Attenborough. Beaver Films made The Angry Silence, a screenplay by Forbes in which Attenborough took the lead role. It starred child actor Hayley Mills and Alan Bates, in one of his earliest film roles, the film was nominated for four BAFTA awards, including Best Film from any Source. It was the basis for a 1996 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, the L-Shaped Room, his next film as director, with Leslie Caron in the female lead, led to her gaining a nomination for an Oscar, and winning the BAFTA and Golden Globe awards. Comments Phil Wickham, It feels like half a new wave film – a mid-point between the innovation of the Woodfall Films and the mainstream of the British film industry. Forbes wrote and directed Séance on a Wet Afternoon, and the year he wrote the third screen adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel Of Human Bondage. In 1965, he went to Hollywood to make King Rat and he followed this with The Wrong Box and The Whisperers, the latter featuring Edith Evans. A caper film, Deadfall, starred Michael Caine, in 1969, Forbes was appointed chief of production and managing director of the film studio Associated British. Under Forbess leadership, the studio produced The Railway Children, The Tales of Beatrix Potter and The Go-Between and his tenure though, was short-lived and marked by financial problems and failed projects
4.
Pier Angeli
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Pier Angeli was an Italian-born television and film actress. Her American cinematographic debut was in the role of the 1951 film Teresa. She had one son with Vic Damone, her husband from 1954 to 1958, born Anna Maria Pierangeli in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. Her twin sister is the actress Marisa Pavan, Angeli made her film debut with Vittorio De Sica in Domani è troppo tardi, after being spotted by director Léonide Moguy and De Sica. She was discovered by Hollywood, and MGM launched her in her first American film, directed by Fred Zinnemann, this film also saw the joint debuts of Rod Steiger and John Ericson. Reviews for her performance in the film compared her to Greta Garbo, under contract to MGM throughout the 1950s, she appeared in a series of films, including The Light Touch with Stewart Granger. Plans for a film of Romeo and Juliet with her and Marlon Brando fell through when a British-Italian production was announced, after discovering Leslie Caron, another continental ingénue, MGM lent Angeli out to other studios. She went to Warner Bros. for The Silver Chalice, which marked the debut of Paul Newman, Angeli was lent out again, to Columbia, for Port Afrique. She returned to MGM for Somebody Up There Likes Me as Paul Newmans long-suffering wife and she then appeared in The Vintage with Mel Ferrer and John Kerr, and finished her contract in Merry Andrew, starring Danny Kaye. She appeared with Vic Damone as a guest on the June 17,1956 episode of Whats My Line, during the 1960s and until 1970, Angeli returned to live and work in Britain and Europe. She had a role in the war epic Battle of the Bulge. 1968 found Angeli in Israel, top billed in Every Bastard a King, according to Kirk Douglas autobiography, he and Angeli were engaged in the 1950s after meeting on the set of the film The Story of Three Loves. For a short time, Angeli also had a relationship with James Dean, however, she broke off the relationship and went on to marry singer. Her marriage to Damone ended in divorce, followed by highly publicized court battles for the custody of their one son and her second marriage was to Italian composer Armando Trovajoli, with whom she had another son, Andrew. At the age of 39, Angeli was found dead of a barbiturate overdose in her home at 355 S. McCarty Drive. She is interred in the Cimetière des Bulvis, in Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine and she was later portrayed by Valentina Cervi in the 2001 TV movie James Dean, which depicted her relationship with Dean. In 2015, she was portrayed by Alessandra Mastronardi in the James Dean biopic. Pier Angeli at the Internet Movie Database Pier Angeli at AllMovie Pier Angeli at Find a Grave Pier Angeli Official Site Photographs and literature
5.
Bernard Lee
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John Bernard Lee, known as Bernard Lee, was an English actor, best known for his role as M in the first eleven Eon-produced James Bond films. Lees film career spanned the years 1934 to 1979, though he had appeared on stage from the age of six and he was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Lee appeared in one hundred films, as well as on stage. He died of cancer on 16 January 1981, aged 73. Lee was born on 10 January 1908, the son of Nellie and he was born in either County Cork in what is now the Republic of Ireland, or Brentford, London. Lees father was also an actor and Bernards first appearance on stage in 1914, Lee attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, working as a fruit porter to pay his fees. During the 1930s, after graduating from RADA, he worked in repertory theatre in Rusholme and Cardiff before beginning work on the West End stage in thrillers. Lee also played roles, such as with Arthur Askey in Ten Minute Alibi. Terence Pettigrew mentions a witty scene featuring Bernard Lee in the film in which he is struggling to put on a tight collar prior to slipping into town for a few ales, spare a Copper, Once a Crook, and The New Lot. After the war, Lee returned to the stage whilst also developing a film career. In total, Lee appeared in one hundred films during his career. During the 1950s he had a run on stage, appearing as Able Seaman Turner in Seagulls Over Sorrento. In 1954 Lee starred opposite Gregory Peck in The Purple Plain and he starred alongside John Gregson, Anthony Quayle and Peter Finch. George Lovell remarked that Captain Patrick Dove was played ponderously by Bernard Lee, other films of this period include The Spanish Gardener, Dunkirk, Beyond This Place, Whistle Down the Wind, and The L-Shaped Room. No. Smith and Lavington, meanwhile, remarked that Lee was the incarnation of Flemings crusty admiral. One American newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, described Lee as a real roast-beef-and-Yorkshire-pudding type of British actor, murray Pomerance refers to Lee as a paternal actor in embodying this role. In 1967 Lee appeared in O. K. Connery, a spoof of the James Bond film series which starred Connerys brother Neil Connery, Lois Maxwell, and several former actors of the series. During this period he appeared in several ITC television productions such as The Baron, Man in a Suitcase
6.
Malcolm Arnold
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Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold, CBE was an English composer. His output of works features music in genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, numerous concertos, concert works, chamber music. He wrote extensively for the theatre, with five ballets specially commissioned by the Royal Ballet and he also produced scores for more than a hundred films, among these The Bridge on the River Kwai, for which he won an Oscar. Malcolm Arnold was born in Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, the youngest of five children from a prosperous Northampton family of shoemakers. After seeing Louis Armstrong play in Bournemouth, he took up the trumpet at the age of 12, at the RCM he studied composition with Gordon Jacob and the trumpet with Ernest Hall. In 1941 he joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra as second trumpet, in 1941 he registered as a conscientious objector, but in the event he was allowed to continue in the LPO. In 1944, after his brother in the Royal Air Force had been killed, when the army put him in a military band he shot himself in the foot to get back to civilian life. After a season as principal trumpet with the BBC Symphony Orchestra he returned to the London Philharmonic in 1946 where he remained until 1948 when he left to become a full-time composer. Arnold began his career playing professionally, but by the age of 30 his life was devoted to composition. He was ranked with Benjamin Britten as one of the most sought-after composers in Britain. His natural melodic gift earned him a reputation as a composer of music in works such as some of his concert overtures. His nine symphonies are often deeply personal and show a serious side to his work. Arnold also wrote a variety of concertos and chamber works, as well as music for the theatre including major ballets, by 1961, Arnold had a reputation for being unpleasant, frequently drunk and highly promiscuous. He divorced his first wife in that year and his second wife was forced to take out a court order after they separated. After the divorce, he made two suicide attempts and his later years saw a decline in both health and finances. He overcame both, despite being only a year to live in the early 1980s. He lived for 22 more years, albeit with a carer, Anthony Day, Arnold died at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, Norwich, on 23 September 2006, after suffering from a chest infection. That same day his last work, The Three Musketeers, was premiered in a Northern Ballet production at the Bradford Alhambra, the score included no new music by Arnold, but excerpts from various of his compositions were arranged by John Longstaff
