Jack Clayton

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Jack Clayton, born in 1921 and died on February 26, 1995), was a British film director and producer who specialized in bringing literary works to the screen. Clayton, who started as a teenager studio "tea boy" in 1935, rose to fame in British cinema, spanning nearly 60 years.

He followed a string of increasingly important roles in British cinema before rising to international prominence as a director in 1969 with his Oscar-winning feature film debut, The Innocents (1961), based on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. Clayton had a promising future in mind, and peers and critics alike praised him for his work, but a number of common factors hampered his career.

He was a notably 'choosy' filmmaker, who admitted, "I never made a film I didn't want to make," and he regularly rejected films (including Alien) that were big hits for other directors.

However, he was dogged by bad luck and poor timing, and studio politics stifled a string of planned films in the 1970s, which were either removed from his hands or cancelled in the final stages of production.

He suffered a double blow in 1977 – his current film was cancelled just two weeks before shooting was supposed to begin, but just two weeks later, he suffered a serious stroke that robbed him of his ability to talk, and put his career on hold for five years. Despite Jack Clayton's brief career, the films of the filmmaker remain highly admired and lauded by leading film commentators such as Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, as well as other prominent film critics such as Harold Pinter, Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, Tennessee Williams, and Steven Spielberg.

Personal life

When asked about his faith, he replied, "ex-Catholic." Clayton married three times, his first marriage was to actress Christine Norden in 1947, but the pair split in 1953; the same year he married French actress Katherine Kath Katharina, but the relationship was short lived. Haya Harareett's third marriage, which lasted until his death, was to him. Clayton died in a hospital in Slough, England, after a brief illness on February 25, 1995.

BAFTA hosted a dinner on the first anniversary of Clayton's death, which included a screening of The Bespoke Overcoat and a solo flute performance from Delerue's score for Something Wicked This Way Comes, which was a favorite of Clayton's wife Haya. Sir John Woolf, Harold Pinter, Karel Reisz, Freddie Francis, Clayton's editor, Terry Rawlings, his deputy Robert Shapiro, and actor Sam Waterston and Scott Wilson, who had worked on The Great Gatsby, were among the tributes. Harold Pinter said, "in his personal respect to Clayton."

Clayton, who had taken him as the editor of The Innocents, gave Jim Clark his major break. During the filming, they became close friends (and regular drinking buddies). Clark's book Dream Repairman published a number of insights into their personal and professional relationships, as well as the often contradictory personality traits of the director, who described her as "a very complex personality." The velvet glove with an iron fist.

Clayton was often charming, but was also vulnerable to outbursts of extreme dissatisfaction, according to Clark. Sims recalled one incident in which Sims was unavoidably late calling Clayton with the critiques from the pre-released critics' screening of The Innocents. Clayton (who had been too tense to attend) burst into a rage over the phone, and when Clark arrived in Clayton's studio the next morning, he discovered that Clayton had completely destroyed a large plaster scale model of Bly House and was unable to speak to them. Clark worked with Clayton on Both The Innocents and The Pumpkin Eater, but their professional relationship and friendship came to an end after the latter film was allegedly written by Clayton with a vitriolic letter blaming him for the film's demise. Both the two met at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, while Clayton was on The Great Gatsby, which was (accord to Clark):

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Early life and career, 1921–58

Clayton, a Brighton boy, began his career as a child actor on the film Dark Red Roses (1929). He began aspiring to be a speed skater and joined Alexander Korda's Denham Film Studios in 1935, and moved from tea boy to film editor to film editor.

Clayton appeared on many well-known British films, including the first British Technicolor film Wings of the Morning (1937), and spent time with visiting American filmmakers, including Thornton Freeland on Over the Moon (1939) and Tim Whelan on Q Planes (1939). As a second assistant director on Korda's lavish Technicolor fantasy The Thief of Baghdad (1940), he co-ordinated all three shooting units, including veteran co-director Michael Powell on the noted "quota quickie" The Spy in Black (1939). He also gained valuable editing experience as assisting David Lean, the editor (and uncredited producer) of Shaw's Major Barbara (1941).

Clayton shot his first film, "The Battlefield (1944), exposing the challenges in Naples' redevelopment, the first great city to be liberated in World War II after Allied bombardment and enslavement by the returning Nazis. He was second-unit commander on Gordon Parry's Bond Street (1948) and project manager on Korda's An Ideal Husband (1947). In 1947, Clayton married actress Christine Norden, but the couple divorced in 1953. Clayton became an associate producer on several of John and James Woolf's Romulus Films productions, including Moulin Rouge (1952) and Beat the Devil (1953), both directed by John Huston in the early 1950s. Clayton met his second wife, French actress Katherine Kath (born Lilly Faess), during the film's making of Moulin Rouge; the couple married in 1953, but the marriage was short-lived; Clayton first met rising British actress Laurence Harvey (1954) and I Am a Camera (1955).

Clayton directed his second film, Bespoke Overcoat (1956) for Romulus. Gogol's story in the film, based on Wolf Mankowitz' (1953) version of Nikolai Gogol's short story The Overcoat (1842), is relocated to a clothing warehouse in the East End of London, and the ghostly protagonist is a poor Jew.

Clayton appeared on a number of screen farces during 1956, including Three Men in a Boat (again with Laurence Harvey), followed by The Whole Truth, which starred Stewart Granger as a film producer.

Career problems and unrealised projects

Clayton's resume suffered after the unveiling of Our Mother's House (1967), and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), but he was only able to complete one film as a producer, The Great Gatsby (1974). Clayton's own perfection as a filmmaker, his sharpness and taste, his ardent and meticulous approach to his work, and his refusal not to repeat himself, were all reasons; in his biographer's words, Clayton "never made a film he did not want to make." In the aftermath of Room at the Top, he had turned down several well-known films. Don't They Shoot Horses? Despite his love for the book, he turned down the opportunity to direct They Shoot Horses in 1969. He did not want to take over a film that had already been made and cast and was ready to shoot, but his replacement, Sydney Pollack, was set to miss a career-making opportunity. He turned down the opportunity to direct the film that was eventually produced as Alien by Ridley Scott in 1977.

Clayton's success was also harmed by the film company's inherent danger. Clayton worked on several programs throughout his tenure as his biographer Neil Sinyard explains, but for various reasons, they did not come to fruition. Clayton's were among the projects that were never able to get to the screen or that were eventually created by other producers.

Another complicating factor in Clayton's career was that several film projects were cancelled without warning when pre-production was well advanced – in one case, just two weeks before shooting was scheduled. Three major projects, Casualties of War, Fall Creek, and Silence, the series of failures that reportedly devastated Clayton, are none of which were credited to his later health problems.

As compensation for the cancellation of Silence, Fox offered Clayton the opportunity to film a new science fiction script co-credited to David Giler and Dan O'Bannon, but Clayton turned down the opportunity (Alien), but Ridley Scott, who had worked with him throughout his career, missed the film (Alien). Clayton died of a major stroke a few months later, robbery that had taken his ability to talk. He was aided in his recovery by his wife Haya and a group of close friends, but he later revealed that he deliberately kept his illness private because he was afraid he would not get work again if his affliction became known. He did not commit to another role for five years.

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