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| Bryan Forbes: British writer, actor and film director | Bryan Forbes: British writer, actor and film director |
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| The director, actor and writer Bryan Forbes, who has died aged 86, was one of the most creative forces in the British film industry of the 1960s, and the Hollywood films he directed included the original version of The Stepford Wives (1974). In later life he turned to the writing of books, both fiction and memoirs. | |
| The key turning point for him in cinema was the formation of the independent company Beaver Films with his friend Richard Attenborough in 1958. For the screenplay of their first production, The Angry Silence (1960), Forbes received an Oscar nomination and a Bafta award, while Attenborough played a factory worker shunned and persecuted for not joining a strike. His colleagues are shown as being manipulated by skulking professional agitators, and to some it seemed more like a political statement than a human story about mankind in the mass crushing the individual. | The key turning point for him in cinema was the formation of the independent company Beaver Films with his friend Richard Attenborough in 1958. For the screenplay of their first production, The Angry Silence (1960), Forbes received an Oscar nomination and a Bafta award, while Attenborough played a factory worker shunned and persecuted for not joining a strike. His colleagues are shown as being manipulated by skulking professional agitators, and to some it seemed more like a political statement than a human story about mankind in the mass crushing the individual. |
| Forbes then wrote and/or directed a string of notable British productions. He both wrote and took the part of one of the disaffected officers turning to crime in The League of Gentlemen (1960), and directed Whistle Down the Wind (1961), about children who mistake a convict on the run for Jesus. He took a novel by Lynne Reid Banks as the basis for the L-shaped Room, which he also directed, and one by Kingsley Amis for Only Two Can Play (both 1962). He provided both the screenplay for and directed Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), concerning the sinister abduction of a child, and The Whisperers (1967), in which Edith Evans was outstanding as a lonely old woman. | Forbes then wrote and/or directed a string of notable British productions. He both wrote and took the part of one of the disaffected officers turning to crime in The League of Gentlemen (1960), and directed Whistle Down the Wind (1961), about children who mistake a convict on the run for Jesus. He took a novel by Lynne Reid Banks as the basis for the L-shaped Room, which he also directed, and one by Kingsley Amis for Only Two Can Play (both 1962). He provided both the screenplay for and directed Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), concerning the sinister abduction of a child, and The Whisperers (1967), in which Edith Evans was outstanding as a lonely old woman. |
| For Hollywood, Forbes scripted and directed King Rat (1965), a thoughtful study of British and American soldiers in a Japanese prisoner of war camp that concentrated more on character than gung-ho antics. It was a critical success and did well commercially – except in America. | For Hollywood, Forbes scripted and directed King Rat (1965), a thoughtful study of British and American soldiers in a Japanese prisoner of war camp that concentrated more on character than gung-ho antics. It was a critical success and did well commercially – except in America. |
| Other Hollywood offers arrived, but in 1969 Forbes accepted the offer of the impresario Bernard Delfont, then with EMI, to run Elstree Film Studios, which the company had taken over. This amounted virtually to an attempt to revive the ailing British film industry by instituting a traditional studio system with a whole "slate" of films in play, one of which happened to be from my political novel Candidate of Promise. However, some EMI executives raised difficulties over Forbes both heading the studio and directing his own film, The Raging Moon (1971), starring his wife Nanette Newman as a woman paralysed from the waist down finding love. | Other Hollywood offers arrived, but in 1969 Forbes accepted the offer of the impresario Bernard Delfont, then with EMI, to run Elstree Film Studios, which the company had taken over. This amounted virtually to an attempt to revive the ailing British film industry by instituting a traditional studio system with a whole "slate" of films in play, one of which happened to be from my political novel Candidate of Promise. However, some EMI executives raised difficulties over Forbes both heading the studio and directing his own film, The Raging Moon (1971), starring his wife Nanette Newman as a woman paralysed from the waist down finding love. |
| One success of the venture was the production of The Railway Children (1970), but most of the announced films – including Candidate of Promise – were never made. Forbes, who had a three-year contract, left after two years, complaining privately that for the first time in his life he had made powerful enemies. Delfont's explanation to me was that Forbes lacked business and organisational skills: "My mistake was not to see that he was creative, but only creative." | One success of the venture was the production of The Railway Children (1970), but most of the announced films – including Candidate of Promise – were never made. Forbes, who had a three-year contract, left after two years, complaining privately that for the first time in his life he had made powerful enemies. Delfont's explanation to me was that Forbes lacked business and organisational skills: "My mistake was not to see that he was creative, but only creative." |
| For The Stepford Wives (1974), William Goldman provided a screenplay from the surreal novel by Ira Levin, with Newman as the figure who became the computerised fantasy of boorish men in a small American town. The final Hollywood film that Forbes directed was The Naked Face (1984), with Roger Moore as a psychiatrist who gets caught up with the Chicago mafia. His last screenwriting credit came with Attenborough's Chaplin (1992). | For The Stepford Wives (1974), William Goldman provided a screenplay from the surreal novel by Ira Levin, with Newman as the figure who became the computerised fantasy of boorish men in a small American town. The final Hollywood film that Forbes directed was The Naked Face (1984), with Roger Moore as a psychiatrist who gets caught up with the Chicago mafia. His last screenwriting credit came with Attenborough's Chaplin (1992). |
| Forbes was born John Clarke into a working-class home in West Ham, in east London. His cultural horizons were extended when he was evacuated during the second world war to the Truro home of Canon Gotto, a cultivated cleric with an enormous library and presence in local cultural life. | Forbes was born John Clarke into a working-class home in West Ham, in east London. His cultural horizons were extended when he was evacuated during the second world war to the Truro home of Canon Gotto, a cultivated cleric with an enormous library and presence in local cultural life. |
| Another mentor was the BBC radio producer Lionel Gamlin, who made him question master of the Junior Brains Trust, and advised adopting his stage name of Bryan Forbes. Though he got to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at 17, he thought he was seen as too short and too "working-class" to play the bland upper-class juvenile leads then popular. He played in repertory theatre, and had just taken over a part in Terence Rattigan's Flare Path when he was called up for second world war service, first in the Intelligence Corps and then the Combined Services Entertainment Unit. | |
| A published collection of short stories, Truth Lies Sleeping (1951), pointed to his promise as a writer, but his initial course was to continue acting, and take supporting film roles when possible. Presciently, he wrote to a friend while at a repertory company: "One day I shall direct a film – preferably a film of one of my own scripts." | A published collection of short stories, Truth Lies Sleeping (1951), pointed to his promise as a writer, but his initial course was to continue acting, and take supporting film roles when possible. Presciently, he wrote to a friend while at a repertory company: "One day I shall direct a film – preferably a film of one of my own scripts." |
| In the early 1950s, he went to Hollywood with the actress who was briefly his first wife, Constance Smith. He languished there while she worked. It was not long before he returned to Britain and undertook the rewriting of scripts as well as acting. He met his second wife, Newman, while playing a man being run over by a train. They got married in 1955. | |
| When he returned to producing books, it was with wry fiction about the tribulations suffered by the creative spirit in showbiz, The Distant Laughter (1972) and The Rewrite Man (1983). Ned's Girl (1977) was a biography of Evans, and That Despicable Race (1980) concerned actors as a breed. Later novels were mostly about spies, though sometimes embraced comedy, as with Partly Cloudy (1995), about domestic disasters brought about by the clash of the generations during one traumatic weekend. | When he returned to producing books, it was with wry fiction about the tribulations suffered by the creative spirit in showbiz, The Distant Laughter (1972) and The Rewrite Man (1983). Ned's Girl (1977) was a biography of Evans, and That Despicable Race (1980) concerned actors as a breed. Later novels were mostly about spies, though sometimes embraced comedy, as with Partly Cloudy (1995), about domestic disasters brought about by the clash of the generations during one traumatic weekend. |
| Forbes was a founder of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain; with Attenborough he helped form Capital Radio, the London station launched in 1973; and he served as president of the National Youth Theatre. He was to write with incomparable irony about the bizarre workings of the film industry, as in his two volumes of autobiography, Notes for a Life (1974) and A Divided Life (1992). In 2004 he was appointed CBE. | Forbes was a founder of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain; with Attenborough he helped form Capital Radio, the London station launched in 1973; and he served as president of the National Youth Theatre. He was to write with incomparable irony about the bizarre workings of the film industry, as in his two volumes of autobiography, Notes for a Life (1974) and A Divided Life (1992). In 2004 he was appointed CBE. |
| He is survived by Nanette and their two daughters, Emma and Sarah. | He is survived by Nanette and their two daughters, Emma and Sarah. |
| Bryan Forbes (John Theobald Clarke), director, actor, screenwriter and novelist, born 22 July 1926; died 8 May 2013 | Bryan Forbes (John Theobald Clarke), director, actor, screenwriter and novelist, born 22 July 1926; died 8 May 2013 |