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Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991)

31/7/2021

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Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991)  self portrait
Doris Clare Zinkeisen self portrait
Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991) was a Scottish theatrical stage and costume designer, painter, commercial artist, and writer. She was best known for her work in theatrical design.

Biography

Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991)  self portrait
Doris Clare Zinkeisen self portrait
Doris Zinkeisen was born in Clynder House in Rosneath, Argyll, Scotland. her father Victor Zinkeisen was a timber merchant and amateur artist from Glasgo whose family were originally from Bohemia and had been settled in Scotland for two hundred years. She had a younger sister, Anna Zinkeisen, who also became an artist.The family left Scotland and moved to Pinner, near Harrow in 1909. Zinkeisen attended the Harrow School of Art for four years and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools in 1917 together with her sister Anna. During World War I Zinkeisen served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment at a hospital in Northwood, Middlesex.
​Zinkeisen shared a studio in London with her sister during the 1920s and 1930s from where she embarked on her career as a painter, commercial artist, and theatrical designer.

Zinkeisen's realist style made her popular as a portraitist and she became a well-known society painter. The subject matter of her paintings, society portraiture, equestrian portraiture, and scenes from the parks of London and Paris reflect the lifestyle of the upper class at the time. An early success was her 1925 portrait of the actor Elsa Lanchester.
portrait of the actor Elsa Lanchester by Doris Zinkeisen, 1925
portrait of the actor Elsa Lanchester by Doris Zinkeisen, 1925
portrait by Doris Zinkeisen
painting of ballerinas by Doris Zinkeisen
Painting PARKLAND RIDE by Doris Zinkeisen
Painting PARKLAND RIDE by Doris Zinkeisen
She also worked widely in other media as an illustrator and commercial artist including producing advertising posters for several British mainline railway companies and murals for the RMS Queen Mary.

Zinkeisen produced a number of posters for London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), Southern Railway (SR), and the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) in the 1930s which often featured historical themes. 

In 1935, John Brown and Company Shipbuilders of Clydebank commissioned both of the Zinkeisen sisters to paint the murals in the Verandah Grill, a restaurant and night-club on the ocean liner the RMS Queen Mary. The murals, on the theme of entertainment, depicted circus and theatre scenes and can still be seen on the ship, now permanently moored in Long Beach, California. Zinkeisen was also involved in planning the interior decoration which featured a parquet dance floor surrounded by black Wilton carpets, star-studded red velvet curtains and a sweeping illuminated balustrade whose colours changed in time with the music. Writing in Vogue in 1936, Cecil Beaton described the Verandah Grill as 'By far the prettiest room on any ship – becomingly lit, gay in colour and obviously so successful that it would be crowded if twice its present size'. The largest mural was damaged during World War II and restored by Zinkeisen after the war. 

The Zinkeisen sisters also contributed murals to the RMS Queen Elizabeth in 1940.
During World War II, Zinkeisen joined the St John Ambulance Brigade and worked as a nurse in London. She worked in the casualty department in St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. Zinkeisen worked in the casualty department in the mornings and painted in the afternoons, recording the events of the day.

In 1944, Doris and her sister Anna were commissioned by United Steel Companies (USC) to produce twelve paintings that were reproduced in the trade and technical press in Britain, Canada, Australia and South Africa. The images were subsequently collated in a book, This Present Age, published in 1946.
​

Following the liberation of Europe in 1945, Zinkeisen was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee as a war artist for the North West Europe Commission of the Joint War Organisation of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John (JWO). Based in Brussels at the commission's headquarters she recorded the commission's post-war relief work in north west Europe including the rehabilitation and repatriation of prisoners of war and civilian internees. Zinkeisen traveled by lorry or by air throughout north-west Europe making sketches which she brought back to her studio in the commission's headquarters for further work.

By the time Zinkeisen had become a war artist her palette had already darkened from the colours of her society paintings. Her war paintings use muted greys, browns, and ochres like contemporaries such as Eric Ravilious and Stanley Spencer.
Despite her success as a painter and commercial artist she was best known as a theatrical designer. And Zinkeisen was a successful stage and costume designer for plays and films.

She started to work in stage design as soon as she completed her studies at the Royal Academy. Her first job was working for the actor-manager Nigel Playfair.  Playfair wanted Zinkeisen to sing in the productions, but Zinkeisen insisted on remaining behind the scenes. One of the first plays she worked on was Clifford Bax and Playfair's 1923 adaptation of The Insect Play. Claude Rains who played three roles in the play described Zinkeisen as "a stunning women".

​In 1922, while working with Nigel Playfair, Zinkeisen met James Whale. The two were considered a couple for some two years, despite Whale's living as an openly gay man. The couple was reportedly engaged in 1924 but by 1925 the engagement was off.

Zinkeisen married Edward Grahame Johnstone, a naval officer in 1927, and they had twin daughters in June 1928 Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone, who would become children's book illustrators,  and a son Murray Johnstone who would become a fine horsewoman and won the Moscow Cup at the International Horse Show in 1934.

Zinkeisen became the chief stage and costume designer for Charles B. Cochran's popular London revues. Cochran described her work in an article published in The Studio magazine in 1927.

Miss Doris Zinkeisen seems to me to follow the best traditions of English theatrical decoration... She can now create costumes for all moods and times, and capture with equal facility the acid fervour of puritanism or the sweet lyricism of a faun... this young decorator, at her early age is, in my opinion, in the front rank of British designers.

— Charles B. Cochran, The Studio (1927)

​
In 1928, Zinkeisen designed the costumes for This Year of Grace by Noël Coward  at the London Pavilion. In 1933, Zinkeison designed the decor and costumes for Cochran's production of Cole Porter's musical Nymph Errant at the Adelphi Theatre in London. The décolletage formed by the low cut design of one of the costumes resulted in a strike by the chorus against the perceived indecency of the costume. During the Second World War, she designed costumes and sets for the Old Vic Company productions of Arms and the Man and Richard III  at the New Theatre.
Doris Zinkeisen with her brushes (1929) by Harold Cazneaux
Doris Zinkeisen with her brushes (1929) by Harold Cazneaux
Doris Zinkeisen: New Idea portrait with patterned background (1929) by Harold Cazneaux
Doris Zinkeisen: New Idea portrait with patterned background (1929) by Harold Cazneaux
Zinkeisen was a costume designer on a number of Herbert Wilcox films, including the film version of Noël Coward's operetta Bitter Sweet (1933), The Little Damozel, which included a nearly transparent dress. Wilcox's 1932 film The Blue Danube was based on a short story by Zinkeisen. British-born director James Whale specifically requested Zinkeisen to design the costumes for the only American film she ever worked on, the 1936 screen version of the musical Show Boat. It remains today the most popular and highly regarded film that Zinkeisen worked on.

In 1938 she wrote Designing for the Stage, a book regarded by Sue Harper, Professor of Film History, as an "influential innovation". ​
After the war, Zinkeisen continued to work in London as a theatrical designer and held occasional exhibitions of her paintings. She designed the cover of a special edition of Everybody's Magazine to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. In 1954, Zinkeisen designed the scenery and costumes for Noël Coward's musical, After the Ball, based on Oscar Wilde's play, Lady Windermere's Fan.

​
In 1955, Zinkeisen created Laurence Olivier's make-up for the film version of Richard III.
After the death of her husband Grahame Johnstone in 1946, Zinkeisen's twin girls Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone lived with their mother. Zinkeisen outlived her daughter Janet who died in an accident in 1979.
​
Doris Zinkeisen died on 3 January 1991, in Badingham, Suffolk, aged 92.
Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991)  Doris Zinkeisen  by Madame Yevonde Vivex colour print, January 1936, national portrait gallery
Doris Zinkeisen by Madame Yevonde Vivex colour print, January 1936

Further interest

Books
  • Zinkeisen, Doris (1938). Designing for the Stage. The Studio.
  • Priestley, J. B.; Doris Zinkeisen (1948). The high toby: a play for the toy theatre (with scenery and characters by Doris Zinkeisen). Penguin Books.
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Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008)

23/4/2021

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Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, in Balenciaga dress

Profile

​Dorian Elizabeth Leigh Parker (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), known professionally as Dorian Leigh, was an American model and one of the earliest modeling icons of the fashion industry. She is considered one of the first supermodels, and was well known in the United States and Europe.
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel

Biography

​Dorian Leigh Parker was born in San Antonio, Texas, to George and Elizabeth Parker. Her parents married when they were very young and Elizabeth promptly gave birth to three daughters in quick succession: Dorian, Florian "Cissie" (1918–2010), and Georgiabell (1921–1988). Thirteen years after the birth of her third daughter, Elizabeth believed she was going through menopause and was shocked to discover that she was pregnant. She gave birth to her fourth daughter, Cecilia (1932–2003), who became known as model and actress Suzy Parker. The family moved to Jackson Heights, Queens, soon after Dorian's birth and later to Metuchen, New Jersey where George Parker invented a new form of etching acid, the production of which gave him enough income to retire.

Dorian graduated from Newton High School in Queens, New York, in 1935 and enrolled at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. At college, she met her first husband, Marshall Powell Hawkins, whom she married on a whim in North Carolina in 1937. They had two children: Thomas Lofton ("TL") Hawkins (1939–2014) and Marsha Hawkins (born 1940). The couple separated in the 1940s.

Dorian worked as a file clerk at a department store in Manhattan and as a tabulator, where she found that she had an aptitude for math, mechanical engineering, and drawing.

Dorian then worked at Bell Laboratories, and was a tool designer during World War II at Eastern Air Lines (with their Eastern Aircraft division) where she assisted in the design of airplane wings. While working Republic Pictures as an apprentice copywriter, she was encouraged by a Mrs. Wayburn to try modeling.
​In 1944 Dorian went to the Harry Conover modeling agency. At 27, Dorian was not only old by modeling standards, but at barely 5'5", she was shorter than the other models at the agency. Conover immediately sent her to see Diana Vreeland, the editor of Harper's Bazaar. Dorian met with Vreeland and fashion photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who were intrigued by her zig-zagged eyebrows. Dorian was photographed for the cover of the June 1944 issue of Harper's Bazaar, her very first modeling assignment. Later the magazine was shocked to discover her real age was 27(not 19 as she said), and that she already had two children.

Dorian's parents thought modeling was not respectable, so Dorian used only her first and middle name during her career. When Dorian became an enormous success though, they thought it was acceptable that their youngest daughter Suzy use the Parker last name when she also became a famous model. Their other daughter, Florian, also had modeling photos in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, but quit when she married a man in the military.

Dorian instantly became busy with modeling assignments, landing on the covers of major magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Paris Match, LIFE, and Elle. Because of her schedule, Dorian's two children were sent to live with her parents in Florida, while she was based in New York City and traveling to Europe.

In 1946, Dorian appeared on the cover of six American Vogue magazines. She worked with famous fashion photographers Irving Penn, John Rawlings, Cecil Beaton, and Paul Radkai. She dated Irving Penn, who later married another model Lisa Fonssagrives.
Dorian Leigh on the cover of Vogue, June 1946
Dorian Leigh on the cover of Vogue, June 1946
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), first American supermodel
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, November 1946
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, 1946
Dorian Leigh in white sleeveless with high wing collar blouse by Adelaar, photo by Clifford Coffin
Dorian Leigh in white sleeveless with high wing collar blouse by Adelaar, photo by Clifford Coffin
Dorian Leigh in Bernath suede suit, photo by Horst. P. Horst
Dorian Leigh in Bernath suede suit, photo by Horst. P. Horst
On one assignment of Vogue, Dorian argued with photographer Paul Radkai's wife Karen, who wanted to be a fashion photographer and wanted to take many free extra photos of Dorian for her portfolio. When Dorian refused, Karen warned Dorian she would "ruin her." Indeed, Vogue never used Dorian again, and Karen became a Vogue photographer for many years.

Dorian easily transitioned to working with Harper's Bazaar's new, young photographer, Richard Avedon(who would become one of the most famous photographers in history).
Dorian Leigh, Harper's Bazzar, September 1952, photo by Richard Avedon
Dorian Leigh, Harper's Bazzar, September 1952, photo by Richard Avedon
While living in her apartment in New York, Dorian struck up a friendship with a young author, Truman Capote who was fascinated by Dorian's lifestyle of non-stop men, coming-and-goings, and having a store across the street handle her phone calls, and called her "Happy-go-lucky." Capote's character Holly Golightly in his famous 1958 novel Breakfast at Tiffany's is said to be largely based on Dorian's life, as well as socialite Gloria Vanderbilt's.
Dorian Leigh photo by William Helburn
Dorian Leigh by William Helburn
After being fed up with Harry Conover's agency, Dorian decided to start her own modeling agency called the "Fashion Bureau". She came up with the idea of the "voucher system." With this innovative system, the modeling agency would pay the models weekly, instead of the models' having to wait to be paid directly by the clients. Often it took companies weeks, months, or even years to pay models for their work.

Her modelling agency inspired a young fashion stylist named Eileen Ford, who, along with her husband Gerard W. Ford, started what would become one of the most prestigious modeling agencies in the world, Ford Models.

Around 1947, Dorian's sister Cissy introduced her to Roger Mehle who was divorced from Aileen Mehle(who later became the very famous gossip columnist known as "Suzy"). Cissy was married to an army officer and Mehle was the youngest Navy commander and fighter ace during WWII.

In August 1948, Dorian was two months pregnant when she married Mehle. Dorian's bridemaids were her teen sister Suzy Parker and Suzy's teen model friend Carmen Dell'Orefice. Dorian's two older children, who were being raised by her parents in Florida, came to live with the couple in Pennsylvania.
Dorian closed her agency when she married. She then telephoned Eileen Ford and told her that she would join the Ford Agency if they also signed her 15-year-old sister, Suzy Parker, sight-unseen. Suzy, 15 years younger than Dorian, had already been working for the Huntington Hartford agency making $25 per hour. Dorian told Ford she believed Suzy should be making $40 per hour. The Fords' agency was only two years old so they were anxious to represent a famous model like Dorian. The Fords were shocked during their initial meeting to see that Suzy was completely different from her sister Dorian who was thin, had an extremely small waist, and had black hair and bright blue eyes. Suzy was almost six inches taller than Dorian, had a very large frame, and had bright red hair, freckles, and green eyes. (In the 1950s, Suzy would become even more famous than Dorian, and would go on to be a movie and television actress.
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker, 1953
Dorian Leigh with her younger sister Suzy Parker, 1953
Dorian gave birth to her daughter, Young Eve Mehle, on March 27, 1949. The couple had a house in Bucks County, Pennsylvania but rarely saw each other. Roger Mehle's naval career stationed him in Atlantic City, and Dorian commuted to New York City and Paris for modeling work. ​
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, in Balenciaga evening dress, 1950
Dorian Leigh in Balenciaga evening dress, 1950
Dorian Leigh in Balenciaga evening dress, photo by Richard Avedon, 1951
Dorian Leigh in Balenciaga evening dress, photo by Richard Avedon, 1951
In 1952, when she was 35 years old, Richard Avedon photographed her for Revlon's most famous advertising campaign, Fire and Ice. In this two-page advertisement, Dorian is wearing a very tight, silver sequined gown wrapped in a huge red wrap that was copied from a Balenciaga original. The dress had hand-sewn silver sequins on it, and it took so long to create that only the front of the dress was finished in time to be photographed for the ad. The back was non-existent and held in place with safety pins. Dorian also had a silver streak put in her black hair. The original ad had Dorian holding her hand in front of her breast. The agency considered the photo too risqué, and the ad was re-shot. This ad was accompanied by a provocative quiz written by Kay Daly. The ad became an enormous success, winning Advertising Age's "Magazine Advertisement of the Year" award.
Dorian Leigh, Fire and Ice Campaign for Revlon
That same year, Dorian also played the part of a model in the play The Fifth Season. Her job as model, mother, and actress was featured in Look magazine's June 2, 1953, cover story. By then, Dorian had appeared on the covers of more than 50 magazines. On the Look cover, Dorian is quoted as saying, "I would rather have a baby than a mink coat.".
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, in black dress with cap sleeves, 1954
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, in black dress with three quarter sleeves, 1954
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel, in red coat, 1954, photo by Georges Dambier, Normandy, France
In the 50s, Dorian  began to work more often in Europe with Richard Avedon.

While in Paris, Dorian met the married Spanish athlete Alfonso Cabeza de Vaca, Marquis of Portago (Alfonso de Portago)nicknamed Fon, who was 11 years younger than her,  was married with a three-year-old daughter. Dorian and Fon were both reluctant to divorce their spouses, but carried on an affair all summer in Paris and Biarritz. Dorian became pregnant by him, but chose to have an abortion because she feared Roger Mehle would divorce her and take full-custody of their daughter Young Eve. Only weeks later, at the end of the summer, Fon told Dorian that his wife Carroll was pregnant with their second child. Dorian returned to the United States and divorced Roger Mehle on November 24, 1954, in Mexico. Fon then married Dorian in Mexico right away, but since de Portago was not divorced, the marriage was not legal.

Coco Chanel, great friend of her sister Suzy, warned Dorian against the affair, but Dorian continued it with Fon even though his wife Carroll gave birth to their son Anthony de Portago around 1954. When she got pregnant by de Portago again, Dorian left her three other children with her parents in Florida, fled to Paris and Switzerland, and gave birth to her son Kim Blas Parker on September 27, 1955 in Switzerland.
​After the birth of her baby son Kim, Dorian began the first legal modeling agency in France to support her son. She also had lent about $15,000 to the financially irresponsible de Portago , with whom she continued an on-and-off relationship in 1956 and 1957.

In early 1957, De Portago, still married,  was also openly dating actress Linda Christian, the ex-wife of actor Tyrone Power.

On April 23, 1957, Dorian's 40th birthday, de Portago told Dorian that he was supposedly finally divorcing Carroll so they could be legally married. He told her that he was entering the famous Mille Miglia car race in Italy on May 8, 1957 and Carroll was supposed to sign their divorce papers on May 9.

Instead, on May 8, de Portago was seen at the site of car race with Linda Christian who kissed him famously before his race. The same day, Dorian received a phone call from de Portago's mother Olga, informing Dorian that Fon's tire on his Ferrari race car had blown up because he did not stop in time for a tire change. He was killed with his co-driver as well as nine spectators, including five children. This catastrophe ended the Mille Miglia forever.

A few days after Alfonso de Portago was killed, Dorian's sister Suzy, making a movie with Cary Grant, told famous gossip columnist Louella Parsons that Dorian had a son with de Portago and she was estranged from her sister because of it. Dorian was shocked that Suzy leaked this secret, Dorian's parents were furious and told Dorian that she would never have custody of her children. They also refused to accept Kim.

In 1957, Dorian returned to Florida and visited her daughter Young at her parents’ home. Dorian then took Young and fled to Paris where she remained mostly for the next twenty-one years. The next year In 1958 she became pregnant by another man, had an abortion and married Bordat days later.

Although Dorian already had four children by three different men, she wanted another baby. When her husband Bordat claimed he was too young, Dorian moved out of their apartment, but they remained legally married.

Dorian was so busy with her Paris modeling agency that she now had branches in Hamburg, Germany, and London to which she often traveled.

During a solo ski vacation to Klosters, Switzerland over Christmas 1960, 43-year-old Dorian craved a baby and slept with four men in one week. In September 1961, Dorian gave birth to her fifth child, Miranda, in France. Dorian thought that a young ski instructor at Klosters was the father. Dorian then divorced Bordat but she did not tell her daughter Miranda that Dr. Bordat was not her father until she was a teenager, and despite never meeting her biological father, Miranda kept his last name.

In 1964, 47-year-old Dorian met 23-year-old Israeli writer Iddo Ben-Gurion and they were married. But after she discovered Iddo was a drug-addict embezzling money from her modeling agencies, she divorced him in 1966. But she eventually had to close her agencies because so much money was stolen by Iddo. Most of her modeling fortune had been spent recklessly or stolen.

Living in Paris, Dorian studied at Le Cordon Bleu and opened her own restaurant, Chez Leigh, from 1973 to 1975. She tried to get cooking jobs in Corsica and Orleans as well. By 1976, Dorian was broke.
​
In 1977, Dorian received a phone call from the New York City modeling agency Stewart Cowley asking her to work as his office manager. Dorian agreed to return to New York where her son Kim was living. Kim's half-brother Anthony de Portago also lived in New York City and the two actually had become good friends. Dorian soon discovered that her 21-year-old son Kim was a serious drug addict, and sent him to live with her sister Suzy in California briefly. Only six months after Dorian re-settled and reunited with Kim in New York, he jumped 33 floors from his apartment window to his death, leaving a suicide note behind.

After Kim's death, Dorian lived in Pound Ridge, New York, where she made pâtés for delicatessens and specialty food shops, according to a profile in The New York Times by Enid Nemy. She also worked with Martha Stewart in the early 1980s.

Dorian wrote two cookbooks, Pancakes: From Flapjacks to Crepes (1987) and Doughnuts: Over 3 Dozen Crullers, Fritters and Other Treats (1994) at the age of 77.
​
In 1980, Dorian published an autobiography, The Girl Who Had Everything.

According to Dorian, she wrote her autobiography for her late son: "I really wrote it for Kim, who will never read it. But perhaps other Kims and their parents may learn from my unhappy experiences".
Dorian Leigh, photo by Lillian Bassman, 1948
Dorian died in a Falls Church, Virginia nursing home from Alzheimer's disease at the age of 91 on July 7th in 2008. In her obituary, her first son, T.L. Hawkins, reminisced about his mother's famous "Fire and Ice" photograph.

Her only remaining sister Florian Parker died at the age of 92 in 2010.
Dorian Leigh (April 23, 1917 – July 7, 2008), the first American supermodel
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David Lean CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991)

28/3/2021

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David Lean, the greatest English film director
David Lean, the greatest English film director
​Sir David Lean CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Widely considered one of the most influential directors of all time, Lean directed the large-scale epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984). He also directed two adaptations of Charles Dickens novels, Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), as well as the romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).

Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's In Which We Serve, which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Beginning with Summertime in 1955, Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios; in 1970, however, the critical failure of his film Ryan's Daughter led him to take a fourteen-year break from filmmaking, during which he planned a number of film projects which never came to fruition. In 1984 he had a career revival with A Passage to India, adapted from E. M. Forster's novel; it was an instant hit with critics but proved to be the last film Lean would direct.

Lean's affinity for pictorialism and inventive editing techniques has led him to be lauded by directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Ridley Scott. Lean was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute Sight & Sound "Directors' Top Directors" poll in 2002. Nominated seven times for the Academy Award for Best Director, which he won twice for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, he has seven films in the British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films (with three of them being in the top five) and was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1990.
David Lean, the greatest English film director

Biography

​David Lean was born on 25 March 1908 at 38 Blenheim Crescent, South Croydon, Surrey (now part of Greater London), to Francis William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye. His parents were Quakers and he was a pupil at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading. His younger brother, Edward Tangye Lean (1911–1974), founded the original Inklings literary club when a student at Oxford University.

When Lean was aged ten, his uncle gave him a Brownie box camera. "You usually didn't give a boy a camera until he was 16 or 17 in those days. It was a huge compliment and I succeeded at it.' Lean printed and developed his films, and it was his 'great hobby'.

Lean was a half-hearted schoolboy with a dreamy nature who was labeled a "dud" of a student. In 1923, his father deserted the family and Lean would later follow a similar path after his own first marriage and child.

In the Christmas Term of 1926, Lean left school at the age of 18 and entered his father's chartered accountancy firm as an apprentice.


Bored by his work, Lean spent every evening in the cinema, and in 1927, after an aunt had advised him to find a job he enjoyed, he visited Gaumont Studios where his obvious enthusiasm earned him a month's trial without pay. He was taken on as a teaboy, promoted to clapperboy, and soon rose to the position of third assistant director. By 1930 he was working as an editor on newsreels, including those of Gaumont Pictures and Movietone, while his move to feature films began with Freedom of the Seas (1934) and Escape Me Never (1935). He has also edited  two film productions of two George Bernard Shaw plays, Pygmalion (1938) and Major Barbara (1941). 

Lean began his directing career, after editing more than two dozen features by 1942. 
​His first work as a director was in collaboration with Noël Coward on In Which We Serve (1942), and he later adapted several of Coward's plays into successful films, including This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945) and Brief Encounter (1945). The film shared Grand Prix honors at the 1946 Cannes film festival and garnered Lean his first Academy nominations for directing and screen adaptation, and Celia Johnson who played the female lead a nomination for Best Actress. It has since become a classic, one of the most highly regarded British films.

Two celebrated Charles Dickens adaptations followed – Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948).

The next film directed by Lean was The Passionate Friends (1949), an atypical Lean film, and the first of three films to feature the actress Ann Todd, who became his third wife. The last of the films with Todd, The Sound Barrier (1952), has a screenplay by the playwright Terence Rattigan and was the first of his three films for Sir Alexander Korda's London Films. 
David Lean directing Katharine Hepburn in Summer Time
David Lean directing Katharine Hepburn in Summer Time
Summertime (1955) marked a new departure for Lean. It was partly American financed, although again made for Korda's London Films. The film features Katharine Hepburn in the lead role as a middle-aged American woman who has a romance while on holiday in Venice. It was shot entirely on location there.

Lean's films now began to become infrequent but much larger in scale and more extensively released internationally. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) was based on a novel by Pierre Boulle recounting the story of British and American prisoners of war trying to survive in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. The film stars William Holden and Alec Guinness and became the highest-grossing film of 1957 in the United States. It won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Alec Guinness, who had battled with Lean to give more depth to his role as an obsessively correct British commander who is determined to build the best possible bridge for his Japanese captors in Burma.

After extensive location work in the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, and elsewhere, Lean's Lawrence of Arabia was released in 1962. It recounts the life of T. E. Lawrence(played by Peter O'Toole), the British officer who is depicted in the film as uniting the squabbling Bedouin peoples of the Arab peninsula to fight in World War I and then push on for independence. French composer Maurice Jarre, on his first Lean film, created a soaring film score with a famous theme and won his first Oscar for Best Original Score. The film turned actor Peter O'Toole, playing Lawrence, into an international star, and was nominated for ten Oscars and won seven, including Best Picture and Lean's second win for Best Director. He remains the only British director to win more than one Oscar for directing.
David Lean with Omar Sharif on the set of Lawrence of Arabia, 1965
David Lean with Omar Sharif on the set of Lawrence of Arabia, 1965
David Lean with Julie Christie and Geraldine Chaplin
David Lean with Julie Christie and Geraldine Chaplin
David Lean in 1965 while shooting Doctor Zhivago
David Lean in 1965 while shooting Doctor Zhivago
David Lean with Sarah Miles on the set of Ryan's daughter, 1970
David Lean with Sarah Miles on the set of Ryan's daughter, 1970
David Lean in Northern Finland in 1965 while shooting Doctor Zhivago
David Lean in Northern Finland in 1965 while shooting Doctor Zhivago
Lean had his greatest box-office success with Doctor Zhivago (1965), a romance set during the Russian Revolution. The film, based on the banned novel by Nobel Prize-winning Russian poet Boris Pasternak, tells the story of a brilliant and warm-hearted physician and poet Yuri (played by Omar Sharif) who, while seemingly happily married into the Russian aristocracy, and a father, falls in love with a beautiful abandoned young mother named Lara (played Julie Christie) and struggles to be with her in the chaos of the Bolshevik revolution and subsequent Russian Civil War.

As of 2020, it is the 9th highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation. Producer Carlo Ponti used Maurice Jarre's lush romantic score to create a pop tune called "Lara's Theme", which became an international hit song with lyrics under the title "Somewhere My Love", one of cinema's most successful theme songs. The British director of photography, Freddie Young, won an Academy Award for his color cinematography. 

Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970) was released after an extended period on location in Ireland. A doomed romance set against the backdrop of 1916 Ireland's struggles against the British, it is loosely based on Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. The film received far fewer positive reviews than the director's previous work, being particularly savaged by the New York critics. Nonetheless, the film was a box office success, earning $31 million and making it the 8th highest-grossing film of that year. It won two Academy Awards the following year, another for cinematographer Freddie Young.

The poor critical reception of the film prompted Lean to meet with the National Society of Film Critics, gathered at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, including The New Yorker's Pauline Kael, and ask them why they objected to the movie. These critics so lacerated the film for two hours to David Lean's face that the devastated Lean was put off from making films for a long time. 
​During the last years of his life, Lean was in pre-production of a film version of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo. 
​From 1977 until 1980, Lean and Robert Bolt worked on a film adaptation of Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian, a dramatized account by Richard Hough of the Mutiny on the Bounty. After Bolt suffered a serious stroke and was unable to continue writing, however, Lean was forced to abandon the project after overseeing casting and the construction of the $4 million Bounty replica as the director felt that Bolt's involvement would be crucial to the film's success.

The film's producer, Italian mogul Dino De Laurentiis did not want to lose the millions he had already put into the project over what he thought was as insignificant a person as the director dropping out. The film was eventually released as The Bounty.

Lean then embarked on a project he had pursued since 1960, a film adaptation of A Passage to India (1984), from E. M. Forster's 1924 novel of colonial conflicts in British-occupied India. Entirely shot on location in the sub-continent, this became his last completed film. He rejected a draft by Santha Rama Rau, responsible for the stage adaptation and Forster's preferred screenwriter, and wrote the script himself. In addition, Lean also edited the film with the result that his three roles in the production (writer, editor, director) were given equal status in the credits.

Lean recruited long-time collaborators for the cast and crew, including Maurice Jarre (who won another Academy Award for the score), Alec Guinness in his sixth and final role for Lean, as an eccentric Hindu Brahmin, and John Box, the production designer for Dr. Zhivago. The film opened to universally enthusiastic reviews and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and Lean himself nominated for three Academy Awards in directing, editing, and writing. His female star, an English woman played by Australian actress Judy Davis her first Academy nomination. Peggy Ashcroft, as the sensitive Mrs. Moore, won the Oscar for best supporting actress, making her, at 77, the oldest actress to win that award.

He was signed on to direct a Warner Bros.-backed adaptation of J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun. Steven Spielberg, who was brought on board as a producer for Lean, later assumed the role of director when Lean dropped out of the project; Spielberg was drawn to the idea of making the film due to his long-time admiration for Lean and his films. Empire of the Sun was released in 1987.
​The Nostromo project involved several writers whose work was abandoned. In the end, Lean decided to write the film himself with the assistance of Maggie Unsworth with whom he had worked on the scripts for Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and The Passionate Friends. Nostromo had a total budget of $46 million and was six weeks away from filming at the time of Lean's death from throat cancer and interment at Putney Vale Cemetery.

Nostromo was finally adapted for the small screen with an unrelated BBC television mini-series in 1997.

Lean was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1953, and was knighted for his contributions and services to the arts in 1984.
Lean received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1990. ​​
Lean was married six times, had one son, and at least two grandchildren—from all of whom he was completely estranged—and was divorced five times. He was survived by his last wife, art dealer Sandra Cooke, the co-author (with Barry Chattington) of David Lean: An Intimate Portrait (2001),[10] as well as Peter Lean, his son from his first marriage.

His six wives were:
  • Isabel Lean (28 June 1930 – 1936) (his first cousin); one son, Peter
  • Kay Walsh (23 November 1940 – 1949)
  • Ann Todd (21 May 1949 – 1957)
  • Leila Matkar (4 July 1960 – 1978) (from Hyderabad, India); Lean's longest-lasting marriage
  • Sandra Hotz (28 October 1981 – 1984)
  • Sandra Cooke (15 December 1990 – 16 April 1991, Lean's death)
David Lean and his third wife Ann Todd
David Lean and his third wife Ann Todd
Picture
David Lean and his fourth wife Leila Matkar of India on their wedding, 1960
In 1999, the British Film Institute compiled its list of the Top 100 British films; seven of Lean's films appeared on the list:
  • Brief Encounter (#2)
  • Lawrence of Arabia (#3)
  • Great Expectations (#5)
  • The Bridge on the River Kwai (#11)
  • Doctor Zhivago (#27)
  • Oliver Twist (#46)
  • In Which We Serve (#92)
In addition to this, the American Film Institute's 1998 100 Years...100 Movies list placed Lawrence of Arabia 5th, The Bridge on the River Kwai 13th and Doctor Zhivago 39th; in the 2007 revised edition, Lawrence of Arabia placed 7th and The Bridge on the River Kwai placed 36th.

He directed more films that won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography at the Oscars than any other director, with five wins out of six nominations for Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter—the last nomination being for A Passage to India.
As Lean himself pointed out, his films are often admired by fellow directors as a showcase of the filmmaker's art. Lean was also notorious for his perfectionist approach to filmmaking; director Claude Chabrol stated that he and Lean were the only directors working at the time who were prepared to wait "forever" for the perfect sunset, but whereas Chabrol measured "forever" in terms of days, Lean did so in terms of months.

Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese in particular are fans of Lean's epic films and claim him as one of their primary influences. Spielberg and Scorsese also helped in the 1989 restoration of Lawrence of Arabia, which had been substantially altered both by the studio in theatrical release and in particular in its televised versions; the theatrical re-release greatly revived Lean's reputation.

Several of the many other later twentieth century directors who have acknowledged significant influence by Lean include Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Spike Lee, and Sergio Leone.
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