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John Schlesinger

April 12, 2024

This article is about the director. For the attorney, see Marilyn Milian.

John Richard Schlesinger[1] CBE (/ˈʃlɛsɪndʒər/ SHLESS-in-jər; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director, and actor. He emerged in the early 1960s as a leading light of the British New Wave, before embarking on a successful career in Hollywood, often directing films dealing frankly in provocative subject matter, combined with his status as one of the only openly-gay directors working in mainstream films.[2][3]

John Schlesinger

CBE
Schlesinger in 1974
Born
John Richard Schlesinger

(1926-02-16)16 February 1926
London, England
Died25 July 2003(2003-07-25) (aged 77)
Palm Springs, California, U.S.
Alma materBalliol College, Oxford
Occupations
  • Director
  • actor
PartnerMichael Childers

Schlesinger started his career making British dramas A Kind of Loving (1962), Billy Liar (1963), and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967). He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Midnight Cowboy (1969) and was Oscar-nominated for Darling (1965) and Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). He gained acclaim for his Hollywood films The Day of the Locust (1975), and Marathon Man (1976). His later films include Madame Sousatzka (1988), and Cold Comfort Farm (1995). He also served as an associate director of the Royal National Theatre.

Over his career he received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, and four BAFTA Awards as well as nominations for three Golden Globe Awards. In 1970, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to film, and in 2002, he was made a BAFTA Fellow. Four of Schlesinger's films are on the British Film Institute's Top 100 British films.[4]

Early life edit

Schlesinger was born and raised in Hampstead, London,[5] in a Jewish family,[6] the eldest of five children[7] of distinguished Emmanuel College, Cambridge–educated paediatrician and physician Bernard Edward Schlesinger OBE FRCP (1896–1984), who had also served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a brigadier,[8] and his wife Winifred Henrietta, daughter of Hermann Regensburg, a stockbroker from Frankfurt.[9] She had left school at 14 to study at the Trinity College of Music, and later studied languages at the University of Oxford for three years.[10][11] Bernard Schlesinger's father Richard, a stockbroker, had come to England in the 1880s from Frankfurt.[12]

After St Edmund's School, Hindhead and Uppingham School (where his father had also been),[13] Schlesinger enlisted in the British Army during World War II. While serving with the Royal Engineers, he made films on the war's front line. He also entertained his fellow troops by performing magic tricks.[14] After his tour of duty, he continued making short films and acted in stage productions while studying at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was involved in the Oxford University Dramatic Society.[15]

Career edit

Schlesinger's acting career began in the 1950s and consisted of supporting roles in British films such as The Divided Heart and Oh... Rosalinda!!, and British television productions such as BBC Sunday Night Theatre, The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Vise. He began his directorial career in 1956 with the short documentary Sunday in the Park about London's Hyde Park. In 1958, Schlesinger created a documentary on Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival for the BBC's Monitor TV programme, including rehearsals of the children's opera Noye's Fludde featuring a young Michael Crawford.[16][17] In 1959, Schlesinger was credited as exterior or second unit director on 23 episodes of the TV series The Four Just Men and four 30-minute episodes of the series Danger Man.[18] He also appeared in Col March of Scotland Yard as "Dutch cook" in "Death and the Other Monkey" 1956.

By the 1960s, he had virtually given up acting to concentrate on a directing career, and another of his earlier directorial efforts, the British Transport Films' documentary Terminus (1961), gained a Venice Film Festival Gold Lion and a British Academy Award. His first two fiction films, A Kind of Loving (1962) and Billy Liar (1963) were set in the North of England. A Kind of Loving won the Golden Bear award at the 12th Berlin International Film Festival in 1962.[19] His third feature film, Darling (1965), tartly described the modern way of life in London and was one of the first films about 'swinging London'. Schlesinger's next film was the period drama Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's popular novel accentuated by beautiful English country locations. Both films (and Billy Liar) featured Julie Christie as the female lead.

Schlesinger's next film, Midnight Cowboy (1969), was internationally acclaimed. A story of two hustlers living on the fringe in the bad side of New York City, it was Schlesinger's first film shot in the US, and it won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture. The film was one of the earliest mainstream American films to deal explicitly in a homosexual relationship, and is considered a groundbreaking work of queer cinema.[20][21][22] During the 1970s, he made an array of films that were mainly about loners, losers and people outside the mainstream world, such as Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Day of the Locust (1975), Marathon Man (1976) and Yanks (1979). Later, came the major box office and critical failure of Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), followed by films that attracted mixed responses from the public, and low returns, although The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) made money and Pacific Heights (1990) was a box-office hit. In Britain, he did better with films like Madame Sousatzka (1988) and Cold Comfort Farm (1995). Other later works include plays for television An Englishman Abroad (1983) and A Question of Attribution (1991), both with scripts by Alan Bennett, The Innocent (1993) and The Next Best Thing (2000).

Schlesinger directed on stage Timon of Athens (1965) for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the musical I and Albert (1972) at London's Piccadilly Theatre. From 1973, he was an associate director of the Royal National Theatre, where he produced George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House (1975). He directed several operas, including Les contes d'Hoffmann (1980) and Der Rosenkavalier (1984), both at Covent Garden.[23]

Schlesinger directed a party political broadcast for the Conservative Party in the general election of 1992, which featured Prime Minister John Major returning to Brixton in south London, thus highlighting Major's humble background, something atypical for a Conservative politician at that time. Schlesinger said he had voted for all three main political parties in the UK at one time or another.

Later life and death edit

In 1991, Schlesinger made a brief return to acting, portraying the gay character 'Derek' in the TV adaptation of The Lost Language of Cranes for the BBC. Schlesinger had himself come out during the making of Midnight Cowboy.[24]

Schlesinger was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to film.[25][26] Maintaining a flat in London and house at Palm Springs, California[27] Schlesinger had a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars dedicated to him in January 2003, which was his final public appearance.[28][29]

Schlesinger underwent a quadruple heart bypass in 1998, before suffering a stroke on New Year's Day 2001, which substantially diminished his faculties.[30] He died at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs on the morning of 25 July 2003, at the age of 77.[31][2]

Schlesinger was survived by his partner of over 30 years, photographer Michael Childers. A memorial service was held on 30 September 2003.[26] He was cremated, with most of his ashes interred next to his parents, and the remainder left to be interred with Childers.[32]

Filmography edit

Films edit

Television edit

Documentary edit

Awards and honours edit

He was twice nominated for the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion, and was recipient of the Directors Guild of Great Britain's Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1970, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to film, and in 2002, he was made a BAFTA Fellow.

Academy Awards

BAFTA Awards

Golden Globe Awards

  • Best Director (1966) (Darling) – Nominated
  • Best Director (1970) (Midnight Cowboy) – Nominated
  • Best Director (1977) (Marathon Man) – Nominated

References edit

  1. ^ "Schlesinger, John Richard (1926–2003)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/92267. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b Breznica, Anthony (26 July 2003). "Filmmaker John Schlesinger Dies at 77". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
  3. ^ "Where to begin with John Schlesinger". BFI. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
  4. ^ "British Film Institute – Top 100 British Films – cinemarealm.com". Retrieved 25 October 2023.
  5. ^ Mann, 2004, pp. 46, 179
  6. ^ Bond, Paul (8 August 2003). "Obituary: John Schlesinger, filmmaker, 1926–2003". World Socialist Website. International Committee of the Fourth International. Retrieved 21 June 2011.
  7. ^ John Schlesinger, Gene D. Phillips, Twayne Publishers, 1981, p. 17
  8. ^ "Bernard Edward Schlesinger | RCP Museum".
  9. ^ Their life through letters was later published by their grandson Ian Buruma as Their Promised Land (Penguin, 1917.)
  10. ^ Mann, 2004, p. 54
  11. ^ Current Biography Yearbook 1970, ed. Charles Moritz, The H. W. Wilson Co., 1971, p. 377
  12. ^ Mann, 2004, p. 51
  13. ^ Mann, 2004, p. 58
  14. ^ John Schlesinger on Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved February 22, 2020.
  15. ^ Rhodes, Rachel (25 November 2005). "Jocelyn Page – interview transcript" (PDF). British Library. Retrieved 2 April 2016.
  16. ^ Benjamin Britten on Camera Video from 10:01.
  17. ^ Wiebe, Heather. Britten's Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction. Cambridge University Press, 2012: p. 153
  18. ^ End credits of episodes of both series.
  19. ^ . berlinale.de. Archived from the original on 8 April 2011. Retrieved 3 February 2010.
  20. ^ Harris, Mark (29 May 2018). "Midnight Cowboy: On the Fringe". Criterion Collection.
  21. ^ "50 Years After Midnight Cowboy, Gay Cinema Is Still a Work in Progress". LAmag - Culture, Food, Fashion, News & Los Angeles. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
  22. ^ "X-Rated: Inside the Myths and Legends of Midnight Cowboy". Vanity Fair. 26 February 2021. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
  23. ^ Millington, Barry (2001). "John Schlesinger". In Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John (eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan Publishers. ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.‎
  24. ^ Goldstein, Patrick (27 February 2005). "'Midnight Cowboy' and the very dark horse its makers rode in on". LA Times.
  25. ^ "No. 45117". The London Gazette (Supplement). 5 June 1970. p. 6373.
  26. ^ a b "Diaries 1996–2004". Untold Stories. p. 335.
  27. ^ Meeks, Eric G. (2014) [2012]. The Best Guide Ever to Palm Springs Celebrity Homes. Horatio Limburger Oglethorpe. pp. 41–43. ISBN 978-1479328598.
  28. ^ Mann, 2004, p. 559
  29. ^
  30. ^ Mann, 2004, p. 556
  31. ^ Mann, 2004, p. 560
  32. ^ Mann, 2004, p. 560

Sources edit

  • Mann, William J. (2004). Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 978-0091794897

External links edit

  • John Schlesinger at IMDb
  • at the TCM Movie Database
  • John Schlesinger at the BFI's Screenonline
  • Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
  • Literature on John Schlesinger
  • Interview at the British Entertainment History Project

April 12, 2024
john, schlesinger, this, article, about, director, attorney, marilyn, milian, john, richard, schlesinger, shless, jər, february, 1926, july, 2003, english, film, stage, director, actor, emerged, early, 1960s, leading, light, british, wave, before, embarking, s. This article is about the director For the attorney see Marilyn Milian John Richard Schlesinger 1 CBE ˈ ʃ l ɛ s ɪ n dʒ er SHLESS in jer 16 February 1926 25 July 2003 was an English film and stage director and actor He emerged in the early 1960s as a leading light of the British New Wave before embarking on a successful career in Hollywood often directing films dealing frankly in provocative subject matter combined with his status as one of the only openly gay directors working in mainstream films 2 3 John SchlesingerCBESchlesinger in 1974BornJohn Richard Schlesinger 1926 02 16 16 February 1926London EnglandDied25 July 2003 2003 07 25 aged 77 Palm Springs California U S Alma materBalliol College OxfordOccupationsDirectoractorPartnerMichael ChildersSchlesinger started his career making British dramas A Kind of Loving 1962 Billy Liar 1963 and Far from the Madding Crowd 1967 He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Midnight Cowboy 1969 and was Oscar nominated for Darling 1965 and Sunday Bloody Sunday 1971 He gained acclaim for his Hollywood films The Day of the Locust 1975 and Marathon Man 1976 His later films include Madame Sousatzka 1988 and Cold Comfort Farm 1995 He also served as an associate director of the Royal National Theatre Over his career he received numerous accolades including an Academy Award and four BAFTA Awards as well as nominations for three Golden Globe Awards In 1970 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire CBE in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to film and in 2002 he was made a BAFTA Fellow Four of Schlesinger s films are on the British Film Institute s Top 100 British films 4 Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Later life and death 4 Filmography 4 1 Films 4 2 Television 4 3 Documentary 5 Awards and honours 6 References 7 Sources 8 External linksEarly life editSchlesinger was born and raised in Hampstead London 5 in a Jewish family 6 the eldest of five children 7 of distinguished Emmanuel College Cambridge educated paediatrician and physician Bernard Edward Schlesinger OBE FRCP 1896 1984 who had also served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a brigadier 8 and his wife Winifred Henrietta daughter of Hermann Regensburg a stockbroker from Frankfurt 9 She had left school at 14 to study at the Trinity College of Music and later studied languages at the University of Oxford for three years 10 11 Bernard Schlesinger s father Richard a stockbroker had come to England in the 1880s from Frankfurt 12 After St Edmund s School Hindhead and Uppingham School where his father had also been 13 Schlesinger enlisted in the British Army during World War II While serving with the Royal Engineers he made films on the war s front line He also entertained his fellow troops by performing magic tricks 14 After his tour of duty he continued making short films and acted in stage productions while studying at Balliol College Oxford where he was involved in the Oxford University Dramatic Society 15 Career editSchlesinger s acting career began in the 1950s and consisted of supporting roles in British films such as The Divided Heart and Oh Rosalinda and British television productions such as BBC Sunday Night Theatre The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Vise He began his directorial career in 1956 with the short documentary Sunday in the Park about London s Hyde Park In 1958 Schlesinger created a documentary on Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival for the BBC s Monitor TV programme including rehearsals of the children s opera Noye s Fludde featuring a young Michael Crawford 16 17 In 1959 Schlesinger was credited as exterior or second unit director on 23 episodes of the TV series The Four Just Men and four 30 minute episodes of the series Danger Man 18 He also appeared in Col March of Scotland Yard as Dutch cook in Death and the Other Monkey 1956 By the 1960s he had virtually given up acting to concentrate on a directing career and another of his earlier directorial efforts the British Transport Films documentary Terminus 1961 gained a Venice Film Festival Gold Lion and a British Academy Award His first two fiction films A Kind of Loving 1962 and Billy Liar 1963 were set in the North of England A Kind of Loving won the Golden Bear award at the 12th Berlin International Film Festival in 1962 19 His third feature film Darling 1965 tartly described the modern way of life in London and was one of the first films about swinging London Schlesinger s next film was the period drama Far from the Madding Crowd 1967 an adaptation of Thomas Hardy s popular novel accentuated by beautiful English country locations Both films and Billy Liar featured Julie Christie as the female lead Schlesinger s next film Midnight Cowboy 1969 was internationally acclaimed A story of two hustlers living on the fringe in the bad side of New York City it was Schlesinger s first film shot in the US and it won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture The film was one of the earliest mainstream American films to deal explicitly in a homosexual relationship and is considered a groundbreaking work of queer cinema 20 21 22 During the 1970s he made an array of films that were mainly about loners losers and people outside the mainstream world such as Sunday Bloody Sunday 1971 The Day of the Locust 1975 Marathon Man 1976 and Yanks 1979 Later came the major box office and critical failure of Honky Tonk Freeway 1981 followed by films that attracted mixed responses from the public and low returns although The Falcon and the Snowman 1985 made money and Pacific Heights 1990 was a box office hit In Britain he did better with films like Madame Sousatzka 1988 and Cold Comfort Farm 1995 Other later works include plays for television An Englishman Abroad 1983 and A Question of Attribution 1991 both with scripts by Alan Bennett The Innocent 1993 and The Next Best Thing 2000 Schlesinger directed on stage Timon of Athens 1965 for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the musical I and Albert 1972 at London s Piccadilly Theatre From 1973 he was an associate director of the Royal National Theatre where he produced George Bernard Shaw s Heartbreak House 1975 He directed several operas including Les contes d Hoffmann 1980 and Der Rosenkavalier 1984 both at Covent Garden 23 Schlesinger directed a party political broadcast for the Conservative Party in the general election of 1992 which featured Prime Minister John Major returning to Brixton in south London thus highlighting Major s humble background something atypical for a Conservative politician at that time Schlesinger said he had voted for all three main political parties in the UK at one time or another Later life and death editIn 1991 Schlesinger made a brief return to acting portraying the gay character Derek in the TV adaptation of The Lost Language of Cranes for the BBC Schlesinger had himself come out during the making of Midnight Cowboy 24 Schlesinger was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire CBE in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to film 25 26 Maintaining a flat in London and house at Palm Springs California 27 Schlesinger had a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars dedicated to him in January 2003 which was his final public appearance 28 29 Schlesinger underwent a quadruple heart bypass in 1998 before suffering a stroke on New Year s Day 2001 which substantially diminished his faculties 30 He died at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs on the morning of 25 July 2003 at the age of 77 31 2 Schlesinger was survived by his partner of over 30 years photographer Michael Childers A memorial service was held on 30 September 2003 26 He was cremated with most of his ashes interred next to his parents and the remainder left to be interred with Childers 32 Filmography editFilms edit A Kind of Loving 1962 Billy Liar 1963 Darling 1965 Far From the Madding Crowd 1967 Midnight Cowboy 1969 Sunday Bloody Sunday 1971 The Day of the Locust 1975 Marathon Man 1976 Yanks 1979 Honky Tonk Freeway 1981 The Falcon and the Snowman 1985 The Believers 1987 Madame Sousatzka 1988 Pacific Heights 1990 The Innocent 1993 Cold Comfort Farm 1995 Eye for an Eye 1996 The Next Best Thing 2000 Television edit The Adventures of Aggie 1956 57 Separate Tables 1983 TV An Englishman Abroad 1983 TV A Question of Attribution 1991 TV Cold Comfort Farm 1995 TV The Tale of Sweeney Todd 1998 TV Documentary edit Sunday in the Park 1956 Terminus 1961 Israel A Right to Live 1967 Visions of Eight segment The Longest 1973 Awards and honours editHe was twice nominated for the Venice Film Festival s Golden Lion and was recipient of the Directors Guild of Great Britain s Lifetime Achievement Award In 1970 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire CBE in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to film and in 2002 he was made a BAFTA Fellow Academy Awards Best Director 1966 Darling Nominated Best Director 1970 Midnight Cowboy Won Best Director 1972 Sunday Bloody Sunday NominatedBAFTA Awards Best Short Film 1962 Terminus Won Best British Film 1966 Darling Nominated Best Direction 1970 Midnight Cowboy Won Best Direction 1972 Sunday Bloody Sunday Won Best Direction 1980 Yanks Nominated Best Single Drama 1984 An Englishman Abroad Won Best Single Drama 1992 A Question of Attribution Won BAFTA Fellowship 1996 Golden Globe Awards Best Director 1966 Darling Nominated Best Director 1970 Midnight Cowboy Nominated Best Director 1977 Marathon Man NominatedReferences edit Schlesinger John Richard 1926 2003 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 92267 Subscription or UK public library membership required a b Breznica Anthony 26 July 2003 Filmmaker John Schlesinger Dies at 77 The Washington Post ISSN 0190 8286 Retrieved 25 October 2023 Where to begin with John Schlesinger BFI Retrieved 25 October 2023 British Film Institute Top 100 British Films cinemarealm com Retrieved 25 October 2023 Mann 2004 pp 46 179 Bond Paul 8 August 2003 Obituary John Schlesinger filmmaker 1926 2003 World Socialist Website International Committee of the Fourth International Retrieved 21 June 2011 John Schlesinger Gene D Phillips Twayne Publishers 1981 p 17 Bernard Edward Schlesinger RCP Museum Their life through letters was later published by their grandson Ian Buruma as Their Promised Land Penguin 1917 Mann 2004 p 54 Current Biography Yearbook 1970 ed Charles Moritz The H W Wilson Co 1971 p 377 Mann 2004 p 51 Mann 2004 p 58 John Schlesinger on Encyclopedia Britannica Retrieved February 22 2020 Rhodes Rachel 25 November 2005 Jocelyn Page interview transcript PDF British Library Retrieved 2 April 2016 Benjamin Britten on Camera Video from 10 01 Wiebe Heather Britten s Unquiet Pasts Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction Cambridge University Press 2012 p 153 End credits of episodes of both series Berlinale Prize Winners berlinale de Archived from the original on 8 April 2011 Retrieved 3 February 2010 Harris Mark 29 May 2018 Midnight Cowboy On the Fringe Criterion Collection 50 Years After Midnight Cowboy Gay Cinema Is Still a Work in Progress LAmag Culture Food Fashion News amp Los Angeles Retrieved 25 October 2023 X Rated Inside the Myths and Legends of Midnight Cowboy Vanity Fair 26 February 2021 Retrieved 25 October 2023 Millington Barry 2001 John Schlesinger In Sadie Stanley Tyrrell John eds The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 2nd ed London Macmillan Publishers ISBN 978 1 56159 239 5 Goldstein Patrick 27 February 2005 Midnight Cowboy and the very dark horse its makers rode in on LA Times No 45117 The London Gazette Supplement 5 June 1970 p 6373 a b Diaries 1996 2004 Untold Stories p 335 Meeks Eric G 2014 2012 The Best Guide Ever to Palm Springs Celebrity Homes Horatio Limburger Oglethorpe pp 41 43 ISBN 978 1479328598 Mann 2004 p 559 Palm Springs Walk of Stars by date dedicated Mann 2004 p 556 Mann 2004 p 560 Mann 2004 p 560Sources editMann William J 2004 Edge of Midnight The Life of John Schlesinger London Hutchinson ISBN 978 0091794897External links edit nbsp Biography portalJohn Schlesinger at IMDb John Schlesinger at the TCM Movie Database John Schlesinger at the BFI s Screenonline Senses of Cinema Great Directors Critical Database Literature on John Schlesinger Interview at the British Entertainment History Project Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title John Schlesinger amp oldid 1213924367, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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