John Lee Thompson (1 August 1914 – 30 August 2002) was an English film director, screenwriter, producer and playwright. Initially an exponent of social realism, he became known as a versatile and prolific director of thrillers, action, and adventure films.
His works included mainstream critical and commercial successes like Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), Ice Cold in Alex (1958), Tiger Bay (1959), North West Frontier (also 1959), The Guns of Navarone (1961), the original Cape Fear (1962), and Mackenna's Gold (1969). He also directed cult classics like the Planet of the Apes sequels, The White Buffalo (1977), Happy Birthday to Me (1981), King Solomon's Mines (1985) and several Charles Bronson vehicles for Cannon Films in the 1980s.
Thompson received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director for The Guns of Navarone. He was also a four-time BAFTA Award nominee (twice for Best Film and twice for Outstanding British Film). He also received accolades from the Berlin International Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival, and was both a Golden Globe and Directors Guild of America Award nominee.
Early life Thompson was born in the Bristol suburb of Westbury on Trym on 1 August 1914. His family had links to the theatre. Thompson studied at Dover College then went to work in the theatre, joining the Nottingham Repertory Company as an actor and stagehand. He later went to work for a repertory company in Croydon, Surrey.
He wrote plays in his spare time, continuing a hobby he had started at the age of nine. One of them, Murder Happens? was performed at Croydon in 1934. His second staged play, Double Error, had a brief West End run at the Fortune Theatre in 1935. An article from this time about the play said he had written 40 plays already, including four in between his first two staged plays. A company worth £10,000 was formed to exploit Thompson's writings over the next seven years but this appears to have not had a long life.
Thompson later said he had written a part for himself to perform, but when management asked him if he wanted to do so he said "of course not," and "the die was cast. Later I decided if I didn't have the guts to admit I wanted to play the role I should never act again and I never did."
Screenwriter The film rights to Double Error were purchased for £100. Thompson was hired to work in the scriptwriting department at British International Pictures at Elstree Studios. While there he made his one appearance as an actor in films, playing a small role in Midshipman Easy (1935).
His first credit was The Price of Folly (1937), based on his play. He also worked on the scripts for Glamorous Night (1937), and he worked as dialogue coach on Jamaica Inn (1939), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
He wrote the scripts for The Middle Watch (1940), made at Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) and East of Piccadilly (1941).
World War II Thompson served in World War II as a tailgunner and wireless operator in the RAF. In 1942 a revised version of Double Error, titled Murder Without Crime, opened at the Comedy Theatre in London. The play had a run on Broadway in 1943.
Post-war After the war Thompson returned to his work as scriptwriter under contract at Associated British on such films as No Place for Jennifer (1949) and For Them That Trespass (1949), the latter starring Richard Todd in his debut.
Thompson was dialogue director on The Hasty Heart (1949), which turned Todd into a star. He later said he gave up dialogue directing because he found the job "impossible. My job was to take stars through their lines but I felt that I was also expected to be a spy for the front office. If a word was altered they wanted to know why. It was a way of keeping control."
The same year his play The Human Touch, co-written with Dudley Leslie, ran for more than a hundred performances at the Savoy Theatre in a production starring Alec Guinness.
British film director
Early films His first film as a director was Murder Without Crime (1950), made at ABPC, who put Thompson under contract. Thompson was offered £500 for the screen rights to the play and £500 to direct. He said "it was not so much that I wanted to direct movies it was to get the money so I could continue writing plays. But while directing it I got the feeling that I wanted to be a movie director."
Thompson said "the fact is I found directing to be much easier than writing and I enjoyed it much more than writing as well. So I became a film director."
The film was about a man who thinks he has committed murder. Thompson also wrote the screenplay, based on his own play Double Error. In the words of Thompson's Screenonline profile "this well structured film went largely unnoticed but contained many of the themes which were to characterise Lee Thompson's work: a good person's struggle with their conscience, an external force of evil, and an out-of-character moment of violence which has long-term consequences. Believing people can "commit crimes without being criminals", he sought to make his audiences condone or at least understand behaviour that they would normally condemn."
Thompson's first film success was one he directed and co-wrote (with Anne Burnaby), The Yellow Balloon (1953), the story of a child who is blackmailed into helping a criminal after accidentally causing his friend's death.
He followed it with a comedy, For Better, For Worse (1954) starring Dirk Bogarde, which was even more popular though it is little remembered today.
Social Realist films Thompson's fourth film as director The Weak and the Wicked (1954), portrays the lives of women in prison and is based on memoirs by Joan Henry, who became Thompson's second wife. Thompson wrote the script, again in collaboration with Anne Burnaby. It starred Glynis Johns and Diana Dors and was a hit at the box office. The success of the film greatly added to Thompson's prestige and he began to be regarded as one of the leading directors in the country.
Thompson was loaned to Rank Films to direct a Jack Buchanan comedy, As Long as They're Happy (1955), co-starring Dors and An Alligator Named Daisy (1955), also starring Dors, along with Donald Sinden. Thompson said "he didn't like the subjects" of their film "but here was the opportunity to work with another worldbeater - Jeannie Carson." He returned to ABPC and the theme of female prisoners in Yield to the Night (1956), an anti-capital punishment tale with Diana Dors as the condemned prisoner.
Thompson later said the "pattern" of his ABPC films was "two pieces of tepid rubbish for one decent project – if I could persuade Robert Clark, who was head of production. He used to wring his hands when I insisted. 'Okay,' he'd finally say. 'Do it if you must. But it won't make money.' I admired him for that really. He did give you a bit of a chance."
The Good Companions (1957) was lighter fare, based on a book by J. B. Priestley. According to one obituary Thompson "made excellent use of the CinemaScope screen, assembled a fine supporting cast and, with zestful choreography... came up with one of the few successes in a genre for which the British cinema was not noted."
Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), with Yvonne Mitchell, Anthony Quayle and Sylvia Syms and written by Ted Willis, deals with the collapse of a 20-year marriage. It was a major critical and commercial success, one of the most popular at the British box office in 1957. Several modern critics have cited it as a prototypical version of Kitchen sink realism and precursor to the British New Wave. It won the 1958 Golden Globe Award for Best English-Language Foreign Film.
Action director Thompson had a big success with Ice Cold in Alex (1958), the story of a British Army unit trekking across North Africa in the Second World War. It featured John Mills, Sylvia Syms, Anthony Quayle and Harry Andrews. It won three BAFTA Awards, including Best British Film. He followed it with rth West Frontier (1959), an adventure film set in British India starring Kenneth More and Lauren Bacall. It was one of the most popular films in Britain in 1959.
No Trees in the Street (1959) was a thriller written by Willis. Also in that genre was Tiger Bay (1959), starring John Mills. It introduced cinema audiences to Mills' daughter Hayley and German actor Horst Buchholz. Hayley Mills also earned a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer portraying a 12-year-old girl who refuses to betray a sailor accused of murder.
Thompson followed this with I Aim at the Stars (1960).
Hollywood career Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear Thompson vaulted to international fame with The Guns of Navarone (1961) as a last-minute replacement for director Alexander Mackendrick. His take-charge attitude during its production earned him the nickname 'Mighty Mouse' from lead actor Gregory Peck. Co-star Anthony Quinn said Thompson: Never read a scene until he had to shoot it and approached each shot on a whim. And yet the cumulative effect was astonishing. Lee Thompson made a marvelous picture but how? Perhaps his inventiveness lay in defying convention, in rejecting the accepted methods of motion picture making and establishing his own. Perhaps it was in his very formlessness that he found the one form he could sustain, and nurture, the one form that could, in turn, sustain and nurture him. Perhaps he was just a lucky Englishman who pulled a good picture out of his ass. The Guns of Navarone, a World War II epic filmed on location in Rhodes, Greece, was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Thompson for Best Director. In 1961 he said "primarily I am in the business to entertain. This does not mean that I never want to try artistic movies again. But I do not think you can sell art on the big movie circuits. Art belongs in the art houses." Later he said "I liked the character bits best" about Navarone. "Anyone can make an explosion."
The success of Navarone won him entry into Hollywood, where he directed Cape Fear (1962), a psychological thriller with Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen and Lori Martin; Peck and Mitchum co-producing the film. Based on a novel called The Executioners by John D. MacDonald, Cape Fear shows how a sex offender can manipulate the justice system and terrorise an entire family. Highly controversial for its time, the film was cut heavily in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
He worked on a project with Warren Beatty and Clifford Odets based on an idea of Beatty's. It was never made. Neither was The Short Cut which he discussed doing with Darryl F. Zanuck, or The Living Room from a novel by Graham Greene or Chips with Everything by Arnold Wesker.
Mirisch Brothers Thompson directed Yul Brynner in the Cossack epic Taras Bulba (1962) for producer Harold Hecht. Thompson was going to follow it with Big Charlie starring Brynner but the movie was not made. In 1962 the Mirisch Brothers signed the director to a four-picture contract. The first film made under this contract was the Mayan Indian epic Kings of the Sun (1963), starring Brynner.
In September 1962 Thompson said he would make I Love Louisa with Elizabeth Taylor produced by Arthur Jacobs. (This film became What a Way to Go! (1964) with Shirley MacLaine.) He would put actors under personal contract like Talitha Pol.
In September 1963 Thompson announced he had formed a company, Bowhall Productions, to make around four films a year in the $120,000-$160,000 budget range. Thompson said it was "unlikely" the films would "make a profit" but they were movies he "deeply wanted to make". They included Chips with Everything, Rose without a Thorn by Clifford Bax, and a film in Spain. Following Return from the Ashes he would also make a $7 million movie in Africa Thunder of Giants.