Lewis Gilbert was born in Hackney, London, the son of a second-generation family of music hall performers, and spent his early years travelling with his parents, and watching the shows from the wings. He first performed on stage at the age of 5, when asked to drive a trick car around the stage. This pleased the audience, so this became the end of his parents' act.
At age 17, Lewis Gilbert had a small uncredited role, as "Tom," in THE DIVORCE OF LADY X (1938) opposite Laurence Olivier. Tim Whelan directed this Alexander Korda production. Miklos Rozsa' score has not had a release.
When the Second World War started, Lewis Gilbert joined the Royal Air Force's film unit, where he worked on various documentary films. He was eventually assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit of the U.S. Army Air Forces, where his commanding officer was William Keighley, an American film director, who allowed Gilbert to take on much of his film-making work.
After the war, Gilbert continued to write and direct documentary shorts for Gaumont British, before entering low budget feature film production. Gilbert made his name as a director in the 1950s and 1960s with a series of successful films, often working as the film's writer and producer as well.
One of his first films to get a major U.S. release was 1954's THE GOOD DIE YOUNG, which had a number of cast members familiar to American audiences. The film was a gripping crime tale about four characters who are thrown together and end up in a violent situation when a planned heist goes awry. "Rave" (Laurence Harvey), an aristocratic bum, organizes "Joe" (Richard Basehart), a penniless war vet; "Mike" (Stanley Baker), a former boxer; and "Eddie" (John Ireland), a US Army deserter, for a bank robbery. Gloria Grahame and Joan Collins provided the female interest.
United Artists released the film in the U.S. in 1955. George Auric's score has not had a release.
Always liked his work. Arguably one of the best bonds with Yolt. Anyone with Reach for the sky, carve her name with Pride and Sink the bismarck on their CV was a director of quality. And Operation Daybreak was brilliant. Remarkable age.
Always liked his work. Arguably one of the best bonds with Yolt. Anyone with Reach for the sky, carve her name with Pride and Sink the bismarck on their CV was a director of quality. And Operation Daybreak was brilliant. Remarkable age.
I LOVE Sink The Bismarck. Amazing movie with astonishing FX for the time.
CAST A DARK SHADOW was a 1955 Gilbert thriller in which a clever fortune-hunter with a penchant for murder (Dirk Bogarde) manages to get away with doing in his elderly, supposedly rich spouse. When her fortune turns out to be illusionary, he sets his sights on another wealthy widow (Margaret Lockwood). This film did not get a U.S. release until the small Distributors Corporation of America (DCA) acquired it for release in 1957, four months after Universal had brought Dirk Bogarde's DOCTOR AT LARGE to the States to considerable acclaim. The advertising for CAST A DARK SHADOW eschewed mention of any of the behind-the-camera credits to focus on Bogarde and Lockwood (a BAFTA nominee for the film). Antony Hopkins provided the score.
In 1952, it was announced that Sir Alexander Korda, who had owned the rights to James Barrie's 1902 play THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON for several years, was ready to start production on a film which was to be directed by Sidney Gilliat and star Rex Harrison. That never happened, and when the film finally appeared in June 1957, it was produced by Ian Dalrymple and directed by Lewis Gilbert. In this satire, "Lord Henry Loam" (Cecil Parker), his family and his servants, including butler "William Crichton" (Kenneth More) are shipwrecked on a deserted island where the survival of the fittest renders the rigid class system irrelevant.
This was Kenneth More's second film with Gilbert, after 1956's REACH FOR THE SKY. For much of his role, More was filmed from the waist up to hide the fact that he was wearing shorts with his dinner-jacket because of the Bermuda heat during filming.
When Columbia released the film in the U.S. in December 1957, they changed the title to PARADISE LAGOON, fearing that if they used the original J.M. Barrie title the public would think the film was about a naval officer. Although Douglas Gamley is credited as sole composer, Richard Addinsell, of "Warsaw Concerto" fame, supplied the original dance music, including a waltz, a polka, and a galop. These pieces were reconstructed, recorded, and released on CD by Chandos in 2003, the only music from the film to be released.
CARVE HER NAME WITH PRIDE deals with the true experience of Violette Szabo (Virginia McKenna), a young Englishwoman who became a resistance fighter in occupied France in 1944. Certain details of the story weren't divulged until just a decade ago, with the publication of Leo Marks' book "Between Silk and Cyanide." The film cemented the career of actress McKenna, best known to Americans as the star of BORN FREE. Of the 92 days she spent filming, McKenna only had two days off from the rigorous schedule, which included getting up at 5:30 each morning. The two days off were to marry Bill Travers (her eventual co-star in BORN FREE) and have a very brief honeymoon.
Lewis Gilbert and producer Daniel M. Angel both wanted a double to be used for a jump from a parachute training tower, but McKenna insisted on doing it herself. Slowed slightly by a wire (as are all trainee parachutists) she landed with a professional-looking roll on the mat below. Picking herself up she smiled and said "That was fun; I'd like to do it again." During shooting McKenna received instructions from 'high up' suggesting she smile during her final scene. She refused, deeming this untrue to Violette's character, and voiced this opinion to Gilbert. He totally agreed, and vetoed the idea.
William Alwyn's score for the 1958 film has not had a release.
Gilbert worked for the third time with star Kenneth More in SINK THE BISMARCK!, the World War II story of the British Navy's effort to defeat Nazi Germany's most powerful warship. The film's producer, John Brabourne, was the son-in-law of Lord Louis Mountbatten, Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty. The Royal Navy loaned an aircraft carrier to Twentieth Century-Fox for the making of the picture. Werner Lust, who worked as a technical advisor on the German sequences, was an actual Bismarck survivor.
SINK THE BISMARCK! was Gilbert's first film with Bernard Lee (a "Firing Officer" in the film), who would go on to play "M" in the Bond films directed by Gilbert. Clifton Parker scored the film. His overture/march from the film has been recorded for several compilation CDs. Prior to the release of the movie, a song of the same title sung by Johnny Horton was released in the United States to promote the film. This song never appears in the actual film, and it's easy to hear why the song, sung in the style of Horton's song "The Battle of New Orleans," didn't belong in the film:
Here is Clifton Parker's much more appropriate march:
On 8 June 1989, Dr. Robert Ballard, who had found the R.M.S. Titanic in 1985, discovered the wreckage of the Bismarck approximately 600 miles west of Brest, Belorussia. A television special, "James Cameron's Expedition: Bismarck," broadcast on the Discovery Channel on December 8, 2002, used modern technology to explore the sunken remains of the Bismarck . An unsubstantiated conclusion of that exploration was that the Bismarck was scuttled by its crew in order to avoid having the vessel fall into enemy hands.
Kenneth More was the second most popular star at the U.K. box office in 1961, the year he made his fourth and final film for Lewis Gilbert, LOSS OF INNOCENCE (aka THE GREENGAGE SUMMER). The film told the story of a British girl's (Susannah York) awakening from childhood into life and love while on vacation in France with her sisters and brother. Danielle Darrieux played "Madame Zizi," the proprietor of the château-hotel on the River Marne where the children stay.
More was asked by Gilbert to go on a diet before making the film in order that he be more believable as a romantic lead. The actor did so, as he badly wanted to be in the movie. Richard Addinsell's score was released on a Colpix LP, but has not had a CD re-issue.
The story for Gilbert's H.M.S. DEFIANT flipped the script on MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. On the titular ship, during the French Revolutionary Wars, fair-minded "Captain Crawford" (Alec Guinness) is locked in a battle of wills against his cruel second-in-command "Lt. Scott-Paget" (Dirk Bogarde) whose heavy-handed command style pushes the crew to mutiny. Guinness made the film during a two month break in the shooting of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, when the production moved from Jordan to Spain. Upon finishing this 1962 film, Guinness resumed his LAWRENCE role of "Prince Faisal."
The film was Gilbert's second for producer John Brabourne. When Columbia Pictures brought the film to the U.S. market, knowing that the initials "H.M.S." would carry little meaning for Americans, they re-titled it DAMN THE DEFIANT! Clifton Parker's score was released on a Colpix LP, which was re-issued on CD by Film Score Monthly in 2007.
Lewis Gilbert took his company to Malaya for the filming of 1964's THE 7TH DAWN, a story that begins on the final day of World War II and centers on three disparate friends: an American named "Ferris" (William Holden), a French woman, "Dhana" (Capucine) and a Malaysian, "Ng" (Tetsuro Tamba) who have led guerilla forces against the Japanese occupation in Malaya. Sisannah York (LOSS OF INNOCENCE) also starred. Co-star Capucine was cast as "Dhana" due to her romantic relationship with executive producer Charles Feldman. This was initially opposed by Holden, producer Karl Tunberg, and Gilbert. They were overruled by Feldman. Later in the shoot, Holden began an affair with Capucine much to the displeasure of Feldman.
For his part, Gilbert's wife Hylda was the film's costume supervisor, his son John was the second unit assistant, and his brother-in-law, actor Sydney Tafler, had a small role in the film. Tafler would appear in 15 Gilbert-directed films. Riz Ortolani's score was released on a United Artists LP and made its CD appearance in Film Score Monthly's 2008 "MGM Soundtrack Treasury." Here is Ortolani's end title music:
Aside from the Bond films, Lewis Gilbert's most widely recognized film is 1966's ALFIE, a film he also produced. Michael Caine starred as the title character, an unrepentant ladies' man who gradually begins to understand the consequences of his lifestyle. Gilbert's wife Hylda discovered the play by Bill Naughton when she visited the hair salon and sat next to an actress who was in a production. Upon seeing the play, Hylda urged Gilbert to make it into a film. The film cost only $800,000, about which Gilbert famously quipped, that the sum was "the sort of money executives spend on cigar bills."
ALFIE was the most critically acclaimed and award-nominated film of Gilbert's career. It received five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture, losing to another British film, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. ALFIE did take the Golden Globe Award for Best English-Language Foreign Film, back when they had such a category. (Strangely, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS was not nominated for that award, winning instead for Best Picture - Drama.) Gilbert lost the Golden Globe for Best Director to Fred Zinnemann, director of A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. ALFIE lost the BAFTA award for Best British Film to THE MAN WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. But ALFIE won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
On its original release, the film had an all instrumental soundtrack, by Sonny Rollins. The Oscar-nominated song, by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, was added for the American release, and to a UK re-release. For the UK re-release, the song was sung by Cilla Black over the end credits, and went to number 9 on the British charts. For the U.S. release, the song was originally to be sung by Dionne Warwick over the end credits, but was replaced at the last minute, by the version sung by Cher. Ironically, Warwick's version outperformed Cher's on the Billboard charts. Sonny Rollins' score was released on an Impulse LP, which was first re-issued on CD in the late 1980s and then again in 1997.
“You Only Live Twice” (1964) was one of eight Ian Fleming novels considered for the fifth installment of Eon Productions’ “James Bond” film series. Although four-time Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum had already completed the script for ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, the producers intended to move ahead with YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, likely without Maibaum’s participation.
Harold Jack Bloom was attached as screenwriter until the fall of 1966, when the project was assumed by children’s book author Roald Dahl, who was also in talks with Broccoli to adapt Fleming’s “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” YOU ONLY LIVED TWICE marked Dahl’s first screenwriting effort, and Broccoli said that the author was charged with “thickening” the plot to create a more plausible scenario. Bloom is credited with “additional story material.”
Lewis Gilbert originally turned down the directing job on this movie. He accepted after co-producer Albert R. Broccoli called him, saying: "You can't give up this job. It's the largest audience in the world." Gilbert was mostly collaborative with Roald Dahl's work. As Dahl declared: "He not only helped in script conferences, but had some good ideas, and then left you alone, and when you produced the finished thing, he shot it. Other directors have such an ego, that they want to rewrite it and put in their own dialogue, and it's usually disastrous. What I admired so much about Lewis Gilbert, was that he just took the screenplay and shot it. That's the way to direct: You either trust your writer, or you don't."
YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE marked the first full onscreen appearance of villainous SPECTRE chief “Ernst Stavro Blofeld,” whose face remained obscured in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and THUNDERBALL. It was originally announced that Czech actor Jan Werich would play the part, but a few weeks later, it was indicated the role had been re-cast with Donald Pleasence. Toshiro Mifune passed on the role of karate expert “Tiger Tanaka.” Lewis Gilbert cast Tetsurô Tanba after working with him in THE 7TH DAWN.
Producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, Lewis Gilbert, cinematographer Freddie Young, and production designer Ken Adam began scouting Japanese locations in early 1966. Upon completion, all of them were booked to leave Japan on BOAC flight 911 departing Tokyo for Hong Kong and London. Two hours before their Boeing 707 flight departed, the team were invited to an unexpected ninja demonstration, and so missed their plane. Their flight took off as scheduled, and twenty-five minutes after take-off, the plane disintegrated over Mt. Fuji, killing all aboard. The incident lent an unsettling reality to the meaning of "You Only Live Twice".
Principal photography commenced on 4 July 1966. The unit filmed in Tokyo and Kobe, and consisted of roughly 150 British crewmembers and some Americans. Due to Japanese restrictions on firearms, scenes of a dockside shootout in Kobe were filmed using toy pistols, with insert shots of the props later added at Pinewood Studios in England.
Back in England, Pinewood Studios became home to a $1 million “SPECTRE” headquarters set housed inside a model of Japan’s inactive volcano, Mt. Shinmoe, which was one of the largest film interiors ever constructed in a European studio. A 15 January 1967 Los Angeles Times article estimated the structure at 126 feet tall--big enough to conceal a sixty-six-foot rocket beneath the sliding roof while a helicopter circled overhead. Despite Eon’s intention to economize, various sources estimated the total production cost at $8--$9 million, making it the most expensive Bond film to date.
Lewis Gilbert's regular editor, Thelma Connell, was originally hired to edit the film. However, after her initial, almost three-hour cut received a terrible response from test audiences, Peter R. Hunt was asked to re-edit the film. Hunt's cut proved to be a much greater success, and he was awarded the director's chair on the next film as a result.
As the film proceeded through post-production, reports pointed to the conflicting releases of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and CASINO ROYALE, Columbia Pictures’ comedic “sendup” of the James Bond franchise, based on Fleming’s first book of the series. CASINO ROYALE opened in April 1967, preceding YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE by just two months. Confident in their film’s box-office performance, United Artists humorously addressed the competition by running billboards and print advertisements with the tagline, “Sean Connery IS James Bond.” An hour-long television special, “Welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond,” aired on 2 June 1967 on NBC, featuring footage from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and the four previous Bond films.
The world premiere took place 12 June 1967 at London’s Odeon Leicester Square Theatre, as a royal benefit for the YMCA and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. The following day, the film had its U.S. debut at New York City’s Astor, Victoria, Baronet, and Loew’s Orpheum Theatres. The Los Angeles, CA, engagement began 14 June 1967 at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and on 10 July 1967.
By January 1968, the film’s domestic rentals were $16.3 million, which reaffirmed the commercial viability of the franchise.
John Barry’s score for the film was released on a United Artists LP and made its initial CD appearance in 1988. An expanded CD was issued by Capitol/EMI in 2003.
The most memorable moment from Alfie was not one of the direct-to-camera quips. It was the moment of realisation when the full significance of what an abortion actually means - I wonder what MC conjured up in his mind to sob so wrenchingly?
Broccoli and co.were so cheap they wouldn't spring for 70mm prints so YOLT was releAsed in mono in all territories except Japan. The Japanese distributors were more enlightened and recognized that such an epic film deserves roadshow treatment
In 1967, Gilbert was chosen to direct Lionel Bart's musical of OLIVER!, but, contracted to another project, had to pull out. He recommended Carol Reed who took over. "It was the lowest point in my life," said Gilbert. "I'd developed OLIVER! with Lionel Bart. I had to do The Adventurers instead."
THE ADVENTURERS was to be one of Paramount's big films for 1970. Based on the 1966 Harold Robbins novel, its sprawling plot told the story of a wealthy playboy son (Bekim Fehmiu, in his American film debut) of an assassinated South American diplomat (Fernando Rey) who discovers that his father was really murdered on orders of the corrupt president of the country (Alan Badel)--a man who was his father's friend.
Robbins based many of his characters on real people. The "Dax Xenos" character (played by Fehmiu) is a thinly veiled portrait of Dominican diplomat/playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, and the Candice Bergen character ("Sue Ann Daley") is based on Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton.
According to Ernest Borgnine in his autobiography, there was a violent argument between he and director Lewis Gilbert during the shooting of this film, because Borgnine asked something about a young actor in the cast.
Upon its release, the film was pummeled by the critics. Lewis Gilbert said on June 25, 2010, on the BBC radio program "Desert Island Discs," that THE ADVENTURERS was "a big, sprawling, very expensive film which was a disaster. I should never have made it. It's one I'm not proud of." Still, it is estimated that in 2016 dollars, the film took in over $86 million. The film's score by, Antonio Carlos Jobim, was released on a Paramount LP, but has never had a CD re-issue.
Gilbert recalled: "While doing THE ADVENTURERS, I signed to do THE GODFATHER. Because of their financial problems, Paramount could only find $2 million to make it. I said it needed $7 million." So instead, Gilbert made FRIENDS.
The two lead actors in 1971's FRIENDS, Sean Bury and Anicée Alvina, were such unknowns to American audiences that Paramount didn't even put their names on the film's poster. Instead, maximum billing was given to Elton John and Bernie Taupin, who created the film's song score. FRIENDS told the story of a rich English boy, "Paul Harrison" (Bury), who meets an orphaned French girl, "Michelle Latour" (Alvina). As they become friends, they create a world that is far away from the adult world we live in.
Lewis Gilbert produced, directed, and developed the story for the film, which received mixed reviews, but which was successful enough at the box office to spawn a sequel three years later. Paramount Records also got a decent-selling Elton John soundtrack out of the deal, which was released on CD by Island in 1992.
In 1974, the sequel to FRIENDS, PAUL AND MICHELLE appeared. Bury and Alvina reprised their original roles in a story that picks up three years after the events in the first film. The sequel adds Keir Dullea to the cast. Michel Colombier's score did not get a release.
OPERATION DAYBREAK was set in 1942, when Britain sent a group of British-trained Czech commandos to Prague to assassinate SS-General Reinhard Heydrich (Anton Diffring), head of the Nazi security services. Sgt. Jan Kubis (Timothy Bottoms), Sgt. Karel Kurda (Martin Shaw) and Sgt. Josef Gabcik (Anthony Andrews) parachute into the country, are helped by Czechs sympathetic to their cause, and stay with Marie Moracová (Diana Coupland), a fervent anti-Nazi who risks her entire family to harbor them.
The film was based on an actual raid code-named Operation Anthropoid. Reinhard Heydrich was nicknamed "Heydrich the Hangman" by the people in Nazi-occupied Europe. David Hentschel's score for this 1975 film has not had a release.
