Bryan Forbes (born John Theobald Clarke; 22 July 1926 – 8 May 2013) was an English film director, screenwriter, film producer, actor and novelist described as a "Renaissance man" and "one of the most important figures in the British film industry".
Forbes directed the film The Stepford Wives (1975) and wrote and/or directed several other critically acclaimed films, including Whistle Down the Wind (1961), Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) and King Rat (1965). He also scripted several films directed by others, such as The League of Gentlemen (1960), The Angry Silence (1960) and Only Two Can Play (1962).
Early life
Forbes was born John Theobald Clarke on 22 July 1926 Stratford, West Ham, London. His father was a salesman and he grew up at 43 Cranmer Road, Forest Gate, where he was a pupil at West Ham Secondary School. During the Second World War he was evacuated twice, first to Lincolnshire – where he attended Horncastle Grammar School – and then to Porthleven in Cornwall, where he was looked after by the vicar Canon Edward Thornton Gotto and his wife. A schoolfriend at West Ham was artist Albert Herbert. Lionel Gamlin of the BBC took him on as the host of Junior Brains Trust, and invented Clarke's pseudonym of Bryan Forbes. He received his first credit for Second World War film The Cockleshell Heroes (1955),
In 1959, he formed a production company, Beaver Films, with his frequent collaborator Richard Attenborough. by Forbes in which Attenborough took the lead role, and the two men shared production responsibilities. It was the basis for a 1996 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Comments Phil Wickham: "It feels like half a new wave film – a mid-point between the innovation of the Woodfall Films and the mainstream of the British film industry."
Forbes wrote and directed Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), and the same year he wrote the third screen adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel Of Human Bondage. In 1965, he went to Hollywood to make King Rat, a successful prisoner-of-war story.
Under Forbes's leadership, the studio produced The Railway Children (1970), The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971) and The Go-Between (1971), all successful. His tenure, though, was marked by financial problems and failed projects, and he resigned in 1971. Forbes had full autonomy over the films he made as long as they were below a certain amount but later said "I lacked power in the one area where it really matters - distribution."
Later career
From the early 1970s, Forbes divided his energies between cinema, television, theatre, and writing. In 1972 he started work on the documentary Elton John and Bernie Taupin Say Goodbye Norma Jean and Other Things (1973), which chronicled the life of the young Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Taking a full year to complete, the project gave a behind-the-scenes look at the writing and recording of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Besides footage of John's 1973 Hollywood Bowl concert, the film included interviews with John, Taupin, and band members, including Nigel Olsson and Dee Murray, as well as John's mother, Sheila, DJM label chief Dick James, and James's son, Stephen. (Some of the concert footage was later licensed for the Eagle Vision Classic Albums series Goodbye Yellow Brick Road documentary.) During filming, Forbes formed a close friendship with John and Taupin, which led to other collaborations with them, including photography on the Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album sleeves. ITV broadcast the documentary in the UK on 4 December 1973, Forbes clashed with screenwriter William Goldman over casting decisions and changes to the film's ending made by Forbes, causing Goldman to drop out of the project (while retaining the screenplay credit). Despite its notoriety, The Stepford Wives received mixed reviews and performed weakly at the box office. His subsequent films as a director were less successful: The Slipper and the Rose (1976), with David Frost as executive producer; International Velvet (1978), intended as a continuation of National Velvet (1944), with Newman in the same role as Elizabeth Taylor in the earlier film;
Author
Forbes wrote two volumes of autobiography and several successful novels, the last of which, The Soldier's Story, was published in 2012. Only Two Can Play won Best British Comedy Screenplay of the Writers Guild of Great Britain in 1962. Hopscotch won the Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium of the Writers Guild of America in 1980. who is married to actor John Standing; and television presenter Emma Forbes. Forbes died at his home in Virginia Water on 8 May 2013 at the age of 86, following a long illness. His wife survives him.
Journalist and former Spectator editor Matthew d'Ancona, a friend of the Forbes family, said: "Bryan Forbes was a titan of cinema, known and loved by people around the world in the film and theatre industries, and known in other fields, including politics. He is simply irreplaceable and it is wholly apt that he died surrounded by his family." Film critic Mark Kermode wrote: "Once had the fan-boyish pleasure of telling Bryan Forbes how much I loved [The] Stepford Wives. He was charming and self-effacing. A great loss."