Clive Donner RIP

Clive Donner, 1960s-Era Film Director, Dies at 84

By WILLIAM GRIMES
September 9, 2010

Clive Donner, who helped define the British New Wave with films like “The Caretaker” and “Nothing but the Best” and directed the emblematic swinging ’60s film “What’s New Pussycat?,” died on Tuesday in London. He was 84.

His death was confirmed by Gavin Asher, a cousin, who told Reuters that Mr. Donner had had Alzheimer’s for several years.

Mr. Donner broke through as a director in 1963 with a low-budget black-and-white film of Harold Pinter’s play “The Caretaker,” with Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence and Robert Shaw.

Since he couldn’t find traditional backing for the film, a group of well-wishers that included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Peter Sellers and Noël Coward financed it. The actors waived their salaries, accepting a share of future profits instead.

Superbly acted, with a distinctive look created by the cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, “The Caretaker” established Mr. Donner as a filmmaker to watch.

He delivered on this promise with “Nothing but the Best” (1964), a tart satire with a screenplay by Frederic Raphael. It told the story of an ambitious clerk, played by Mr. Bates, who sets out to scale the class ladder with a little tutoring from an upper-crust scapegrace played by Denholm Elliott. The cinematographer again was Mr. Roeg, working in color this time.

Mr. Donner struck box-office gold with his first Hollywood film, “What’s New Pussycat?” (1965), a naughty slapstick comedy with Peter O’Toole and Sellers thrown among a throng of beauties, among them Capucine, Paula Prentiss, Romy Schneider and Ursula Andress. The script was by Woody Allen, who also appeared in the film but later disavowed it. Audiences, enthralled from the moment Tom Jones began singing the Burt Bacharach-Hal David title song, voted a resounding yes.

“Donner, like Richard Lester, seems to have anticipated the transformation of England from mum to mod,” Andrew Sarris wrote in “The American Cinema” in 1969. “It remains to be seen if the prophet can avoid being swallowed by his own revolution.”

Mr. Donner delivered a dud with the frantic Jack Lemmon-Peter Falk comedy “Luv” (1967), and after the 1960s his career tapered off. His later efforts included the less than memorable “Nude Bomb” (1980) — a spinoff of the television series “Get Smart” — and “Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen” (1981), with Peter Ustinov as the Chinese detective. In the 1980s he directed George C. Scott in two Dickens classics remade for television, “Oliver Twist” and “A Christmas Carol.”

Clive Donner, who is unrelated to the American director Richard Donner, was born in London on Jan. 21, 1926. His father was a concert violinist and his mother ran a dress shop. While attending Kilburn Polytechnic he made a short 8-millimeter film, about a boys’ sports club, and soon after graduating he found work as a cutting-room assistant at Denham Studios.

After military service he returned to Denham and within a few years was hired as a full-fledged editor at Pinewood Studios, where he worked on “Scrooge,” “The Card,” “The Million Pound Note,” “I Am a Camera” and other films.

He directed several low-budget films at Pinewood, including “The Secret Place” (1957), a caper film with David McCallum playing a troubled delinquent, and “Heart of a Child” (1958), a three-handkerchief boy-and-his-dog film. He also directed episodes of the British television series “Danger Man” and “Sir Francis Drake” and a documentary series about India, “Mighty and Mystical,” for Granada Television.

A hint of things to come could be seen in “Some People” (1962). Shot on location in Bristol, England, it tells the story of disaffected teenagers who form a rock group. It captured the pent-up energy of British youth culture, anticipating shock waves just over the horizon.

After “Luv,” Mr. Donner returned to Britain with a coming-of-age film, “Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush” (1968), about a teenage boy’s sexual fantasies, and “Alfred the Great” (1969), a sweeping, big-budget historical drama that pitted David Hemmings, as Alfred, against a savage Viking chieftain, played by Michael York. Critics judged the film to be as bad as it sounds.

Although “Alfred” nearly ended Mr. Donner’s career as a director of feature films, it did yield a dividend. Mr. Donner married its costume designer, Jocelyn Rickards, who died in 2005. He leaves no immediate survivors.

Unable to find work directing films, Mr. Donner made television commercials and directed plays. “Kennedy’s Children,” which opened in a pub theater in Islington, London, in 1974, became a hit that transferred to the West End and Broadway. That same year he directed the film “Vampira,” with David Niven as a somewhat decrepit Count Dracula. (It was released in the United States as “Old Dracula.”)

More successfully, he directed the television film “Rogue Male” (1976), a taut thriller about a British aristocrat, played by Mr. O’Toole, who tries to assassinate Hitler and flees to Dorset, pursued by Gestapo agents. It delighted the critics — The Daily Telegraph of London called it “a super glossy which would have done credit to Pinewood or Ealing in their heyday” — and remained one of Mr. Donner’s favorite films.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/arts/television/09donner.html