39 Facts About David Lean

Sir David Lean was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor, widely considered one of the most important figures of British cinema.

David Lean directed the large-scale epics The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter, and A Passage to India.

David Lean directed the film adaptations of Charles Dickens novels Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, as well as the romantic drama Brief Encounter.

Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's In Which We Serve, which was the first of four collaborations with Noel Coward.

David Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios, beginning with Summertime in 1955.

David Lean is described by film critic Michael Sragow as "a director's director, whose total mastery of filmcraft commands nothing less than awe among his peers".

David Lean has been lauded by directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Ridley Scott.

David Lean was nominated seven times for the Academy Award for Best Director, which he won twice for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, and he has seven films in the British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films and was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1990.

David Lean was born on 25 March 1908 at 38 Blenheim Crescent, South Croydon, Surrey, to Francis William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye.

David Lean's parents were Quakers and he was a pupil at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading.

David Lean was a half-hearted schoolboy with a dreamy nature who was labelled a "dud" of a student; he left school in the Christmas Term of 1926, at the age of 18, and entered his father's chartered accountancy firm as an apprentice.

David Lean later followed a similar path after his own first marriage and child.

Bored by his work, David Lean spent every evening in the cinema, and in 1927, after an aunt had advised him to find a job he enjoyed, he visited Gaumont Studios where his obvious enthusiasm earned him a month's trial without pay.

David Lean was taken on as a teaboy, promoted to clapperboy, and soon rose to the position of third assistant director.

David Lean edited Gabriel Pascal's film productions of two George Bernard Shaw plays, Pygmalion and Major Barbara.

David Lean Shipman wrote in The Story of Cinema: Volume Two : "Of the other Dickens films, only Cukor's David Lean Copperfield approaches the excellence of this pair, partly because his casting, too, was near perfect".

The next film directed by David Lean was The Passionate Friends, an atypical David Lean film, but one which marked his first occasion to work with Claude Rains, who played the husband of a woman torn between him and an old flame.

French composer Maurice Jarre, on his first David Lean film, created a soaring film score with a famous theme and won his first Oscar for Best Original Score.

David Lean was nominated for ten Oscars, winning seven, including two for Best Director.

David Lean remains the only British director to win more than one Oscar for directing.

David Lean had his greatest box-office success with Doctor Zhivago, a romance set during the Russian Revolution.

Around the same time, David Lean directed some scenes of The Greatest Story Ever Told while George Stevens was committed to location work in Nevada.

The poor critical reception of the film prompted David Lean to meet with the National Society of Film Critics, gathered at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, including The New Yorker Pauline Kael, and ask them why they objected to the movie.

David Lean was forced to abandon the project after overseeing casting and the construction of the $4 million Bounty replica; at the last possible moment, actor Mel Gibson brought in his friend Roger Donaldson to direct the film, as producer De Laurentiis did not want to lose the millions he had already put into the project over what he thought was as insignificant a person as the director dropping out.

David Lean rejected a draft by Santha Rama Rau, responsible for the stage adaptation and Forster's preferred screenwriter, and wrote the script himself.

David Lean recruited long-time collaborators for the cast and crew, including Maurice Jarre, Alec Guinness in his sixth and final role for David Lean, as an eccentric Hindu Brahmin, and John Box, the production designer for Dr Zhivago.

David Lean assembled an all-star cast, including Marlon Brando, Paul Scofield, Anthony Quinn, Peter O'Toole, Christopher Lambert, Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Quaid, with Georges Corraface as the title character.

Originally David Lean considered filming in Mexico but later decided to film in London and Madrid, partly to secure O'Toole, who had insisted he would take part only if the film was shot close to home.

David Lean's co-writer and producer, Norman Spencer, has said Lean was a "huge womaniser", and that "to my knowledge, he had almost 1,000 women".

David Lean was survived by his last wife Sandra Cooke, art dealer and co-author of David Lean: An Intimate Portrait, and by Peter Lean, his son from his first marriage.

David Lean died in Limehouse, London, on 16 April 1991, at the age of 83.

David Lean was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1953, and was knighted for his contributions and services to the arts in 1984.

David Lean always had a clear idea of how his characters should be portrayed and would not accept much deviation.

David Lean had a reputation for being tough with his actors and for refusing to let them indulge in "their natural propensity for histrionics".

David Lean's protagonists seek to transform their lives, but often fail to do so.

The tragic flaw in David Lean's characters is a self-centeredness which can lead to misimpression, which can prevent them from seeing what is so clear to everyone else.

David Lean lived through two world wars and matured as an artist during the 50s, when Britain was being forced to re-examine her new role.

Several of the many other later directors who have acknowledged significant influence by David Lean include Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Spike Lee, Sergio Leone, Sir John Boorman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Lawrence Kasdan and Guillermo del Toro.

For example, David Thomson, writing about Lean in his New Biographical Dictionary of Film, comments:.