24 Facts About Jack Clayton

1.

Jack Isaac Clayton was a British film director and producer who specialised in bringing literary works to the screen.

2.

Jack Clayton rapidly rose through a series of increasingly important roles in British film production, before shooting to international prominence as a director with his Oscar-winning feature film debut, the drama Room at the Top.

3.

Jack Clayton looked set for a brilliant future, and he was highly regarded by peers and critics alike, but a number of overlapping factors hampered his career.

4.

Jack Clayton was a notably 'choosy' director, who by his own admission "never made a film I didn't want to make", and he repeatedly turned down films which would become hits for other directors.

5.

Jack Clayton gained invaluable editing experience assisting David Lean, who was the editor of the screen adaptation of Shaw's Major Barbara.

6.

Jack Clayton married actress Christine Norden in 1947, but they divorced in 1953.

7.

Jack Clayton made his second film as a director, the Oscar winning short The Bespoke Overcoat for Romulus.

8.

Jack Clayton worked as producer on a series of screen farces during 1956, including Three Men in a Boat, followed by the thriller The Whole Truth, which starred Stewart Granger as a movie producer.

9.

The period ghost story The Innocents about a woman's descent into madness was adapted by Truman Capote from the classic Henry James short story The Turn of the Screw, which Jack Clayton had first read when he was 10.

10.

Jack Clayton's fourth feature, and his first in colour, was an offbeat psychological drama about a family of children who conceal the fact that their single mother has died, and go on living in their house.

11.

Jack Clayton subsequently endured a string of career reversals that prevented him from making another film until 1974.

12.

The only film Clayton was able to complete between 1968 and 1982 was his high-profile, Hollywood production of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

13.

Jack Clayton returned to directing after an extended hiatus forced on him by his 1977 stroke.

14.

Jack Clayton evidently met Bradbury around 1959 and expressed interest in directing the film but Kelly was unable to raise the money to produce it.

15.

Coincidentally, Jack Clayton was having lunch with Kirk Douglas on the very same day, and when Douglas asked the director about films he might like to make, Jack Clayton mentioned Something Wicked This Way Comes.

16.

Jack Clayton later admitted that he was so enraged by Diller's decision that he put his fist through a Paramount office window.

17.

Jack Clayton's output was compromised by the inherent riskiness of the film business.

18.

Jack Clayton was helped to recover by his wife Haya, and a group of close friends, but he later revealed that he deliberately kept his condition secret because he feared he might not get work again if his affliction became known.

19.

Jack Clayton did not commit to another assignment for five years.

20.

Jack Clayton was married three times, his first was to actress Christine Norden in 1947, but they divorced in 1953; the same year he married again to French actress Katherine Kath, but this was short-lived.

21.

Jack Clayton died in hospital in Slough, England from a heart attack, following a short illness, on 25 February 1995.

22.

Former colleague Jim Clark was given his major break by Jack Clayton, who hired him as the editor on The Innocents.

23.

Clark said that, while often charming, Jack Clayton could be temperamental, and was sometimes prone to outbursts of extreme anger.

24.

Jack Clayton recounted one incident in which Sims was unavoidably late calling Clayton with the reviews from the pre-released critics' screening of The Innocents.