John Richard Schlesinger was an English film and stage director.
19 Facts About John Schlesinger
2.
John Schlesinger won the Academy Award for Best Director for Midnight Cowboy, and was nominated for the same award for two other films.
3.
John Schlesinger had left school at 14 to study at the Trinity College of Music, and later studied languages at the University of Oxford for three years.
4.
John Schlesinger entertained his fellow troops by performing magic tricks.
5.
John Schlesinger's acting career began in the 1950s and consisted of supporting roles in British films such as The Divided Heart and Oh.
6.
John Schlesinger began his directorial career in 1956 with the short documentary Sunday in the Park about London's Hyde Park.
7.
In 1958, John Schlesinger created a documentary on Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival for the BBC's Monitor TV programme, including rehearsals of the children's opera Noye's Fludde featuring a young Michael Crawford.
8.
In 1959, John Schlesinger was credited as exterior or second unit director on 23 episodes of the TV series The Four Just Men and four 30-minute episodes of the series Danger Man.
9.
John Schlesinger appeared in Col March of Scotland Yard as "Dutch cook" in "Death and the Other Monkey" 1956.
10.
John Schlesinger directed on stage Timon of Athens for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the musical I and Albert at London's Piccadilly Theatre.
11.
John Schlesinger directed several operas, including Les contes d'Hoffmann and Der Rosenkavalier, both at Covent Garden.
12.
Schlesinger directed a party political broadcast for the Conservative Party in the general election of 1992, which featured Prime Minister John Major returning to Brixton in south London, thus highlighting Major's humble background, something atypical for a Conservative politician at that time.
13.
John Schlesinger admitted to having voted for all three main political parties in the UK at one time or another.
14.
In 1991, John Schlesinger made a brief return to acting, portraying the gay character 'Derek' in the TV adaptation of The Lost Language of Cranes for the BBC.
15.
John Schlesinger had himself come out during the making of Midnight Cowboy.
16.
John Schlesinger was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to film.
17.
John Schlesinger underwent a quadruple heart bypass in 1998, before suffering a stroke on New Year's Day 2001.
18.
John Schlesinger was taken off life support at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs on 24 July 2003, and he died early the following day at the age of 77.
19.
John Schlesinger was survived by his partner of over 30 years, photographer Michael Childers.