John Schlesinger

John Richard Schlesinger CBE was an English film and stage director and actor He won an Academy Award for Best Director for Midnight Cowboy and was nominated for two other films Darling and Sunday Bloody Sunday Schlesinger was born in London into a middle class Jewish family His acting career began in the 1950s and consisted of supporting roles in British films and television productions He began his directorial career in 1956 with the short documentary Sunday in the Park about Londons Hyde Park In 1958 Schlesinger created a documentary on Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival for the BBCs Monitor TV programme including rehearsals of the childrens opera Noyes Fludde featuring a young Michael Crawford By the 1960s he had virtually given up acting to concentrate on a directing career and another of his earlier directorial efforts the British Transport Films documentary Terminus 1961 gained a Venice Film Festival Gold Lion and a British Academy Award His first two fiction films A Kind of Loving 1962 and Billy Liar 1963 were set in the North of England A Kind of Loving won the Golden Bear award at the 12th Berlinale in 1962 His third feature film Darling 1965 tartly described the modern urban way of life in London and was one of the first films about swinging London Schlesingers next film was the period drama Far from the Madding Crowd 1967 an adaptation of Thomas Hardys popular novel accentuated by beautiful English country locations Both films and Billy Liar featured Julie Christie as the female lead Schlesingers next film Midnight Cowboy 1969 was internationally acclaimed A story of two hustlers living on the fringe in the bad side of New York City it was Schlesingers first film shot in the US and it won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture During the 1970s he made an array of films that were mainly about loners losers and people outside the clean world such as Sunday Bloody Sunday 1971 The Day of the Locust 1975 Marathon Man 1976 and Yanks 1979 Later came the major box office and critical failure of Honky Tonk Freeway 1981 followed by films that attracted mixed responses from the public From 1973 he was an associate director of the Royal National Theatre where he produced George Bernard Shaws Heartbreak House 1975 He also directed several operas beginning with Les contes dHoffmann 1980 and Der Rosenkavalier 1984 both at Covent Garden Schlesinger was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire CBE for his services to film in 1970 In 2003 a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs California Walk of Stars was dedicated to him