J. Lee Thompson

J. Lee Thompson (1 August, 1914-30 August, 2002) was a film director, active in both British films and Hollywood. He was born in Bristol, England, and was a stage actor from age 17 and a playwright by 20. His entry into films was as an actor, and then a screenwriter. His directing debut came in 1950. Lee Thompson, as he was often known, made some critically well-received films in Britain, The Good Companions (1957), Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), Ice Cold in Alex (1958), Tiger Bay (1959), Northwest Frontier (1959), I Aim at the Stars (1960), before he was assigned to direct The Guns of Navarone (1961), as a replacement of original director Alexander Mackendrick. The success of that film won him entry into Hollywood, where he directed Cape Fear (1962), a blistering psychological thriller that was regarded as simply too controversial back home in Britain and subjected to much censorship. Lee Thompson's work in Hollywood was varied and received mixed receptions (including the Cossack epic Taras Bulba and the Mayan Indian epic Kings of the Sun , both starring Yul Brynner, two Shirley Maclaine vehicles What a Way to Go! and John Goldfarb, Please Come Home , and the big-budget Western Mackenna's Gold), though some of his best films from this period, Return from the Ashes (1965) and Country Dance aka Brotherly Love (1970), were at least partly if not wholly British productions, seemingly a redeeming feature. His best work were already behind him when in the 70s, he was functioning as Charles Bronson's regular director on several Hollywood potboilers, and taking on the occasional expensive "trashy" project such as The Greek Tycoon (1978), starring Anthony Quinn as a barely disguised Aristotle Onassis, and Jacqueline Bisset as Jackie Kennedy. Of Thompson's career, it must be said that Hollywood never fulfilled the promise that he had shown in his British films.