TONY RICHARDSONTony Richardson, who died on 14 November, 1991, was one of the greatest directors in British film history and a double Oscar-winner who combined creative and innovative film-making with social exploration.As a member of the realist movement of the late 1950s and early ’60s, he was responsible for such classics in the British cannon as Look Back in Anger (1958), A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962).Cecil Antonio Richardson was born on 5 June, 1928, in Shipley, Yorkshire. He attended the Methodist school Ashville College in Harrogate, but his education was disrupted by the Second World War and he spent a lot of his youth walking in the countryside.Despite this, he got into Oxford where he made his directorial debut with the dramatics society. After university he joined the BBC and his first TV play, Shakespeare’s Othello, was broadcast in 1955.He co-founded the English Stage Theatre at the Royal Court Theatre on Sloane Square in 1956 and Mr Richardson directed several ground-breaking plays in the famous 600-seater venue, the first of which was John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger.Look Back in Anger transferred to Broadway the following year, ran for 400 performances and won a Drama Critics Circle Award. Under pressure to sell the film rights of the play from major studios (who Mr Richardson would never trust), he and Osborne instead formed their own company, Woodfall Film Productions.Look Back in Anger (1958) starred a young Richard Burton and also featured Donald Pleasence in an early role. Critical reactions to the film were diametric, but Mr Richardson’s reputation was firmly established, as was the term "angry young man".Being an angry young man himself (he described hating all authority as an "essential attitude" of youth), Tony Richardson would, along with the likes of Karel Reisz, John Schlesinger and Lindsay Anderson, come to be synonymous with the British ‘New Wave’, a movement in cinema that brought the works of working class authors like Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow and Shelagh Delaney to the screen.A Taste of Honey, based on Delaney’s play about a young northern girl trapped by the pressures and prejudices of modern living and her doomed relationships with a black lover and a gay best friend, won him BAFTA awards for ‘Best British Film’ and ‘Best British Screenplay’.The following year, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner drew on the director’s own fragmented education to embellish Alan Sillitoe’s short story about borstal rebellion. Like Richardson, Colin Smith spends long periods of time on his own out of doors, reflecting on his short but troubled life.As a forerunner of the new wave, it was fitting that Mr Richardson put one of the first nails into its coffin. His next film, the historical comedy Tom Jones (1963), broke with character and allowed Albert Finney to do the same. Tom Jones became his first big international success, scooping him Oscars for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Picture’.The success of Tom Jones allowed him the freedom and financing to pursue his own interests with the subversive Hollywood-based comedy The Loved One (1965), the darkly erotic Mademoiselle (1966) and the subtly anti-war Charge of the Light Brigade (1968).The 1970s marked a decline in the quality of his films, beginning with the dire Ned Kelly (1970) which starred Mick Jagger. A Delicate Balance (1973) with Katharine Hepburn and The Border (1982) with Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel were the fleeting high points of the remainder of his career, but his early work continued to influence generations of emerging film-makers.He married the actress Vanessa Redgrave in 1962 and they had two daughters, Natasha and Joely, both of whom became actresses. He left Vanessa in 1967, shortly after they made The Charge of the Light Brigade together, for Mademoiselle star Jeanne Moreau. However, he was, it later emerged, a bisexual.He died from AIDS complications in 1991 at the age of 63. His last film, Blue Sky, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Jessica Lange (who won an Oscar for her performance), was released in the UK six months after his death.
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