From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Jack Lee (film director)

British director, producer and screenwriter (1913–2002)

Summary

British director, producer and screenwriter (1913–2002)

Field	Value
name	Jack Lee
birth_name	Wilfred John Raymond Lee
birth_place	Slad, Gloucestershire, England
birth_date
death_place	Sydney, Australia
death_date
occupation
family	Laurie Lee (brother)

Wilfred John Raymond Lee (27 January 1913 – 15 October 2002) was a British film director, screenwriter, editor, and producer, who directed a number of postwar films on location in Asia and Australia for The Rank Organisation.

Biography

Early life

Lee was born in the village of Slad near Stroud, Gloucestershire, the eldest brother of Laurie Lee, author of Cider with Rosie. In childhood, the two boys were close but fell out in later life. Natural rivals, Jack gained a place at the grammar school (Marling School in Stroud); Laurie failed to do so, attending Stroud Central School for Boys.

Career

He directed and co-wrote the screenplay of the pioneering motorcycle speedway film *Once a Jolly Swagman *(1949) which starred Dirk Bogarde.

Among Jack Lee's other films are The Wooden Horse (1950), a popular Second World War POW escape film; Turn the Key Softly (1953), a realistic drama; A Town Like Alice (1956), starring Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch, based on Nevil Shute's novel; and Robbery Under Arms (1957), a Western-style adventure set in Australia, based on the 1888 bushranger novel by "Rolf Boldrewood". According to Filmink magazine "Lee wasn't the world's most energetic director – he starts the movie with Dick and Jim literally lounging on the ground in the hot sun and is overly in love with shooting action and characters in long shot."

Lee had a hit film with the comedy The Captain's Paradise.

During the Australian feature film renaissance ushered in with * Picnic at Hanging Rock*, he served as chairman (from 1976 to 1981) of the South Australian Film Corporation, which started the careers of Bruce Beresford and Peter Weir.

Personal life

Lee was originally engaged to be married to Hilda Lee (no relation) but the wedding was called off weeks before it was due to happen. In 1946 he married British casting director Nora Francisca Blackburne (21 April 1914 – 7 July 2009), following her divorce from Adam Alexander Dawson. They had two children before divorcing in 1963.

In 1963, he married Isabel Kidman who was an heiress to the Kidman cattle dynasty. She had two children from her previous marriage. She was not allowed to take them out of the country, so he settled in Australia, and although he returned often to Britain, he spent the rest of his life there.

Death

Lee died in Sydney in October 2002.

References

McFarlane, Brian. "Lee, (Wilfred) Jack Raymond".
link. (24 May 2011 , radiotimes.com; accessed 16 May 2016.)
Profile, ''Halliwells Film 2007''; {{ISBN. 978-0-00-723470-7
Vagg, Stephen. (7 March 2025). "Wrecking Australian stores: the 1957 film version of Robbery Under Arms".
Vagg, Stephen. (27 June 2025). "Forgotten British Film Studios: The Rank Organisation, 1959".
[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1300&dat=19760616&id=R5spAAAAIBAJ&sjid=RJIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3382,3575328 The Making of an Australian Film The Age, 16 June 1976]
(23 August 2005). "The way we were: my life in pictures". [[The Times]].
[[Valerie Grove]]. (1999). "Laurie Lee: The Well-loved Stranger". Viking.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1913-births 2002-deaths english-film-directors people-from-painswick people-educated-at-marling-school

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Jack Lee (film director) — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report