Clive Donner

Clive Stanley Donner (21 January 1926 – 6 September 2010) was a British film director who was part of the British New Wave, directing films such as The Caretaker, Nothing but the Best, What's New Pussycat?, and Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. He also directed television movies and commercials through the mid-1990s. Early career Donner was born in West Hampstead, London. His father was a concert violinist and his mother ran a dress shop; his grandparents were Polish-Jewish immigrants. Donner began his filmmaking career while attending Kilburn Polytechnic. He began working in the film industry as a cutting-room assistant at Denham Studios, having gained the job after joining his father, who was at the studio to record the soundtrack for the film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). Donner did his eighteen months of National Service with the Royal Army Educational Corps, and afterwards was hired by Pinewood Studios as a film editor, where the movies he worked on included Scrooge (1951), with Alastair Sim; The Card (1952), with Alec Guinness; Genevieve (1953), a comedy about a vintage car rally; The Million Pound Note (1954), with Gregory Peck; and I Am a Camera (1955), with Laurence Harvey. Career as director Early works Donner began his professional directing career on a number of low-budget films, starting with The Secret Place (1957), a crime drama about a troubled youth, starring Belinda Lee, Ronald Lewis, and David McCallum. After this Donner says he turned down Rooney and a film which he said was a copy of Genevieve with gliders. Then he agreed to make Heart of a Child (1958) a melodrama starring Jean Anderson and Donald Pleasence. Donner says then a new manager came in, Connery, and Rank released him from his contract.