Lean, Sir David

Lean, Sir David (1908-1991), British film director, considered a master of the epic scale as well as of the small nuance. Born in Croydon, England, Lean began a career with his father, an accountant, and later took a job at Gaumont Films, where he worked his way up from tea-boy to editor of the firm's newsreels. His later work on low-budget feature films was so highly regarded that by 1935 he was considered Britain's leading film editor. He edited the landmark adaptation of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw in 1938; he also edited and co-directed Shaw's Major Barbara (1941) and In Which We Serve (1942) by Noel Coward. Highly impressed, Coward permitted Lean to direct film versions of his This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945), and Brief Encounter (1945), for which Lean won an Academy Award (Oscar) nomination. Other films from around this period include Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), both from the works of Charles Dickens, as well as Hobson's Choice (1954), a popular working-class comedy.

Lean went to Hollywood in 1955 to direct Summertime, starring Katharine Hepburn, and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director. Five years later he won his second Best Director Academy Award for Lawrence of Arabia. After his next two films, Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Ryan's Daughter (1970), Lean gave up films for 14 years. He made a sensational comeback with his adaptation of the E. M. Forster novel, A Passage to India (1984), which won nine Academy Award nominations in total. In 1973 he won the highest honour of the Directors' Guild of America, the D. W. Griffith Award. He was made a CBE in 1953, and received a knighthood in 1984. In 1990 Lean was honoured with the Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute.