Oscar Profile #420: Byron Forbes

Born July 26, 1926 in Stratford, England as John Theobald Clarke, actor-writer-producer-director Bryan Forbes was evacuated to Cornwall during World War II. In 1943, a neighbor who was a BBC producer put 17-year-old Clarke into BBC Radio’s The Will Hay Programme. He spent four years in the Intelligence Corps from 1944-1948. Upon completing his military service, he was forced to change his name under British Equity rules to avoid confusion with actor John Clark (Lynn Redgrave’s future husband) before beginning his stage and screen career.

In numerous films in small roles, Forbes branched out as a writer with 1954’s The Black Knight for which he supplied additional dialogue. He was married to troubled actress Constance Smith at the time, having married her in 1951. They were divorced in 1955, the year he married second wife Nanette Newman with whom he would have two children and remain married until his death.

Forbes’ first fully credited screenplay was 1955’s Cockleshell Heroes. He was nominated for an Oscar for the first and only time for his screenplay for 1960’s The Angry Silence the same year he wrote the better-known The League of Gentlemen.

Still acting and writing, Forbes made his directorial debut with 1961’s Whistle Down the Wind from a screenplay by others. 1962’s The L-Shaped Room, for which star Leslie Caron received an Oscar nomination, his second film as director, was the first for which he both wrote the script and directed. He also wrote and directed 1964’s Séance on a Wet Afternoon for which Kim Stanley received an Oscar nomination. He once again acted as both writer and director, as well as acted in 1965’s King Rat which was nominated for Oscars for its cinematography and art direction. He directed but didn’t write 1966’s The Wrong Box which won a BAFTA award for its costume design. He wrote and directed a third actress, Edith Evans, to an Oscar nomination for 1967’s The Whisperers.

Forbes did not write but directed 1969’s highly anticipated all-star cast film of The Madwoman of Chaillot which he took over when John Huston dropped out in order to be able to direct Katharine Hepburn in the title role. The film, which was a critical and box office failure, was not nominated for any awards. His next film, 1971’s Long Ago, Tomorrow, which he co-wrote as well as directed, earned awards recognition for stars Malcolm McDowall and Forbes’ wife Nanette Newman who was nominated for a BAFTA along with supporting actress Georgia Brown.

Forbes’ 1975 film, The Stepford Wives brought awards recognition for star Katharine Ross and 1976’s The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella earned Oscar nominations for Best Score and Song (“The Slipper and the Rose Waltz – He Danced with Me / She Danced with Me”).

Bryan’s last work as an actor was for the 1986 TV miniseries, First Among Equals. His last work as a director was for the 1989 TV miniseries, The Endless Game. His last screenplay was for 1992’s Chaplin who which Robert Downey Jr. received an Oscar nomination.

Bryan Forbes received an honorary BAFTA award for career achievement at the 2006 awards. He died on May 13, 2013 at 86.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE L-SHAPED ROOM (1962)

Forbes directed Leslie Caron to an Oscar nomination for her sensitive portrayal of a pregnant French girl waiting out her pregnancy in a London boarding house. As wonderful as Caron is, the film is far from a one-woman show. Forbes elicits strong supporting work from Tom Bell as a struggling writer, Brock Peters as a jazz musician, Cicely Courtneidge as a lesbian shut-in and Avis Bunnage as a man-hungry landlady. As was to become his custom, he also gave minor roles to such established actors as Emlyn Williams, Gerald Sim, Bernard Lee, Kay Walsh and his actress wife, Nanette Newman.

SÉANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON (1964)

Forbes directed Kim Stanley to a New York Film Critics Award and an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of the unhinged woman who cajoles her subservient husband (Richard Attenborough) into kidnapping a child so that she can achieve fame as the medium who finds the missing girl. Mark Eden and Nanette Newman (Mrs. Forbes) play the distraught parents. Gerald Sim, who plays the detective on the case was Attenborough’s brother-in-law. He was in seven films directed by Attenborough and nine directed by Forbes. Patrick Magee, of TV’s The Avengers fame plays Sim’s boss.

THE WHISPERERS (1967)

Forbes directed Dame Edith Evans to every major acting award there was at the time except the Oscar for which was nominated but lost to Katharine Hepburn in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. Evans played a lonely old lady who sips tea and listens to radio as her sink faucet drips, drips, drips. She constantly hears voices (the “whisperers” of the title) and turns up the radio to drown them out. The supporting cast includes Eric Portman and Ronald Fraser as her good-for-nothing estranged husband and son and Forbes regulars Nanette Newman, Gerald Sim and Avis Bunnage.

THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT (1969)

Forbes failed to direct Katharine Hepburn to what would have been her fourth Oscar nomination within the decade as well as his fourth actress to receive a nomination for one of his films within the decade. The quirky film based on Jean Giraudoux’s play, features Hepburn in the role that won Tonys for Martita Hunt in 1950 for the original Broadway version and Angela Lansbury in 1969 for Jerry Herman’s musical version, Dear World. She’s supported by the likes of Yul Brynner, Danny Kaye, Edith Evans, Margaret Leighton, Giulietta Masina, Richard Chamberlain, Nanette Newman and John Gavin.

LONG AGO, TOMORROW (1971)

The same year as the better-known A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowall gave an equally unforgettable performance as the young soccer player crippled at 21 who falls in love with a similarly crippled hospital patient played by Nanette Newman. McDowall was nominated for Best Actor for both films by the National Society of Film Critics. Newman and Georgia Brown as a sympathetic nurse both earned BAFTA nominations for this film released in the U.K. as The Raging Moon. It was while watching McDowall in this film that a young Gary Oldman decided to become an actor.