Clive Donner

British director 'Clive Donner' (qv) was born in West Hampstead, London, England. By age 18 he was already working in the film business, as an office clerk at Denham Studios. He eventually became an editor and then graduated to the director's chair. After making a series of TV commercials, he made his theatrical directorial debut with _The Secret Place (1957)_ (qv). In the 1960s he went from smaller, harder-edged black-and-white films to more commercial, "now" films, such as _Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968)_ (qv), _What's New Pussycat (1965)_ (qv) and the disastrous flop _Alfred the Great (1969)_ (qv). He worked only sporadically in features after that--two more bombs, _The Nude Bomb (1980)_ (qv) and _Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981)_ (qv) didn't help matters--and he returned, for the most part, to television. Among his best work there were a critically acclaimed filming of 'Frederic Raphael' (qv)'s thriller _Rogue Male (1976)_ (qv) and a faithful and well-received adaptation of 'Charles Dickens' (qv)' famous novel, _A Christmas Carol (1984)_ (qv) with 'George C. Scott' (qv) as Scrooge. Unfortunately, that was followed by the notorious _Arthur the King (1985)_ (qv), a bizarre, convoluted and disjointed mess about which the less said, the better.::[email protected]