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.[5]
Donner directed some commercials and some short features based on Edgar Wallace novels. He did Some People (1962), a film about a group of alienated youths who form a rock band, starring Kenneth More and Ray Brooks. His television work during that time included episodes of Danger Man (1960) and Sir Francis Drake (1961–62), as well as Mighty and Mystical, a documentary series about India.
Donner's next film, Nothing but the Best (1964), was a satire on the British class system starring Alan Bates and Denholm Elliott, based on a screenplay by Frederic Raphael. The film tells the story of Jimmy Brewster (played by Bates) as a lower-class striver who seeks to move up in the system under the tutelage of his upper crust instructor Charlie Prince (Elliott).
Donner's first large-budget film was What's New Pussycat? (1965), an American-financed comedy shot in France, starring Peter O'Toole and Peter Sellers. O'Toole played the womanizer Michael James, who does his best to remain faithful to his fiancée Carole Werner (Romy Schneider), while numerous women – Ursula Andress, Capucine, Paula Prentiss – fall in love with him, with Sellers playing the role of his psychoanalyst, Dr. Fassbender. The success of the title song, performed by Tom Jones, added to the motion picture's success with audiences.[4]Woody Allen, who wrote the screenplay and made his first screen appearance in the movie, hated the end result, commenting that the vision he had for the movie in his original script had been distorted.[1]
Donner's film Luv (1967), an adaptation of the play by Murray Schisgal, starred Peter Falk, Jack Lemmon and Elaine May, but the addition of locations and characters to the original work led to criticism of the casting and direction, and the film was a commercial failure. Donner rounded out the 1960s with the 9th-century period piece Alfred the Great (1969), starring David Hemmings.
Donner died at age 84 on 7 September 2010 at a carer home in Virginia Water, Surrey, due to complications of Alzheimer's disease.[3][4] His Australian wife, Jocelyn Rickards, a costume designer whom he met while working on Alfred the Great and married in 1971,[3] had died in 2005.[4]
Bibliography
Donner discusses the making of all his films in the book Six English Filmmakers (2014, Paul Sutton) ISBN978-0957246256