John Richard Schlesinger[1]CBE (/ˈʃlɛsɪndʒər/SHLESS-in-jər; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director, and actor. He emerged in the early 1960s as a leading light of the British New Wave, before embarking on a successful career in Hollywood, often directing films dealing frankly in provocative subject matter, combined with his status as one of the rare openly gay directors working in mainstream films.[2][3]
Schlesinger was born and raised in Hampstead, London,[5] in a Jewish family,[6] the eldest of five children[7] of distinguished Emmanuel College, Cambridge–educated paediatrician and physician Bernard Edward Schlesinger OBEFRCP (1896–1984), who had also served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a brigadier,[8] and his wife Winifred Henrietta, daughter of Hermann Regensburg, a stockbroker from Frankfurt.[9] She had left school at 14 to study at the Trinity College of Music, and later studied languages at the University of Oxford for three years.[10][11] Bernard Schlesinger's father Richard, a stockbroker, had come to England in the 1880s from Frankfurt.[12]
Schlesinger's acting career began in the 1950s and consisted of supporting roles in British films such as The Divided Heart and Oh... Rosalinda!!, and British television productions such as BBC Sunday Night Theatre, The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Vise. He began his directorial career in 1956 with the short documentary Sunday in the Park about London's Hyde Park. In 1958, Schlesinger created a documentary on Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival for the BBC's Monitor TV programme, including rehearsals of the children's opera Noye's Fludde featuring a young Michael Crawford.[16][17] In 1959, Schlesinger was credited as exterior or second unit director on 23 episodes of the TV series The Four Just Men and four 30-minute episodes of the series Danger Man.[18] He also appeared in Col March of Scotland Yard as "Dutch cook" in "Death and the Other Monkey" 1956.
Schlesinger's next film, Midnight Cowboy (1969), was internationally acclaimed. A story of two hustlers living on the fringe in the bad side of New York City, it was Schlesinger's first film shot in the US, and it won Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture. The film was one of the earliest mainstream American films to deal explicitly with homosexual relationships, and is considered a groundbreaking work of queer cinema.[20][21][22] During the 1970s, he made an array of films that were mainly about loners, losers and people outside the mainstream world, such as Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), The Day of the Locust (1975), Marathon Man (1976) and Yanks (1979). Later, came the major box office and critical failure of Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), followed by films that attracted mixed responses from the public, and low returns, although The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) made money and Pacific Heights (1990) was a box-office hit. In Britain, he did better with films like Madame Sousatzka (1988) and Cold Comfort Farm (1995). Other later works include plays for television An Englishman Abroad (1983) and A Question of Attribution (1991), both with scripts by Alan Bennett, The Innocent (1993) and The Next Best Thing (2000).
Schlesinger directed a party political broadcast for the Conservative Party in the general election of 1992, which featured Prime Minister John Major returning to Brixton in south London, thus highlighting Major's humble background, something atypical for a Conservative politician at that time. Schlesinger said he had voted for all three main political parties in the UK at one time or another.
Later life and death
In 1991, Schlesinger made a brief return to acting, portraying the gay character 'Derek' in the TV adaptation of The Lost Language of Cranes for the BBC. Schlesinger had himself come out during the making of Midnight Cowboy.[24]
Schlesinger underwent a quadruple heart bypass in 1998, before suffering a stroke on New Year's Day 2001, which substantially diminished his faculties.[30] He died at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs on the morning of 25 July 2003, at the age of 77.[31][2]
Schlesinger was survived by his partner of over 30 years, photographer Michael Childers. A memorial service was held on 30 September 2003.[26] He was cremated, with most of his ashes interred next to his parents, and the remainder left to be interred with Childers.[31]
