David Lean

David Lean (1908-1991), British film director, considered a master of the epic scale as well as of the small nuance, born in Croydon, England, and educated at Leighton Park School. Lean began a career with his father, an accountant, and later took a job at Gaumont Films, where he was placed in charge of editing for the firm's newsreels. His later work on low-budget feature films was so brilliant that by 1935 he was considered Britain's leading film editor. He edited the landmark adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1938) and edited and co-directed Shaw's Major Barbara (1941) and Noel Coward's In Which We Serve (1942). Highly impressed, Coward permitted Lean to direct film versions of his This Happy Breed (1945), Blithe Spirit (1945), and Brief Encounter (1945), for which Lean won an Oscar nomination.

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 Oscar. Five years later he won his second Oscar 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 A Passage to India (1984), winning three more Academy Award nominations. In 1973 he won the highest honor of the Directors' Guild of America, the D. W. Griffith Award. He was made a commander of the British Empire in 1953 and was knighted in 1984.