The L-Shaped Room

Bryan Forbes, CBE is an English film director, actor and writer. Bryan Forbes was born John Theobald Clarke on 22 July 1926 in Queen Mary’s Hospital, Stratford, West Ham, Essex (now Greater London), and grew up at 43 Cranmer Road, Forest Gate, West Ham, Essex (now Greater London).

Forbes trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts but did not complete his studies. After military service from 1945 to 1948, he played numerous supporting roles in British films including in 1955 The Colditz Story, alongside John Mills, as well as appearing on the stage, but was obliged to change his name by British Equity to avoid confusion with the adolescent actor John Clark. He began also to write for the screen, receiving his first full credit for The Cockleshell Heroes in 1955. Another noted screenplay of his from this period was for The League of Gentlemen in 1959, in which he also acted.

He formed a production company with his frequent collaborator Richard Attenborough in 1959 (Beaver Films), which went on to make The Angry Silence in 1960, a screenplay by Forbes in which Attenborough took the lead role, and both shared production responsibilities. In 1961 he made his directorial debut Whistle Down the Wind, again produced by Attenborough. In 1964, Forbes wrote and directed Séance on a Wet Afternoon, for which he won a 1965 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Foreign Film Screenplay. That same year he wrote the third screen adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel Of Human Bondage. In 1965 he went to Hollywood to make King Rat.

In 1969 he was appointed chief of production and managing director of the film studio Associated British (EMI), but the experience was not a success and he resigned the post in 1971, though he was partially responsible for financing The Railway Children (1970). After his experience as an executive, Forbes film output declined, although he did enjoy success as the director of The Raging Moon (1971) and The Stepford Wives (1975). The Slipper and the Rose (1976), International Velvet (1978) and The Naked Face (1984) were not successful. More recently, he scripted Attenborough’s Chaplin (1992) —wikipedia