Storey delivered a blast of energy to the dull early 60s with the character of Frank Machin, a rugby player who capitalised on the new magic of celebrity
David Storey, author of This Sporting Life, dies at 83
David Storey, in an unforgettable partnership with the director Lindsay Anderson, provided one of the great energising shocks of the 1960s, a blast of energy, smashing at the dullness, the complacency and hypocrisy of class-ridden Britain. Storey adapted his own 1960 novel This Sporting Life for the screen: Lindsay Anderson directed it, and won from Richard Harris a performance to rival Brando. He is Frank Machin, a gifted sportsman who wants to make it as a professional rugby league player (like Storey himself), but is poignantly in love with his widowed landlady, played by Rachel Roberts. Frank is a superstar on the field; he has money, success with women and a cocksure sense of...
David Storey, author of This Sporting Life, dies at 83
David Storey, in an unforgettable partnership with the director Lindsay Anderson, provided one of the great energising shocks of the 1960s, a blast of energy, smashing at the dullness, the complacency and hypocrisy of class-ridden Britain. Storey adapted his own 1960 novel This Sporting Life for the screen: Lindsay Anderson directed it, and won from Richard Harris a performance to rival Brando. He is Frank Machin, a gifted sportsman who wants to make it as a professional rugby league player (like Storey himself), but is poignantly in love with his widowed landlady, played by Rachel Roberts. Frank is a superstar on the field; he has money, success with women and a cocksure sense of...
- 3/28/2017
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
David Storey, the British author and playwright whose debut novel This Sporting Life he adapted into an Oscar-nominated film, has died. He was 83.
"Dad died peacefully with his family around him. He gave and inspired great love, drew us out and showed us how the world really is," a spokesman for his four children said.
Storey won the Booker Prize in 1976 for the family drama Saville and also saw his play Home adapted into a film starring John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson.
But it was his debut novel, published in 1960 and based on his experiences playing professional rugby league, for...
"Dad died peacefully with his family around him. He gave and inspired great love, drew us out and showed us how the world really is," a spokesman for his four children said.
Storey won the Booker Prize in 1976 for the family drama Saville and also saw his play Home adapted into a film starring John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson.
But it was his debut novel, published in 1960 and based on his experiences playing professional rugby league, for...
- 3/27/2017
- by Alex Ritman
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The Judge John Deed star remembers the 60s at the Royal Court, and being discovered by the great auteur
By 1969 I'd done a few roles for Sidney Bernstein's Granada Television, which was the place for new, dangerous drama, and a couple of plays at the Royal Court. I was in their first revival of Look Back in Anger. John Osborne came along to rehearsals a lot – he was shocked at how gritty and visceral we'd made the production. It was an incredibly exciting time – I felt part of a movement of dissent. I did the premiere of David Storey's The Contractor, with the great Lindsay Anderson, and then I did a play called Cancer, which was later renamed Moonchildren.
Cancer was based on the experiences of its writer, Michael Weller. It's about a group of students who rent a flat. It's a very funny and very realistic play,...
By 1969 I'd done a few roles for Sidney Bernstein's Granada Television, which was the place for new, dangerous drama, and a couple of plays at the Royal Court. I was in their first revival of Look Back in Anger. John Osborne came along to rehearsals a lot – he was shocked at how gritty and visceral we'd made the production. It was an incredibly exciting time – I felt part of a movement of dissent. I did the premiere of David Storey's The Contractor, with the great Lindsay Anderson, and then I did a play called Cancer, which was later renamed Moonchildren.
Cancer was based on the experiences of its writer, Michael Weller. It's about a group of students who rent a flat. It's a very funny and very realistic play,...
- 2/17/2014
- by Martin Shaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Fighting, dying, hoping, hating … great sports films are about far more than sport itself. Here Guardian and Observer critics pick their 10 best
• Top 10 superhero movies
• Top 10 westerns
• Top 10 documentaries
• Top 10 movie adaptations
• Top 10 animated movies
• Top 10 silent movies
• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s
10. This Sporting Life
Lindsay Anderson brought to bear on his adaptation of David Storey's first novel, all the poetic-realist instincts he had been honing for the previous decade as a documentarian in the Humphrey Jennings mould. (Anderson had won the 1953 best doc Oscar for Thursday's Children.) Filmed partly in Halifax and Leeds, but mainly in and around Wakefield Trinity Rugby League Club, one of its incidental attractions is its record of a northern, working-class sports culture that would change out of all recognition over the next couple of decades.
The story of Frank Machin, a miner who becomes a star on the rugby field,...
• Top 10 superhero movies
• Top 10 westerns
• Top 10 documentaries
• Top 10 movie adaptations
• Top 10 animated movies
• Top 10 silent movies
• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s
10. This Sporting Life
Lindsay Anderson brought to bear on his adaptation of David Storey's first novel, all the poetic-realist instincts he had been honing for the previous decade as a documentarian in the Humphrey Jennings mould. (Anderson had won the 1953 best doc Oscar for Thursday's Children.) Filmed partly in Halifax and Leeds, but mainly in and around Wakefield Trinity Rugby League Club, one of its incidental attractions is its record of a northern, working-class sports culture that would change out of all recognition over the next couple of decades.
The story of Frank Machin, a miner who becomes a star on the rugby field,...
- 11/25/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
It's 1969, the King's Road is swinging and William Boyd has a lunch rendezvous with the subject of his latest novel, Solo – secret agent, 007. Don't miss Bond's Q&A
Time travel. 1969. Chelsea. There was an autumnal feel about the day as I emerged from the tube station at Sloane Square. Instinctively, I looked round over my right shoulder to see what was playing at the Royal Court. The Contractor by David Storey, directed by Lindsay Anderson. I hadn't seen that play – but then I had been a 17-year-old schoolboy in 1969, and my theatre-going life hadn't really started. It was strange being back in Chelsea in 1969, the year of the moon-landing, the year of my first summer in London. Stranger still to be going to interview James Bond.
I walked along the south side of Sloane Square heading for the King's Road. The curved art deco monolith of Peter Jones acting as...
Time travel. 1969. Chelsea. There was an autumnal feel about the day as I emerged from the tube station at Sloane Square. Instinctively, I looked round over my right shoulder to see what was playing at the Royal Court. The Contractor by David Storey, directed by Lindsay Anderson. I hadn't seen that play – but then I had been a 17-year-old schoolboy in 1969, and my theatre-going life hadn't really started. It was strange being back in Chelsea in 1969, the year of the moon-landing, the year of my first summer in London. Stranger still to be going to interview James Bond.
I walked along the south side of Sloane Square heading for the King's Road. The curved art deco monolith of Peter Jones acting as...
- 9/28/2013
- by William Boyd
- The Guardian - Film News
Hang around in Calderdale, and you could well end up in a movie. Our Hebden Bridge outpost, Jill Robinson, reels off some the greats
Last year saw the premiere at the Hebden Bridge Picture House of the film A Calder Valley Christmas, with local people (including this outpost of the Northerner) queuing around the block to be among the first to see it. Directed by local film-maker Nick Wilding, the piece combines archive material, reminiscences about bad winters, carols, poems, scenes of local Mummers and other traditions, and monologues by the incomparable Ian Dewhirst MBE. (He actually lives in Keighley, but he tells such a good tale that he is often invited over the hill.) Like all the best films, there is an accompanying song, Christmas in Hebden Bridge, performed by children from local schools.
However, this is by no means the only film to have used the dramatic natural...
Last year saw the premiere at the Hebden Bridge Picture House of the film A Calder Valley Christmas, with local people (including this outpost of the Northerner) queuing around the block to be among the first to see it. Directed by local film-maker Nick Wilding, the piece combines archive material, reminiscences about bad winters, carols, poems, scenes of local Mummers and other traditions, and monologues by the incomparable Ian Dewhirst MBE. (He actually lives in Keighley, but he tells such a good tale that he is often invited over the hill.) Like all the best films, there is an accompanying song, Christmas in Hebden Bridge, performed by children from local schools.
However, this is by no means the only film to have used the dramatic natural...
- 12/20/2011
- by Jill Robinson
- The Guardian - Film News
Versatile Irish stage actor who became a familiar face across British drama
Before he became a familiar face on television and cinema screens, the outstanding Irish actor Tp McKenna, who has died after a long illness aged 81, bridged the gap between the old and the new Abbey theatres in Dublin. He appeared with the company for eight years during the interim period at the Queen's theatre; the old Abbey burned down in 1951, the new one opened by the Liffey in 1966.
During that time he made his reputation as a leading actor of great charm, vocal resource – with a fine singing voice – and versatility. He was equally adept at comedy and tragedy, a great exponent of the best Irish playwriting from Jm Synge and Séan O'Casey to Hugh Leonard and Brian Friel. The elder son in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night was a favourite, much acclaimed role.
It was Stephen D,...
Before he became a familiar face on television and cinema screens, the outstanding Irish actor Tp McKenna, who has died after a long illness aged 81, bridged the gap between the old and the new Abbey theatres in Dublin. He appeared with the company for eight years during the interim period at the Queen's theatre; the old Abbey burned down in 1951, the new one opened by the Liffey in 1966.
During that time he made his reputation as a leading actor of great charm, vocal resource – with a fine singing voice – and versatility. He was equally adept at comedy and tragedy, a great exponent of the best Irish playwriting from Jm Synge and Séan O'Casey to Hugh Leonard and Brian Friel. The elder son in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night was a favourite, much acclaimed role.
It was Stephen D,...
- 2/17/2011
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
There are many things in this world that I find truly baffling. Why are we destroying our marine habitats so that rich Japanese restaurants can sell expensive soup? Why do we demand that politicians solve all our problems for us, while secretly willing them to fail? Why do we keep expecting Guy Ritchie to make another good film? But perhaps the most baffling of all is the fact that Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has never been released on DVD in Britain. It is perhaps the finest filmic adaptation of a stage play ever rendered on celluloid. But only American audiences are able to enjoy it in the comfort of their own homes. Adaptations of plays can often be morbidly dull. They rely on the same visceral energy and tension that works so well in a theatre but is almost impossible to transfer onto a video recording that will be...
- 8/21/2009
- by Nicholas Deigman
- t5m.com
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