Clive Donner

Clive Stanley Donner (21 January 1926 – 6 September 2010) was a British film director who was part of the British New Wave, directing films such as The Caretaker, Nothing but the Best, What's New Pussycat?, and Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. He also directed television movies and commercials through the mid-1990s. His father was a concert violinist and his mother ran a dress shop; his grandparents were Polish-Jewish immigrants. Donner says then a new manager came in, Connery, and Rank released him from his contract.

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.

1960s Donner's breakthrough directing role came with The Caretaker (1963), a film made with a low-budget funded almost entirely by financial contributions starting at £1,000 each from such individuals as Richard Burton, Noël Coward, Peter Sellers and Elizabeth Taylor, with the stars bypassing their standard fees and taking shares of the film's revenue. The movie, based on the play of the same name by Harold Pinter, was filmed in black-and-white with cinematography by Nicolas Roeg.

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.

1980s The Nude Bomb (1980) is a comedy based on the television series Get Smart, which featured Don Adams reprising his role as secret agent Maxwell Smart. and was Donner's last theatrical film.

For television, Donner directed a film version of The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982) with Ian McKellen and Jane Seymour His Australian wife, Jocelyn Rickards, a costume designer whom he met while working on Alfred the Great and married in 1971, had died in 2005.