Carol Reed: A Biography

by Nicholas Wapshott

Carol Reed - director of thirty-four films, among them Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, Outcast of the Islands, Mutiny on the Bounty and, of course, the great postwar classic The Third Man. He is fully revealed here as the complex, reticent, eccentric man of enormous gifts who understood actors and writers (he was both) and was a master of the art of telling stories, and making movies. At the center of Reed's life was the fact of his birth: He was the illegitimate son of one of Edwardian England's great character actors, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who for fifty years dominated the London stage and whose flamboyant personality and love affairs were legend. Nicholas Wapshott shows how Reed's response to his heritage - the conflict between his shame and his pride - was reflected in the elusive, enigmatic figure he presented throughout his life. Here is Reed as a boy with his father's theatrical colleagues (among them Bernard Shaw, W. S. Gilbert, Wilde, Whistler, Ellen Terry and James Barrie) . . . Reed landing his first job: an assistant to the bestselling thriller writer of his day, playwright and producer Edgar Wallace . . . Reed with his secret love, Daphne du Maurier (she later described the romance in her novel I'll Never Be Young Again) . . . Reed's marriages - first to the beloved star Diana Wynyard, then to Penelope Dudley Ward, the daughter of a mistress of Edward VIII. We follow Reed as a young actor, assistant director and dialogue coach - and finally, a director making his first film, It Happened in Paris, from a script adapted by John Huston; Reed developing what would become the brilliant repertory company he worked with again and again: Tyrone Guthrie, Margaret Lockwood, Alastair Sim, Michael Redgrave, Emlyn Williams, Roger Livesey and Robert Donat, among others. We see Reed's long writing collaboration with Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov, beginning when they were young men stationed together during the war. And his ten-year collaboration with Graham Gr

Genres: Biography

365 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Nicholas Wapshott is a journalist and the author of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage. A former senior editor at The Times of London and the New York Sun, he lives in New York.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting account of the experiences of a director of one of the classic movies and a victim of Marlon Brando's childish ego.

What would have learned if I hadn't already known it: Brando was a monumental jerk and his success, even his survival, is an indictment of many. We outlawed dueling much too soon.

[Dave Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most interesting for the Reed/Greene working method, but lots of good stuff here for the movie buff.