Robert Bolt

Robert Bolt
Born (1924-08-15)15 August 1924
Sale, Cheshire, England
Died 21 February 1995(1995-02-21) (aged 70)
Petersfield, Hampshire, England
Nationality British
Information
Notable work(s)
  • Screenplays
  • Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
  • Doctor Zhivago (1965)
  • The Mission (1986)
  • Plays
  • Vivat! Vivat Regina! (1971)
Magnum opus A Man for All Seasons (1960)

Robert Oxton Bolt, CBE (August 15, 1924 – February 21, 1995) was an English playwright and a two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter, known for writing the screenplays for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Man for All Seasons, the latter two of which won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Career

He was born in Sale, Cheshire. At Manchester Grammar School his affinity for Sir Thomas More first developed. He attended the University of Manchester, and, after wartime service in the RAF (1943–1946), the University of Exeter. For many years he taught English and history at Millfield School and only became a full-time writer at the age of 33 when his play The Flowering Cherry was staged in London in 1958, with Celia Johnson and Ralph Richardson.

Although he was best known for his original play A Man for All Seasons – a depiction of Sir Thomas More's clash with King Henry VIII over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon – which won awards on the stage and in its film version, most of his writing was screenplays for films or television.

Bolt was known for dramatic works that placed their protagonists in tension with the prevailing society. He won great renown for A Man for All Seasons, his first iteration of this theme, but he developed it in his existential script for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). In Lawrence, he succeeded where several before him had failed, at turning T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom into a cogent screenplay by turning the entire book on its head and making it a search for the identity of its author, presenting Lawrence as a misfit both in English and Arab society.

It was at this time that Bolt himself fell foul of the law, and as part of the Committee of 100 was arrested and imprisoned for protesting against nuclear proliferation. He refused to be "bound over" (i.e., to sign a declaration that he would not engage in such activities again) and was sentenced to one month in prison because of this.[1] The producer of the Lawrence film, Sam Spiegel, persuaded Bolt to sign after he had served only two weeks. Bolt later regretted his actions, and did not speak to Spiegel again after the film was completed.

Later, with Doctor Zhivago, he invested Boris Pasternak's novel with the characteristic Bolt sense of narrative and dialogue – human, short and telling. The Bounty was Bolt's first project after a stroke, which affected not only his movement, but his speech. In it, Fletcher Christian takes the "Lawrence" role of a man in tension with his society who in the process loses touch with his own identity. The Mission was Bolt's final film project, and once again represented his thematic preoccupations, this time with 18th-century Jesuits in South America.

Bolt's final produced script was Political Animal, later made into the TV movie Without Warning: The James Brady Story (1991), about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan and the struggles of his press secretary, James Brady, to recover from a near-fatal gunshot injury he received in the process. Bolt was initially reluctant to make the film, but after meeting Brady he felt he could relate to Brady's struggles with a cerebral injury; thus, a lot of his own experiences recovering from his stroke found their way into the script.

Personal life

Bolt was married four times, twice to British actress Sarah Miles. His first wife was Celia Ann "Jo" Roberts, by whom he had three children; they divorced in 1963. He was married to Miles from 1967 until 1976; Bolt had his fourth child, Thomas, with Miles. In the early 1980s, he had a short-lived third marriage, to the actress Ann Queensberry (former wife of David Douglas, 12th Marquess of Queensberry), before remarrying Sarah Miles in 1988, with whom he remained until his death in 1995.[2]

He had four children: Sally (died 1982), Ben, Joanna, and Tom.

Death

Bolt suffered a heart attack and a stroke that left him paralysed in 1979. He died aged 70, in Petersfield, Hampshire, England, following a long illness.

Honours

Robert Bolt was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1972.

Partial list of plays

Bolt wrote several plays for BBC Radio in the '50s, as well as several unproduced plays, so this list is incomplete. Many of his early radio plays were for children, and only a few (see below) were adapted for the stage.

State of Revolution was Bolt's final produced play, though he wrote several others that were never published or produced. He spent much of the mid-to-late 1970s working on a play about portrait artist Augustus John (famous for a series of portraits of T. E. Lawrence), but his work on The Bounty, and later his failing health, forced him to abandon it.

Screenplays

Bolt may be best remembered for his work on film and television screenplays. His work for director David Lean garnered him particular acclaim and recognition, and Bolt tried his hand at directing with the unsuccessful Lady Caroline Lamb (1972). While some criticised Bolt for focusing more on the personal aspects of his protagonists than the broader political context (particularly with "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Man for All Seasons"), most critics and audiences alike praised his screenplays. Bolt won two Oscars, two BAFTA Awards, and won or was nominated for several others.

Bolt also worked on the early drafts of the script for Gandhi, but his script was considered unsatisfactory and he was replaced by John Briley. Bolt also had several unrealised projects, including a TV miniseries of Gore Vidal's novel Burr and an adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time for Norman Lear.[4]

After being paid $400,000 US plus ten percent of profits for his Ryan's Daughter screenplay, Bolt became for a time the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood (with only William Goldman in serious competition).

Awards

Tony Awards

Main article: Tony Awards
Year Nominated work Category Result[5]
1962 A Man for All Seasons Best Play Won
1972 Vivat! Vivat Regina! Nominated

Screenplay Awards

Year Nominated work Academy Awards[6]
Best Adapted Screenplay
BAFTA Awards[7]
Best British Screenplay (A)
Best Original Screenplay (B)
Golden Globe Awards[8]
Best Screenplay
1962 Lawrence of Arabia Nominated Won A (1963) N/A
1965 Doctor Zhivago Won N/A Won
1966 A Man for All Seasons Won Won A (1968) Won
1986 The Mission N/A Nominated B (1987) Won

Filmography

Bibliography

References

  1. Calder, John (23 February 1995). "Obituary: Robert Bolt". The Independent. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  2. Turner, Adrian (1998). Robert Bolt: Scenes From Two Lives. Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-180176-1.
  3. Trewin, J. C. "Critic on the Hearth." Listener [London, England] 5 August 1954: 224.
  4. Marcus, Leonard S. "Listening for Madeleine (Excerpt)". TOR.com. TOR. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  5. "Search Results: Robert Bolt". www.tonyawards.com. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  6. "Robert Bolt". awardsdatabase.oscars.org. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  7. "BAFTA Awards Search: Robert Bolt". awards.bafta.org. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  8. "Robert Bolt". www.goldenglobes.com. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Robert Bolt
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/8/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.