Like his friend Lindsay Anderson, Gavin Lambert was educated at Cheltenham and Oxford, and, with Anderson and others, founded the short-lived but influential journal, Sequence, while still at Oxford. He edited Sight and Sound from 1949 to 1955, then wrote and directed Another Sky (1955), made in Morocco. He went to live in Hollywood as a screenwriter and personal assistant to director Nicholas Ray, whose Bitter Victory (UK/France, 1957) he co-wrote. Among his British films, he was nominated for a shared screenplay Oscar for Sons and Lovers (d. Jack Cardiff, 1960), a skilful job of compression, and wrote The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (UK/US, d. José Quintero, 1961), adapting Tennessee Williams' novel. The author of several novels with Hollywood settings (e.g., Inside Daisy Clover, 1963) and books about such figures as George Cukor, most recently he has written Mainly About Lindsay Anderson (2000), which also reveals a good deal about himself and their contrasting responses to their homosexuality. He contributed to Stephen Frears's film in the centenary History of Cinema series, Typically British (1998). An American citizen since 1964, he died in Los Angeles on 18 July 2005. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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