Robert Bolt | |
|---|---|
| Born | 15 August 1924 Sale, Cheshire, England |
| Died | 20 February 1995 (aged 70) Chichester, Sussex, England |
| Education | Manchester Grammar School; University of Manchester; University of Exeter |
| Notable works |
|
| Spouse | Celia Ann "Jo" Roberts
(m. 1948; div. 1963)
(m. 1988)Ann Queensberry
(m. 1980; div. 1985) |
| Children | 4 |
Robert Oxton Bolt CBE (15 August 1924 – 20 February 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 him the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
He was born in Sale, Cheshire, to Methodist parents; his father owned a small furniture shop.[1] At Manchester Grammar School his affinity for Sir Thomas More first developed. After leaving school aged sixteen, he worked in an insurance office, which he disliked; after studying in the evening for five weeks he passed three A-levels and went on to attend the University of Manchester, from which, after a year, he undertook wartime service, initially as a pilot officer candidate in the RAF (air-sickness preventing him from continuing past training) from 1943 to 1946. He then served as an Army officer in West Africa until 1947, when he returned to the University of Manchester and spent three years completing his honours degree in history.[2] Following this, he took a teaching diploma from the University of Exeter.[3] 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.
He first earned notice 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, though subsequently most of his writing was screenplays for films or television.
Bolt's writing included primarily dramatic works that placed their protagonists in tension with the prevailing society. He won praise 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 transforming the entire book into 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 he 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.[4] Sam Spiegel, the producer of Lawrence, 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 in Doctor Zhivago, Bolt invested Boris Pasternak's novel with his own characteristic 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 also 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 it 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 head injury, and many of his own experiences recovering from his stroke found their way into the script.
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: Sally (died 1982), Ben, and Joanna.[5] 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 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.[6]
After the war, Bolt joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, but he left it in the late 1960s after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.[7]
Bolt suffered a heart attack and a stroke that left him paralysed in 1979. He died aged 70 in 1995, in Petersfield, Hampshire, England, following a long illness.[8]
Robert Bolt was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1972.
Bolt wrote several plays for BBC Radio in the 1950s, as well as several unproduced plays. Many of his early radio plays were for children, with few adapted for the stage.
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 A 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 had several unrealised projects, including a TV miniseries adaptation of Gore Vidal's novel Burr; a film adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time for Norman Lear;[10] a script inspired by the Patty Hearst kidnapping called The Cover-Up with Oliver Stone;[11] a script about Irish patriot Michael Collins called Blest Souls with Michael Cimino; original screenplays about Galileo Galilei and explorers Scott and Amundsen;[7] a film adaptation of André Malraux's novel Man's Fate also with Cimino;[12] and a script about the life of Siddhartha called Buddha for Ron Fricke.[13][14] Additionally, Bolt was briefly attached as writer for Gandhi and David Lean's unmade film version of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, before he was replaced on both.[7]
After being paid $US400,000 plus ten per cent of profits for his Ryan's Daughter screenplay, Bolt became, for a time, the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood.[citation needed]
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Main article: Tony Awards |
| Year | Nominated work | Category | Result[15] |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 | A Man for All Seasons | Best Play | Won |
| 1972 | Vivat! Vivat Regina! | Nominated |
| Year | Nominated work | Academy Awards[16] Best Adapted Screenplay |
BAFTA Awards[17] Best British Screenplay (A) Best Original Screenplay (B) |
Golden Globe Awards[18] Best Screenplay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 | Lawrence of Arabia | Nominated | Won A (1963) | — |
| 1965 | Doctor Zhivago | Won | — | Won |
| 1966 | A Man for All Seasons | Won | Won A (1968) | Won |
| 1986 | The Mission | — | Nominated B (1987) | Won |
