"In 18 months it brought in $87,000," he later said. Neither was filmed but Far Alert kept being sold and re-sold. The same year Michael Pate bought a story of his Forbidden Territory for filming. In 1956 he sold a script about pilots to RKO, Far Alert. While trying to break into screenwriting he paid the bills working as a carpenter. In 1954 he moved to New York, then to Hollywood. He tried to get into producing but had no luck so started writing screenplays. Early FilmsĬlavell entered the film industry via distribution, and worked at that in England for a number of years. He would visit her on set while making films and began to be interested in becoming a film director. He enrolled with the University of Birmingham, where he met April Stride, an actress, whom he married in 1949 (date of marriage sometimes given as 1951). Clavell was reportedly saved, along with an entire battalion, by an American prisoner of war who later became the model for "The King" in King Rat.īy 1946, Clavell became a captain, but a motorcycle accident ended his military career. According to the introduction to Clavell's novel King Rat (1962), over 90% of the prisoners who entered Changi never walked out. Later he was transferred to Changi Prison in Singapore.Ĭlavell suffered greatly at the hands of his Japanese captors. Wounded by machine gun fire, he was eventually captured and sent to a Japanese prisoner of war camp on Java. Clavell was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School.ĭuring 1940, aged 19, Clavell joined the Royal Artillery, and was sent to Malaya to fight the Japanese. Born in Australia, Clavell was the son of Commander Richard Charles Clavell, a British Royal Navy officer who was stationed in Australia on secondment to the Royal Australian Navy from 1920 to 1922.
0 kommentar(er)
