Lewis Gilbert: From the Music Hall to Moonraker

Lewis Gilbert (1920-2018) was a successful British film director, but it was his trad show biz origins that tipped the balance toward his inclusion in these annals.

Gilbert’s parents had a music hall act, and he grew up touring with them on the circuits. When he was quite a small child, Gilbert joined them on stage. His part of the act was to drive a small trick car around. In 1927 his father succumbed to TB. His mother could only find work as a movie extra so he lived with his paternal aunt Daisy Gilbert, who was also in music hall with another aunt (The Dancing Gilbert Sisters), though his mom continued to be an important part of the picture in their very unconventional household. Gilbert worked as a child actor, and appeared in a handful of films in his teens such as Dick Turpin (1934) and The Divorce of Lady X (1937). The latter was produced by Alexander Korda, who proposed to send Gilbert to RADA, but Gilbert preferred to pursue a career as a director. He was Alfred Hitchcock’s assistant on Jamaica Inn (1939). By 1945 Gilbert was directing documentary shorts, which led him to features.

The earliest of Gilbert’s films that I have seen in his pleasant 1957 version of Barrie’sThe Admirable Crichton starring Kenneth More. More also starred in Gilbert’s Sink the Bismarck (1960), based on C.S. Forester’s book, a major hit. (I’m pretty sure the title of Raise the Titanic was based on the title of this movie, just flipped. In related news, More was also in 1958’s A Night to Remember). Gilbert directed many war films, most of them with a naval angle. They included Albert R.N. (1953), The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954), Reach for the Sky (1956), Carve Her Name with Pride (1958), Light up the Sky (1960), H.M.S. Defiant (1962), and The 7th Dawn (1964).

In 1966 Gilbert directed the international hit Alfie, which made a star of Michael Caine, and featured the hit theme song by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, performed by Cher on the soundtrack, with charting singles by Dionne Warwick and Cilla Black, and a famous cover by Barbra Streisand, among others. The box office success of Alfie brought Gilbert to another level of demand as a director. He immediately followed that up by scaling the heights even further, helming three important films in the James Bond franchise: You Only Live Twice (1967), The Spy Who Loved Me (1978) and Moonraker (1979). If you know your Bond, the titular secret agent is a former naval officer, making these cheeky action films a kind of natural pinnacle to Gilbert’s career.

Other than these, Gilbert’s best known film is Educating Rita (1983) which reunited him with Caine, and introduced Americans to Julie Walters. It was based on a play by Willy Russell, whose Shirley Valentine (1989) Gilbert also directed, with Tom Conti and Pauline Collins.

Gilbert had been slated to direct Oliver! in 1967, but other obligations compelled him to sit it out. He finally got to grapple with a musical in the form of Stepping Out (1991) with Walters, Liza Minnelli,Bill Irwin, Ellen Green, Jane Krakowski,Andrea Martin, Shelley Winters,Nora Dunnet al. He was also considered for The Godfather, but passed on the project for budgetary reasons. He later worked with Francis Ford Coppola on the solid ghost story Haunted (1995) with Aidan Quinn, Kate Beckinsale, Anthony Andrews, John Gielgud, and Anna Massey.

Gilbert’s final film Before You Go, with Walters and Tom Wilkinson, was released in 2002.

For more on the history of show business, including English music hall,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.