T. E. B. Clarke
1952 The Lavender Hill Mob
Thomas Ernest Bennett "Tibby" Clarke, OBE (7 June 1907 – 11 February 1989) was a film screenwriter who wrote several of the Ealing Studios comedies.
Early life
Clarke was born in Watford on 7 June 1907. His father, Ernest Clarke, had been raised in Hull, moving to South Africa in the late 19th century. He was enlisted to carry dispatches for the Jameson Raid though, avoiding imprisonment, managed to obtain a job working for a gold mining company. Ernest then married Madeline Gardiner, with whom he raised three children. Their eldest child was Dudley Clarke, who would later become a pioneer of military deception operations during the Second World War. A girl, Dollie, followed.
The gold mining company Ernest had been working for then offered him an opportunity to move to their London office, enabling him to return to England with his young family. They sailed from South Africa, the first ship to leave the country following the end of the Boer War.[1] Upon arriving in England, Ernest purchased a house in Watford, where Madeline gave birth to their third and final child, Thomas Ernest Bennett Clarke.
Always known as "Tibby", Clarke attended Charterhouse School and Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied law for a year before departing after impersonating a proctor and booking students for being out after dark without a cap and gown.[2][3] He then visited Australia, New Zealand, San Francisco, and Canada, returning to England to work as a journalist for, in succession, the Hardware Trade Journal, the weekly magazine Answers, and The Daily Sketch tabloid newspaper. After gaining temporary employment as a publicity officer for the W. S. Crawford Advertising Agency in the late 1920s, he came into contact with the film industry for the first time.[2]
Film career
Clarke's first screen credit was for heavily modifying the script of For Those in Peril in 1944, followed by proper contributions to The Halfway House (1944) and Johnny Frenchman (1945).[2] His scripts always featured careful logical development from a slightly absurd premise to a farcical conclusion. In 1952, he was awarded a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his script for The Lavender Hill Mob, making him one of just a handful of Britons to receive this award. He continued to work as a scriptwriter after Ealing ceased production, his later contributions including Sons and Lovers and the Disney film The Horse Without a Head.
Clarke was also a novelist and writer of non-fiction, but presented at least one fictional work as fact. His book Murder at Buckingham Palace (1981) purports to tell the story of a hushed-up murder at the Royal residence in 1935. Despite its including 'documentary' photographs, there is no external evidence that the book is anything but pure fiction. For The Blue Lamp (1950) he drew on his experience as a war reserve constable with the Metropolitan Police during the Second World War.[4][5]
He was awarded the OBE in 1952. He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1960 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre.
Animal welfare
Clarke was an advocate of animal welfare and opposed coursing. He authored A Savage Sport: The Case Against Coursing for the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports in 1935.[6]
Death
Clarke was diagnosed with cancer in 1988. He died at London Bridge Hospital in February, 1989.[7]
Bibliography
Screenplays
- Johnny Frenchman (1945)
- Hue and Cry (1947)
- Against the Wind (1948)
- Passport to Pimlico (1949)
- The Blue Lamp (1950)
- The Magnet (1950)
- The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)
- The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953)
- The Rainbow Jacket (1954)
- Barnacle Bill (US: All at Sea, 1957)
- Gideon's Day (US: Gideon of Scotland Yard, 1958)
- Sons and Lovers (1960)
- The Horse Without a Head
Non-fiction
- Go South - Go West
- What's Yours?
- Intimate Relations
- This is Where I Came In
Novels
- Jeremy's England
- Cartwright Was a Cad
- Two and Two Make Five
- Mr Spirket Reforms
- The World Was Mine
- The Wide Open Door
- The Trail of the Serpent
- The Wrong Turning
- The Man Who Seduced a Bank
- Murder at Buckingham Palace
- Intimate Relations (ISBN 9780718109271)
References
- ^ Clarke, T.E.B (1974). This is Where I Came In. London: Michael Joseph Ltd. p. 18. ISBN 0718112237.
- ^ a b c Street, Sarah (rev.), "Clarke, Thomas Ernest Bennett (1907–1989)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, January 2011. Retrieved 7 February 2024. (subscription required)
- ^ T. E. B. Howarth, Cambridge Between Two Wars (London: Collins, 1978), p. 64. ISBN 0002111810
- ^ Burton, Alan; Chibnall, Steve (2013). Historical dictionary of British cinema. Blue Ridge Summit, MA: Scarecrow Press Inc. p. 103. ISBN 9780810867949.
- ^ "T.E.B. Clarke, Writer, Dies at 81". New York Times. 15 February 1989. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
- ^ Clarke, T. E. B. (1935). A Savage Sport: The Case Against Coursing. National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports.
- ^ "Obituary: Mr T E B Clarke". Horley & Gatwick Mirror. 16 February 1989. p. 2. (subscription required)
External links
- T. E. B. Clarke at the BFI's Screenonline
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- Preston Sturges (1940)
- Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles (1941)
- Michael Kanin and Ring Lardner Jr. (1942)
- Norman Krasna (1943)
- Lamar Trotti (1944)
- Richard Schweizer (1945)
- Muriel Box and Sydney Box (1946)
- Sidney Sheldon (1947)
- No award (1948)
- Robert Pirosh (1949)
- Charles Brackett, D. M. Marshman Jr., and Billy Wilder (1950)
- Alan Jay Lerner (1951)
- T. E. B. Clarke (1952)
- Charles Brackett, Richard L. Breen, and Walter Reisch (1953)
- Budd Schulberg (1954)
- Sonya Levien and William Ludwig (1955)
- Albert Lamorisse (1956)
- George Wells (1957)
- Nathan E. Douglas and Harold Jacob Smith (1958)
- Clarence Greene, Maurice Richlin, Russell Rouse, and Stanley Shapiro (1959)
- I. A. L. Diamond and Billy Wilder (1960)
- William Inge (1961)
- Ennio de Concini, Pietro Germi, and Alfredo Giannetti (1962)
- James Webb (1963)
- S. H. Barnett, Peter Stone and Frank Tarloff (1964)
- Frederic Raphael (1965)
- Claude Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven (1966)
- William Rose (1967)
- Mel Brooks (1968)
- William Goldman (1969)
- Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North (1970)
- Paddy Chayefsky (1971)
- Jeremy Larner (1972)
- David S. Ward (1973)
- Robert Towne (1974)
- Frank Pierson (1975)
- Paddy Chayefsky (1976)
- Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman (1977)
- Robert C. Jones, Waldo Salt, and Nancy Dowd (1978)
- Steve Tesich (1979)
- Bo Goldman (1980)
- Colin Welland (1981)
- John Briley (1982)
- Horton Foote (1983)
- Robert Benton (1984)
- William Kelley, Pamela Wallace, and Earl W. Wallace (1985)
- Woody Allen (1986)
- John Patrick Shanley (1987)
- Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow (1988)
- Tom Schulman (1989)
- Bruce Joel Rubin (1990)
- Callie Khouri (1991)
- Neil Jordan (1992)
- Jane Campion (1993)
- Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary (1994)
- Christopher McQuarrie (1995)
- Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (1996)
- Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (1997)
- Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard (1998)
- Alan Ball (1999)
- Cameron Crowe (2000)
- Julian Fellowes (2001)
- Pedro Almodóvar (2002)
- Sofia Coppola (2003)
- Pierre Bismuth, Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman (2004)
- Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco (2005)
- Michael Arndt (2006)
- Diablo Cody (2007)
- Dustin Lance Black (2008)
- Mark Boal (2009)
- David Seidler (2010)
- Woody Allen (2011)
- Quentin Tarantino (2012)
- Spike Jonze (2013)
- Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., and Armando Bo (2014)
- Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer (2015)
- Kenneth Lonergan (2016)
- Jordan Peele (2017)
- Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie and Peter Farrelly (2018)
- Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won (2019)
- Emerald Fennell (2020)
- Kenneth Branagh (2021)
- Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (2022)
- Justine Triet and Arthur Harari (2023)