| Activity | Of English ancestry and of Scottish descent, Anderson was the son of a British Army officer, he was born in Bangalore, South India, and educated at St. Ronan's School in Worthing and Cheltenham College, where he met his lifelong friend and biographer, the screenwriter and novelist Gavin Lambert; and later at Wadham College, Oxford, where he studied classics, and Magdalen College, Oxford where he studied English literature.
After graduating, Anderson worked for the final year of the Second World War as a cryptographer for the Intelligence Corps, at the Wireless Experimental Centre in Delhi. Before going into film-making, Anderson was a prominent film critic writing for the influential Sequence magazine (1947-52), which he co-founded with Gavin Lambert and Karel Reisz; later writing for the British Film Institute's journal Sight and Sound and the left-wing political weekly the New Statesman. In a 1956 polemical article, "Stand Up, Stand Up", he outlined his theories of what British cinema should become.
Following a series of screenings which he and the National Film Theatre programmer Karel Reisz organized for the venue of independently-produced short films by himself and others, he developed a philosophy of cinema which found expression in what became known, by the late-1950s, as the Free Cinema movement. This was the belief that the British cinema must break away from its class-bound attitudes and that non-metropolitan Britain ought to be shown on the nation's screens.
Along with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and others he secured funding from a variety of sources (including Ford of Britain) and they each made a series of socially challenging short documentaries on a variety of subjects. These films, influenced by one of Anderson' heroes, the French film maker Jean Vigo, and made in the tradition of the British documentaries of Humphrey Jennings, foreshadowed much of the social realism of British cinema that emerged in the next decade, with Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) and Anderson's own film This Sporting Life (1963).
One of Anderson's early short films, Thursday's Child (1953), concerning the education of deaf children, made in collaboration with Guy Brenton, won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 1954. Anderson reconnected with his roots as a documentary maker in 1985 when he was invited by producer Martin Lewis to chronicle the first-ever visit to China by Western pop artists Wham! resulting in Anderson's film Foreign Skies: Wham! In China. Anderson is best remembered as a film maker for his Mick Travis trilogy of feature films, all of which star Malcolm McDowell as Travis: If.... (1968), a satire on public schools; O Lucky Man! (1973) a Pilgrim's Progress inspired 'road movie' and Britannia Hospital (1982). He was a leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave.
Anderson developed an acquaintance from 1950 with John Ford, which led to what has come to be regarded as one of the standard books on that director, Anderson's About John Ford (1983). Based on half a dozen meetings over more than two decades, and a lifetime's study of the man's work, the book has been described as "One of the best books published by a film-maker on a film-maker".[4]
Anderson was also a significant British theatre director. He was long associated with London's Royal Court Theatre, where he was Co-Artistic Director 1969-70, and Associate Artistic Director 1971-75, directing premiere productions of plays by David Storey, among others.
In 1992, as a close friend of actress Jill Bennett, Anderson included a touching episode in his autobiographical BBC film Is That All There Is?, with a boat trip down the River Thames (several of her professional colleagues and friends aboard) to scatter her ashes on the waters while musician Alan Price sang the song "Is That All There Is?."
Every year, the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) gives an acclaimed filmmaker the chance to screen his or her personal Top 10 favorite films. In 2007, Iranian filmmaker Maziar Bahari selected O Dreamland and Every Day Except Christmas (1957), a record of a day in the old Covent Garden market, for his top ten classics from the history of documentary.
The novelist, screenwriter and critic Gavin Lambert was a close friend of both Malcolm McDowell and Anderson. Nonetheless, some of Anderson's circle were outraged by Lambert's memoir, Mainly About Lindsay Anderson, in which he posited the idea that the film-maker was a repressed homosexual who fetishised the male body on camera.
Lambert had 'come out' very early. Anderson, the son of a major-general, was from a background where - as McDowell puts it - "you don't come out... I think he [Anderson] was what you call now a celibate homosexual. I remember having a great discussion with Gavin and saying that he [Anderson] would never have made If... like it was, with this repressed homosexuality throughout, if he had been out like you. He would not have made these films with this angst, this edge and this poetic side.
"I know that he was in love with Richard Harris the star of Anderson's first feature, This Sporting Life. I am sure that it was the same with me and Albert Finney and the rest. It wasn't a physical thing. But I suppose he always fell in love with his leading men. He would always pick someone who was unattainable because he was heterosexual." (Above three paragraphs from The Independent.co.uk)
Theatre productions
All Royal Court, London, unless otherwise indicated:
The Waiting of Lester Abbs (Kathleen Sully, 1957)
The Long and the Short and the Tall (Willis Hal,1959)
Progress to the Park (Alun Owen, 1959)
The Trial of Cob and Leach/Jazzetry (Christopher Logue, 1959)
Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (John Arden, 1959)
The Lily White Boys (Harry Cookson and Christopher Logue, 1960)
Trials by Logue: Antigone/Cob and Leach (Christopher Logue, 1960)
Diary of a Madman (Gogol adaptation,1963)
Box and Cox (John Maddison Morton, 1961)
The Fire Raisers (Max Frisch, 1961)
Julius Caesar (William Shakespeare, 1964)
Andorra (Max Frisch, National Theatre at the Old Vic, 1964)
The Cherry Orchard (Anton Chekhov, Chichester Festival Theatre, 1966
The Contractor (David Storey, 1969)
Home (David Storey, also Morosco Theatre NY, 1970)
The Changing Room (David Storey, 1971)
The Farm (David Storey, 1973)
Life Class (David Storey, 1974)
In Celebration (David Storey 1974)
What the Butler Saw (Joe Orton, 1975)
The Seagull (Anton Chekhov, Lyric Theatre, 1975); in repertory with
The Bed Before Yesterday (Ben Travers, Lyric Theatre, 1975)
The Kingfisher (William Douglas Home, Lyric Theatre 1977, Biltmore NY, 1978)
Alice's Boys (Felicity Brown and Jonathan Hayes, Savoy Theatre, 1978)
Early Days (David Storey, National Cottesloe Theatre, 1980)
The Holly and the Ivy (Wynyard Browne, Roundabout NY, 1982)
The Cherry Orchard (Anton Chekhov, Theatre Royal Haymarket, 1983)
The Playboy of the Western World (J M Synge, 1984)
In Celebration revival (David Storey, Manhattan Theatre Club, NY, 1984)
Holiday (Philip Barry, Old Vic, 1987)
The March on Russia (David Storey, National Lyttelton Theatre, 1989)
The Fishing Trip (Frank Grimes, Warehouse Theatre, 1991)
Stages (David Storey, National Cottesloe Theatre, 1992)
Filmography
This Sporting Life (1963)
The White Bus (1967)
If.... (1968)
O Lucky Man! (1973)
In Celebration (1975)
Look Back in Anger (1980)
Britannia Hospital (1982)
The Whales of August (1987)
Documentary and TV
Meet the Pioneers (1948)
Idlers that Work (1949)
Three Installations (1951)
Wakefield Express (1952)
Thursday's Children (1953)
O Dreamland (1953)
Trunk Conveyor (1954)
Foot and Mouth (1955)
A Hundred Thousand Children (1955)
The Children Upstairs (1955)
Green and Pleasant Land (1955)
Henry (1955)
£20 a Ton (1955)
Energy First (1955)
Every Day Except Christmas (1957)
March to Aldermaston (1959)
The Singing Lesson (1967)
Home - (Film version of play) (1971)
The Old Crowd, screenplay by Alan Bennett (LWT, 1979)
Foreign Skies: Wham! In China (also known as "If You Were There") (1985)
Glory! Glory! (1989)
Is That All There Is? (Autobiographical film for BBC, 1993) See also Jill Bennett.
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