Michael Robert Winner (30 October 1935 – 21 January 2013) was a British filmmaker. He is known for directing numerous action, thriller, and black comedy films in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, including several collaborations with actors Oliver Reed and Charles Bronson.
Winner's best-known works include Death Wish (1974) and its first two sequels Death Wish II (1982) and Death Wish 3 (1985), the World War II comedy Hannibal Brooks (1969), the hitman thriller The Mechanic (1972), the supernatural horror film The Sentinel (1977), the neo-noir The Big Sleep (1978), the satirical comedy Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), and the Revisionist Westerns Lawman (1971) and Chato's Land (1972).
Winner was known as a media personality in the United Kingdom, appearing regularly on television talk programmes and publishing a restaurant review column for The Sunday Times. He was also a founder of the Police Memorial Trust.
Early life and education Winner was born at 40 Belsize Grove, Belsize Park, Hampstead, London, the only child of Jewish parentsFaces of the week, BBC News, 29 April 2005. Accessed 28 August 2009. George Joseph Winner (1910–1975), of Russian-Jewish origin, and Helen (née Zlota; January 1906 – May 1984), who was born in Poland. His mother had emigrated to the UK in 1932 with her parents and a brother, and later anglicised her name from ‘Chana Rosa’ to ‘Helen Rose’. His father—who was a Freemason and belonged to the same Masonic Lodge as Tommy Cooper— was a businessman and company director responsible for running a branch of the Winner's clothing chain founded by his father, who became a naturalised British citizen in 1910.Michael Winner: Winner Takes All- A Life of Sorts, Michael Winner, 2013 His mother died at the age of 78, in 1984.
Winner was educated at St Christopher School, Letchworth, and Downing College, Cambridge, where he read law and economics. He also edited the university's student newspaper, Varsity, and was the youngest ever editor up to that time, both in age and in terms of his university career (being only in the second term of his second year). Winner had earlier written a newspaper column, "Michael Winner's Showbiz Gossip", in the Kensington Post from the age of fourteen. The first issue of Showgirl Glamour Revue in 1955 had him writing another film and show-business gossip column, "Winner's World".Showgirl Glamour Revue (closed) . A-Z of Men's Magazines Such jobs allowed him to meet and interview several leading film personalities, including James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. He also wrote for the New Musical Express.NME: Still rocking at 50. BBC.co.uk (24 February 2002).
Winner claimed in his memoirs that he avoided National Service by pretending to be a homosexual.
Career Shorts Winner directed his first travelogue, This is Belgium (1957), which was largely shot on location in East Grinstead. It was financed by his father. Later, he wrote, produced and directed a short, The Square (1957), starring A. E. Matthews, and which again was financed by Winner's father.
Winner's first on-screen feature credit was earned as a writer for the low-budget crime film Man with a Gun (1958) directed by Montgomery Tully. He went on to direct the shorts Danger, Women at Work (1959) and Watch the Birdie (1959), and was Associate Producer on Floating Fortress (1959), produced by Harold Baim.
Early British feature films Winner's first feature as director was Shoot to Kill (1960), which he also wrote. Dermot Walsh starred. He followed this with Climb Up the Wall (1960), which was essentially a series of music acts presented by Jack Jackson, but which Winner nonetheless wrote and directed.
Winner's third feature as director was the thriller Murder on the Campus (1961), also known as Out of the Shadow, which Winner also wrote and helped produce. Dermot Walsh starred once again, together with Terence Longdon. Shortly afterwards, Winner wrote and directed the short Girls Girls Girls! (1961) which was narrated by Jackson, and directed the short feature Old Mac (1961), written by Richard Aubrey and starring Charles Lamb, Vi Stevens and Tania Mallet.
Winner directed the shorts Haunted England (1961), It's Magic (1962), and Behave Yourself (1962), the latter of which was based on Emily Post's Book of Manners, and whose cast included Jackson and Dennis Price.
Winner achieved success with a musical he directed, Play It Cool (1962), starring Billy Fury and Michael Anderson Jr., and which was distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated.
Winner's next feature, Some Like It Cool (1962), is the tale of a young woman who introduces her prudish husband and in-laws to the joys of nudism. Filmed at Longleat, Winner was afraid the sight of bare flesh would offend the magistrate for the area, so he confided his worries to the landowner, the Marquess of Bath. 'Don't worry,' said the Marquess, 'I am the local magistrate.' The film cost £9,000 and Winner said it made its money back in a week.
Winner went on to update Gilbert and Sullivan, writing the screenplay and directing a version of The Mikado titled The Cool Mikado (1963), starring Frankie Howerd and Stubby Kaye and which was produced by Harold Baim.
Winner's first significant project was West 11 (1963), a realistic tale of London drifters starring Alfred Lynch, Eric Portman and Diana Dors, and which was based on an adaptation by Hall and Waterhouse of Laura Del-Rivo's novel The Furnished Room (1961).Cathi Unsworth, "The Furnished Room by Laura Del-Rivo - review," The Guardian (6 December 2011).
Oliver Reed Winner's film The System (1964), also known as The Girl-Getters, began a partnership with actor Oliver Reed that would last for six films over a 25-year period, and was based on a script by Peter Draper. Winner would later receive an offer from Columbia to direct a comedy, You Must Be Joking! (1965). It starred American actor Michael Callan and a supporting cast that included Lionel Jeffries and Denholm Elliott, while Winner also wrote the script.
Winner was reunited with Reed on The Jokers (1967), a comedy where Reed was teamed with Michael Crawford. It was based on a script by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais from a story by Winner for his own company, Scimitar Films Limited (for Universal's English operations, then under Jay Kanter). The resulting movie was a popular hit.
Winner and Reed then made the comedy-drama I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967), co-starring Orson Welles, Carol White and Harry Andrews, also for Scimitar. Draper wrote the script, which was a spoof of the advertising world, and the film was also done for Universal.
Winner did some uncredited directing on A Little of What You Fancy (1967), a documentary about the history of the British music hall. Then he and Reed made their fourth feature together, the World War II satire Hannibal Brooks (1969), again from a Clement/La Frenais script and based on a story by Winner.Goodwin, Cliff Evil Spirits: The Life of Oliver Reed, London: Virgin Publishing Ltd, 2000
In 1970, Winner directed The Games for 20th Century Fox, the film is about the Olympic Games and which starred Ryan O'Neal and Stanley Baker, with script by Erich Segal.
Early American films Hannibal Brooks drew notice in Hollywood, and Winner soon received an opportunity to direct his first American film, for United Artists; this was Lawman (1971), a Western starring Burt Lancaster and Robert Duvall, and for which Gerald Wilson was the writer.
Back in England, Winner directed Marlon Brando in The Nightcomers (1971), a prequel to The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, the first of many films for which Winner was credited as editor using the pseudonym 'Arnold Crust'.
Charles Bronson Winner edited, produced and directed Chato's Land (1972), recounting a mixed race native American fighting with white people. It starred Charles Bronson and was made for Scimitar through United Artists. Once more, Gerald Wilson wrote the script. Winner's second film for Bronson and United Artists was The Mechanic (1972), a thriller in which professional assassins are depicted. It was based on a story and script by Lewis John Carlino and Winner also edited, although he did not produce; he replaced Monte Hellman as director.
The following year, Winner cast Lancaster again in the espionage drama Scorpio (1973), co-starring Alain Delon and made for Scimitar and United Artists. Winner also produced and directed a third film with Bronson, The Stone Killer (1973), for Columbia and in collaboration with producer Dino De Laurentiis.
Death Wish Winner and Bronson collaborated on Death Wish (1974), a film that defined the subsequent careers of both men. Based on a novel by Brian Garfield and adapted for the screen by Wendell Mayes, Death Wish was originally planned for director Sidney Lumet, under contract with United Artists. The commitment of Lumet to another film and UA's questioning of its subject matter, led to the film's eventual production by De Laurentiis through Paramount Pictures. Death Wish follows Paul Kersey, a liberal New York architect who becomes a gun-wielding vigilante after his wife is murdered and daughter is raped. With a script adjusted to Bronson's persona, the film generated controversy during its screenings but was one of the year's highest grossers.
Non-Bronson period Winner tried to break out of action films with Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), an animal comedy Winner produced and directed, starring Bruce Dern, Madeline Kahn, Art Carney, and Milton Berle. Intended as a satire of Hollywood, it was a financial failure. Of modest success was his horror film The Sentinel (1977), which Winner wrote, produced and directed for Universal, and which was based on the novel by Jeffrey Konvitz.
Winner then wrote, produced and directed the remake of Raymond Chandler's novel The Big Sleep (1978), starring Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe with a strong support cast including John Mills, Sarah Miles, Richard Boone and Candy Clarke. The film was relocated to England, and financed by ITC Films. Also for ITC, Winner produced, edited and directed the organised crime thriller Firepower (1979). It was meant to star Bronson, who withdrew, and wound up starring Sophia Loren and James Coburn.
Reunion with Bronson/Cannon Films By the early 1980s, Winner found himself in great need of a successful film and accepted Charles Bronson's request to film Death Wish II (1981), a sequel to the 1974 hit. Bronson had already signed a lucrative deal with Cannon Films, independent producer of exploitation fare and marginal art house titles. The sequel, co-starring Bronson's wife Jill Ireland, considerably increased the violence to more graphic levels. Winner said the film was 'the same, but different', to the original. 'That's what sequels are – Rocky II, Rocky III – you don't see Sylvester Stallone move to the Congo and become a nurse. Here the look of LA is what's different. Besides – rape doesn't date!' Death Wish II made a $2 million profit for Cannon filmsAndrew Yule, Hollywood a Go-Go: The True Story of the Cannon Film Empire, Sphere Books, 1987 p24 and made an extra $29 million worldwide.
The success of Death Wish II enabled Winner to raise money from Cannon for a dream project: a 1983 remake of 1945's The Wicked Lady, this time starring Faye Dunaway and which Winner wrote, produced and directed.
For Miracle Films, Winner produced and directed the thriller Scream for Help (1984). He also produced the film Claudia (1985), doing some uncredited directing and editing.
Winner was reunited with Bronson and Cannon for Death Wish 3 (1985), which – although set in New York City – was mostly filmed in London for budgetary reasons. Winner produced and edited."
Winner was also attached to direct Cannon's 1990 film Captain America, from a script by James Silke, which he would revise with Stan Hey, and then Stan Lee and Lawrence Block. By 1987, however, Winner was off the project.