Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger: The Authorised Biography [Hardcover]

William J. Mann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 28, 2005

John Schlesinger's extraordinary career in cinema, stage, opera, and television spanned half a century. It was, however, his films that made him famous, including such classics as Billy Liar, Darling, Midnight Cowboy, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Day of the Locust, and Marathon Man, as well as The Falcon and the Snowman, Madame Sousatzka, and Pacific Heights. In Edge of Midnight, best-selling author and historian William J. Mann chronicles Schlesinger's life and career-from his early documentary days at the BBC to his Academy Award for the X-rated Midnight Cowboy and his glittering nights as a Hollywood host. The author draws on Schlesinger's tapes, diaries, production notes, and correspondence, as well as on interviews with Schlesinger, his family, his partner of 36 years, and his friends. Also included are revelatory, often hilarious anecdotes about, and interviews with, such celebrities as Sir Laurence Olivier, Julie Christie, Dustin Hoffman, Glenda Jackson, Dirk Bogarde, Ian McKellen, Sean Penn, Sally Field, Rupert Everett, and Madonna. This fascinating biography of Schlesinger, who died in 2003, will be a must-have for every film buff.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"There never was anything else," British film director John Schlesinger confided about his life's work. Frail and slowed by a stroke in 2000, the subject of this moving, comprehensive and at times dishy biography shared these pearls with Mann just before his death in 2003. A prolific filmmaker and prominent figure of the British "New Wave," Schlesinger was a born director, according to his siblings. He was both iconoclastic-openly gay before it was fashionable or the least bit acceptable-and fortunate enough to begin his career at a time when British cinema was mining the gritty world of the working class. Amid the recollections of swinging London in the '60s and the descriptions of Schlesinger triumphs, such as Darling (1965), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Marathon Man (1976) and Cold Comfort Farm (1996), Mann covers a prolific career that encompassed film, theater and television. (Schlesinger cut his cinematic teeth on BBC programs.) The author also explains with both detachment and empathy Schlesinger's efforts to bring homosexuality to the screen with a kind of eloquence typically only afforded to heterosexual love affairs. Schlesinger did so with Sunday Bloody Sunday, A Kind of Loving and, through subtext, Midnight Cowboy, which won him an Oscar but was summarily trashed by the old Hollywood guard, who feared the continuation of the celebration of sleaze. The trashing certainly didn't harm Schlesinger's social life, however. His home remained a salon for Hollywood's biggest stars, as well as literary legends and infamous party hounds. Mann writes with a tenderness and admiration about a director who only occasionally enjoyed great success but maintained a great talent for exploring human relationships no matter how unconventional or untidy. 30 b&w photos.
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About the Author

William J. Mann is the author of two previous Hollywood history best-sellers, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood and Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, as well as three novels. He lives in Provincetown, MA.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 628 pages
• Publisher: Billboard Books (June 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823083667
• ISBN-13: 978-0823083664
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,840,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I live in two of the most beautiful places on the planet ' Provincetown, Massachusetts, with its exquisite light and ever-shifting dunes in the summer and the fall, and Palm Springs, California, with its majestic mountains and invigorating desert air in the winter and the spring. I am indeed blessed.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Praise of Schlesinger, March 11, 2005

By 

H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger: The Authorised Biography (Hardcover)

The writher Michael Cunningham (THE HOURS) said that seeing SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY "saved" his life. Peter Finch (on the same movie) remarked that when he did the close-up "liplock" with Murray Head that he just closed his eyes and thought of England. When Princess Margaret and her then husband Lord Anthony Snowdon saw SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, she said within earshot of both Schlesinger and his lover Michael Childers, that she thought the movie was "horrific. . . "Men in bed kissing!" (This from a woman who had an affair with a man 18 years her junior and was caught on film topless with him-- while married to Snowdon.)This film, the director said was his most personal and was about his own affair with a young man; but he labeled THE DAY OF THE LOCUST his "greatest achievement, something that few critics, however, would say. Bob Dylan wrote "Lay, Lady, Lady" for MIDNIGHT COWBOY but didn't get it finished in time to be used in the movie. Schlesinger hated exercise and opined that when he thought about it, he just lay down until the moment passed. Although he lived for many years in the U. S. he felt that many Americans lacked manners, particularly when they went to movies. "'Audiences talk incessantly. . . They run up and down and eat all the time, because that is what they are used to doing at home.'" (We all can tip our hats to this gentleman for that attitude.) Mr. Mann's robust biography of John Schlesinger is chock-full of these and similar details. He had access to everything about this great director: tapes, diaries, family and friends and Mr. Schlesinger although only after he had had a stroke.

Although Mann's work is the "authorized" biography, he assured both Schlesinger and Childers that he would tell the whole story, the "low points and highs." Be that as it may, about the worst thing we find out about Mr. Schlesinger is that he had a temper and often screamed at actors. Mr. Mann most obviously is besotted by Mr. Schlesinger and why shouldn't he be? A lot of us are. When no one else was doing so, he directed films that we had not seen before-- MIDNIGHT COWBOY and SUNDAY BLOOD SUNDAY. Never before had the subject of men loving men been shown so naturally and without shame.

An astute critic, Mr. Mann gives his own reviews of practically everything Schlesinger ever directed: movies, opera, television. He attempts to be objective, noting in much detail the faults of THE NEXT BEST THING, the film starring Rupert Everett and Madonna. According to Mann, Schlesinger attempted to change the script so that the two principals decide to have a child, rather than having an "drunken, unplanned sexual encounter." He was vetoed by Mr. Everett, who gets to live with his bad decision. For years Mr. Schlesinger attempted to direct another gay-themed movie to no avail. He turned down directing Armistead Maupin's TALES OF THE CITY but for a time considered Larry Kramer's THE NORMAL HEART. He also toyed with the idea of doing something with the novelist David Leavitt, but nothing ever came of that idea. Instead the world got THE NEXT BEST THING.

This biography is a tad long-- over 500 pages and also suffers from too much praise from practically everyone Schlesinger ever directed-- Julie Christie, Sir Alan Bates, Dustin Hoffman et al. The list goes on and on. At times it's almost like the footage attached to DVD's where actors and directors "remember" making a film, etc. You have to ask yourself how accurate are memories about events that happened 30 to 40 years ago. EDGE OF MIDNIGHT, however, is still required reading for Schlesinger fans. And there are many of us. As Mann reminds us, this fine director gave us a handful of really great films that will not be repeated and several others that may not be his best but are much better than a lot of films by his contempories.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Yours is a good one John. No great dramatics, just a life lives well", October 14, 2005

By 

M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger: The Authorised Biography (Hardcover)

William J Mann is interviewing famed movie director John Schlesinger at his home in Palm Springs. John has just had triple bypass operation followed by a stroke which has left him paralyzed on one side, confined to a wheelchair, and almost voiceless. Although his brain is far from crippled and he can nod, shake his head, and sometimes answer questions in a brief, unexpectedly pointed whisper.

They spend their days together looking out at the mountains which edge the city, and William sometimes talks with Michael Childers, John's lover and partner for many years. Friends of John's occasionally pop in for a visit - Julie Christie, and Brenda Vaccaro, all tearful and upset at John's seemingly hopeless condition.

Mann uses this sense of immediacy to great effect in Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger. Each chapter begins with a sense of how John is declining and how the author is racing against time to find out as much as he can. By interweaving the present with the past, Mann traces richly varied accounts of John's early struggles and glory days.

The end result is of man who has led a creative, and artistically fuelled life, with Mann offering a poignant contrast between the figure who sits staring at the mountains beyond the window, adrift in silent internal exile, with the sound of his laughter on recorded tapes. John's creative energy and intuition, his penchant for mischievousness and naughtiness, and his willingness to take risks and really push the cinematic envelope for more than twenty years, are highlighted with a candid and sincere accuracy.

And John Schlesinger also gave us Julie Christie, whom Schlesinger chose for the character of Liz in Billy Liar. The world of cinema would indeed by dull without the gorgeous Julie. Much of the narrative talks about the tremendous international success of Darling, and how the movie, not only cemented Christie's stardom, but also allowed John to go on to make even riskier movies.

Mann talks about why Darling was so historically significant and the part it played in the cinematic sexual revolution, which in turn greatly affected the changing sexual habits and attitudes in much of the West. John was determined to raise the bar with onscreen frankness, and he often found himself stymied by the Hollywood old guard who were determined to promise their audiences "real stars looking glamorous in beautiful gowns in beautiful sets, no kitchen sinks, no violence, no messages."

But it was Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday that really pushed the cinematic envelope: Sunday Bloody Sunday, with film's first same sex kiss, boldly rejects "moral" judgment in its account of the middle-class London doctor and the professional woman's feelings and presents both kinds of love as equally natural.

In Midnight Cowboy, Jon Voight's naive hustler from Texas foresees a future for himself in New York as a stud for affluent lonely ladies, but failure plummets him to the city's harsh and seamy underside instead. Midnight Cowboy proved that films, which overthrew convention, that dared embrace radical form and content, could also make money.

Schlesinger admits that he wanted to tell stories that dealt with the human condition, human difficulties, and even the illusions of love. His films were all about adult themes - the difficulties of maintaining relationships, abortion, extramarital affairs, and homosexuality. He wanted to make films about "people pushed on to an edge," and also people who were regarded as the underdog, the outsider in society.

He believed that films needed to be relevant, and that they needed to reflect the changing society. He also wanted his audiences to think, but more importantly, he wanted them to "feel," be it terror or revulsion or compassion or pity. In later years when he couldn't set up the films he wanted to make, Schlesinger damaged his reputation, then his heart and his arteries, by accepting too many potboilers in the desperate, unfulfilled hope of a box-office success that would enable him to work on his own terms again.

Glenda Jackson had a filthy sense of humor. John played a terrible joke on Julie Christie, which involved a feminine sex aid during the making of Far From the Madding Crowd. Sean Penn, although enormously talented, was a nightmare to work with. At the last minute, Brenda Vaccaro refused to show her nipples when doing the love scene in Midnight Cowboy.

The Hollywood brass turned their back on John after the colossal failure of Honky Tonk Freeway, Rupert Everett and Madonna gave the poor man hell on his final disastrous movie, The Next Best Thing - Madonna begging him to do for her what he had done for Julie Christie, while Everett was more concerned with rewriting the script as they were shooting.

William J. Mann has indeed written a formidable account of one director's life, a wonderful patchwork of tidbits including interviews with the people he helped make famous - Alan Bates, Julie Christie, Glenda Jackson. Martin Sheen, Ian McKellan, and Dustin Hoffman.

What evolves is a fascinating biography of a man who desired success, and ambition, and even lots of money. It's a portrait of a tormented man who had a quirky pessimism not withstanding and lived a life relatively free of personal demons. Comfortable with his homosexuality, and totally committed to making movies, "his art came not from discontentment with life, but rather from a love of it." Mike Leonard October 05.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended for professional cinema researchers and intrigued lay readers alike, September 10, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger (Paperback)

Edge Of Midnight: The Life Of John Schlesinger is the authorized biography of the filmmaker whose most famous works include "Midnight Cowboy", "Bloody Sunday", "Marathon Man", and "Day of the Locust". Written with the full cooperation of Schlesinger, his family, and his companion of 36 years Michael Childers, as well as with complete access to tapes, diaries, production notes, and correspondence, not to mention interviews with the actors, crew members, friends and colleagues who knew Schlesinger, Edge Of Midnight accurately traces the singularly amazing career of a dedicated and visionary man. Highly recommended for professional cinema researchers and intrigued lay readers alike.