A director of Thames Television, Euston Films and Thorn EMI, John
Brabourne's entrepreneurial skills were crucial to creating some major
successes in the British cinema. In the sixties he produced two
celebrated Shakespeare adaptations, the film of
Othello (1965) starring
Laurence Olivier and
Maggie Smith and
Franco Zeffirelli's 1968
Romeo und Julia (1968). He
also produced a film version of
August Strindberg's
The Dance of Death (1969),
starring Olivier.
John Ulick Knatchbull, the seventh Baron Brabourne, was born in 1924
and educated at Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford. He succeeded the
title when his brother, Norton, was killed in action in 1943. During
the war John Brabourne served as an officer in the Coldstream Guards in
France. He married
Patricia Mountbatten, daughter of
Lord Louis Mountbatten, in 1946.
Brabourne began his film career as a production manager on such movies
as
Panzerschiff Graf Spee (1956)
(1956) and he later co-produced the wartime drama
Die letzte Fahrt der Bismarck (1960) with
Richard Goodwin.
Three years later he and Goodwin set up a consortium to introduce
Pay-TV, a cable service whose subscribers would buy films, opera and
the arts on meter. The scheme eventually failed and Brabourne and his
partners decided to wind up the operation with £1 million losses. "We
were years ahead of our time," he said.
Brabourne went on to produce a series of box office hits including
Up the Junction (1968),
Trixis Wunderland (1971),
Mord im Orient-Express (1974)
starring Albert Finney,
Tod auf dem Nil (1978) with
Peter Ustinov,
Mord im Spiegel (1980) with
Elizabeth Taylor,
Das Böse unter der Sonne (1982)
(1982) again with Ustinov, and
Klein Dorrit (1987) starring
Alec Guinness.
He always described himself as a "creative producer". "I've always been
very involved with the directors," he said. "I set out to become a
director myself but changed my mind. The things that interested me were
the story, which is number one for me, the script, which is certainly
number two, and the third really important factor is the editing. I
found that, although I like to work with actors, I don't really have a
feeling for directing."
He was also a governor of the British Film Institute and was appointed
a CBE in 1983 for his services to the film industry.
