Almost twenty years after his release from Changi, he had just started talking about his experience when his wife said, “Why don’t you write a novel about it?” Unsure how to write novels, he seized upon Othello’sresentful, envious Iago as an inspiration, and King Rat’s first line spilled out. (I remember being so excited about seeing it that I ran out and bought my first color TV!) A later novel, Noble House,also was made into a mini-series starring Pierce Brosnan and Tia Carrera, along with many notables like Denholm Elliott and John Houseman.īut Clavell remains best known for his work as a novelist, which began during a Hollywood writer’s strike in the early 1960s. Clavell’s script was nominated for the Writers Guild of America’s award for Best Written American Drama in 1968.Ĭlavell finally won an award, a 1981 Emmy, for his TV mini-series Shogun. He penned the screenplay for The Great Escape, a factually based movie of Allied prisoners’ daring plans to get out of a Nazi prisoner of war camp, which starred Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, David McCallum, and Charles Bronson. The Poitier film was nominated for three major awards, including the Directors Guild of America’s Outstanding Directorial Achievement. His remarkable range as a writer-director first revealed itself with Sidney Poitier’s 1967 film hit To Sir, With Love (also made into a TV movie in 1974). Clavell developed a fascination for the East through his experience in a prisoner-of-war camp. Watusi followed, along with Five Gates to Hell, which Clavell wrote, directed, and produced. His first screenplay was the 1958 version of The Fly. in 1953, and launched a long career in the movie industry. After a stint as a salesman, he wrote a TV pilot that brought him to the U.S. But a motorcycle accident left him with a limp and out of the navy. Ĭlavell had planned to be a Naval officer, like his ancestors going back at least to John Clavelle who fought at Trafalgar. This position landed Clavell at the infamous Changi Japanese prisoner of war camp near Singapore for half of World War II, where he “collected material” for what would become his first novel, King Rat (1962). He became a captain with the British Royal Artillery in Southeast Asia during World War II. What’s even more surprising in this day and age, his heroes were often businessmen.Īn English-educated Aussie, Clavell was born in 1924 as Charles Edmund DuMaresq de Clavelle. In over four decades as a novelist, screenwriter, poet, playwright, director, and producer, Clavell added one lushly romantic, gripping story after another to his accomplishments. So said James Clavell, an Australian immigrant to America who learned the fundamentals of the American outlook on life in a horrific Japanese prisoner of war camp. It would have been impossible to achieve this in England.” May 2007 - “I came here with no friends, an old typewriter, and look what I achieved.

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