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Pat Jackson

Known For
Directing

Known Credits
2

Gender
Male

Birthday
March 26, 1916 (110 years old)

Place of Birth
Eltham, London, England, UK

Pat Jackson

Biography

Patrick Douglas Selmes Jackson (26 March 1916 – 3 June 2011) was an English film and television director.

Born in Eltham, to a formerly affluent family which was severely affected by the Wall Street Crash in 1929, and his father's long-term illness and early death ending Jackson's formal education. He joined the GPO Film Unit on his 17th birthday as a messenger boy after his mother persuaded her MP, Sir Kingsley Wood, then also postmaster general, to find work for her son. Rising to production assistant, he was part of the crew for the short film Night Mail (1936). The voice narrating the poem by W.H. Auden ("This is the Night Mail crossing the border, bringing the cheque and the postal order.") was Jackson himself. He directed a number of documentaries, the first being The Horsey Mail (1938) about the rural postal service in Suffolk. The First Days (1939), co-directed by Harry Watt and Humphrey Jennings, was the first of the wartime documentaries, in this instance concerned with the 'Phoney War' period.

Jackson's debut feature film was Western Approaches (1944), a semi-documentary war film for what was now the Ministry of Information's Crown Film Unit. For what became a three-year project, Jackson took on the writing, direction, editing and casting (of non-professional actors) a film about merchant seamen. Featuring an extended period on location at sea, the lifeboat sequences alone took six-months to complete.

After the war, Jackson spent three years in Hollywood under contract to MGM, although the only film he directed during this period was Shadow on the Wall (1950), based on the novel Death in the Doll's House by Lawrence P. Bachmann and Hannah Leessuch. His film Encore (1951) was in competition at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival . White Corridors (1951), a semi-documentary drama about a hospital in the regions, was critically well received at the time. What a Carve Up! (1961), a film in the old dark house genre, was the most commercially successful of Jackson's later feature films.

Jackson worked in television during the 1960s and 1970s. Impressed by the stage work of Patrick McGoohan, he seems to have been involved in casting him for Danger Man (US:Secret Agent), episodes of which he directed. Apart from McGoohan's The Prisoner (1967), he was also involved with episodes of The Saint and The Professionals.

Jackson died on 3 June 2011 aged 95.

Known For

Directing

1977The Professionals...Director
1975King Arthur, the Young Warlord...Director
1972Arthur of the Britons...Director
1968On the Run...Director
1967The Prisoner...Director
1967Man in a Suitcase...Director
1967To Chase A Million...Director
1966The Stable Door...Director
1965Catch As Catch Can...Director
1965The Mysterious Stranger...Director
1965The Night Prowler...Director
1965Mystery at the Forge...Director
1965Highway Robbery...Director
1965All at Sea...Director
1965Dead End Creek...Director
1963Seventy Deadly Pills...Director
1962The Saint...Director
1962Don't Talk to Strange Men...Director
1961What a Carve Up!...Director
1961Seven Keys...Director
1960Danger Man...Director
1960Snowball...Director
1959Virgin Island...Director
1957The Birthday Present...Director
1956The Feminine Touch...Director
1952Something Money Can't Buy...Director
1951Encore...Director
1951White Corridors...Director
1950Shadow on the Wall...Director
1944Western Approaches...Director
1942Ferry Pilot...Director
1942Builders...Director
1940London Can Take It!...Assistant Director
1940Welfare of the Workers...Director
1940Health in War...Director
1939The First Days...Director
1938The Horsey Mail...Director

Writing

1968On the Run...Writer
1963Seventy Deadly Pills...Writer
1959Virgin Island...Writer
1952Something Money Can't Buy...Writer
1951White Corridors...Screenplay
1944Western Approaches...Writer

Acting

1997Back to the Back of Beyondas Pat Jackson
1984Six Into One: The Prisoner Fileas Self