Anderson, Lindsay Gordon

▪ 1995

      British stage and film director (b. April 17, 1923, Bangalore, India—d. Aug. 30, 1994, near Angoulême, France), as one of the original Angry Young Men, made his distaste for conformity and England's class consciousness the constant theme of his often anarchic works. While attending Wadham College, Oxford, Anderson cofounded and coedited the film magazine Sequence, and he later wrote for such publications as Sight and Sound and New Statesman. He began his career in film by directing documentaries, including Thursday's Children (1954), which won an Academy Award. Anderson was part of the Free Cinema movement, which featured contemporary urban working-class themes. He worked in television and the theatre before making his feature debut with This Sporting Life (1963), a classic social realist drama about a rugby player, adapted by David Storey from his novel. His second feature film, If . . . (1968), was about rebellious students who challenge the establishment at a British boarding school. Anderson, who had a long association with London's Royal Court Theatre, became its associate artistic director (1969-75) and directed the premieres of many of Storey's stage productions there—among them, In Celebration (1969), Home (1970), and The Changing Room (1971). Subsequent films were O Lucky Man! (1973), In Celebration (1974), Britannia Hospital (1982), and The Whales of August (1987). "Glory! Glory!"—a two-part television series satirizing TV evangelists—was made in 1989. Anderson also occasionally acted, appearing in cameo parts in several films and playing a Cambridge schoolmaster in Chariots of Fire (1981).

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