Quick Facts
Biography
Desmond Davis (born 24 May 1926 in London, England) is a British film and television director.
Early career
After serving a long apprenticeship as a clapper boy in the 1940s, with Britain's Army Film Unit, Davis eventually worked his way up to focus puller and camera operator in low-budget British films of the 1950s. By the 1960s, Davis worked as a camera operator on such internationally acclaimed films as A Taste of Honey, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Freud (directed by John Huston) and Tom Jones, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Director
Davis not made his directorial debut in 1964 with Girl with Green Eyes winning the US National Board of Review award for Best Director.
His best known film is the 1981 version of Clash of the Titans.
Davis reunited with the two female stars of Girl with Green Eyes, Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave, in Smashing Time (1967), a comedy set in 1960s swinging London.
At the 1966 San Sebastian International Film Festival, he won the Golden Seashell award for I Was Happy Here, which starred Sarah Miles.
In the 1970s Davis took a long hiatus from feature films, and turned his focus on television for work, including episodes of Follyfoot and The New Avengers, as well as an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in the BBC Television Shakespeare series.
After directing Clash of the Titans, he directed the 1985 feature film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Ordeal by Innocence starring Donald Sutherland and Faye Dunaway. Davis also directed the 1983 television adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four with Ian Richardson as Sherlock Holmes.
He continued his work in television, directing a version of Camille with Greta Scacchi and Colin Firth in 1984 and the British drama series The Chief.