Richard Lester

Although everyone considers him a filmmaker from Great Britain, where he ended up settling, Richard Lester was born in the United States, specifically in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), on January 19, 1932. He was a child prodigy who began studying at the University of Pennsylvania at fifteen years old.

Lester began working in 1950 in a television network in which he held all kinds of jobs: assistant, assistant director, and finally director. He decided to move to London in 1953, where he continued to work in independent television productions. There he became friends with Peter Sellers , whom he directed in such small screen shows as The Idiot Weekly, Price 2D and A Show Called Fred . He made his feature film debut in the musical It’s Trad, Dad , and the hilarious comedy A Mouse in the Moon .

Along with Sellers, Lester had co-directed and co-starred in the short The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film , which enamored members of The Beatles, most notably John Lennon . So much so that when the band was hired in 1964 to shoot a movie at the theater, they chose Richard Lester from a list of suitable professionals to direct them, and they ended up giving him the job.

Thus was born What a night of that day! , which follows in the footsteps of the quartet for one day. The way of filming Richard Lester’s songs created a school, and some of his resources are still used in current video clips, especially his multi-angle shots in live performances.

As the film was successful and helped promote the music of The Beatles, Lester was hired for another film, the surreal and funny Help! , from 1965. The filmmaker was also responsible for The Knack… and how to get it , an iconic comedy of the pop movement. Although he won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, his spontaneous staging has been badly damaged by the passage of time.

John Lennon returned to Lester’s command as a co-star in the anarchic and surreal How I Won the War , with a clear anti-war message. In addition, he described the hippie movement with hair and marks in Petulia , where Julie Christie plays a woman who goes to live with various representatives of this movement.

Lester was also responsible for Golfus de Roma , an adaptation of a famous musical that takes place in the days of the Roman Empire.

From the 70s, Lester leaves music and hippies and concentrates on adventure movies. He was responsible for three films based on the most famous works of Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (1973) , The Four Musketeers and The Return of the Musketeers (filmed much later, in 1989). He was also responsible for the catastrophic film The Enigma Is Called Juggernaut , about a terrorist who threatens to blow up a ship, and Butch Cassidy’s First Strikes and Sundance , a poor prequel to Two Men and One Fate .

But his best film is undoubtedly Robin and Marian , a twilight and romantic revision of the Robin Hood myth, where Sean Connery formed an unforgettable couple with a legendary Marion: Audrey Hepburn . Connery reprized Lester’s orders in Cuba , which tells a love story in Havana, during the last days of the Batista dictatorship, and the beginning of the revolution.

Richard Lester was hired to replace Richard Donner in Superman II , when Donner was 70 percent finished. But Lester redid many of the sequences for the sole purpose of being able to appear alone in the credits. His success led to Lester being hired for Superman III , one hundred percent conceived by him. The filmmaker introduced a lot of humor, in fact giving the almost complete lead to comedian Richard Pryor .

After the failure of the comedy Finders Keepers , Lester suffered a great shock after the death of his great friend, the actor Roy Kinnear , during the filming of the aforementioned The Return of the Musketeers , due to a fall from a horse. He retired, although in 1991 he made an exception with Get Back , filming a concert by his friend Paul McCartney .