Jack Gold obit

Goodnight Mister Tom director Jack Gold dies

 

He was not on the list.

A four-time Bafta winner, Gold began his career at the BBC and worked as editor on the Tonight news programme.

His films included thriller The Medusa Touch, starring Richard Burton, but he was best known for his acclaimed TV work spanning several decades.

He worked regularly with actor John Thaw, directing episodes of Inspector Morse and Kavanagh QC.

And it was the duo's work together on the made-for-TV film adaptation Goodnight Mr Tom that gave ITV one of its most popular hits.

The much-repeated film, set during World War Two, starred Thaw as the cantankerous Tom Oakley, whose cosy life is disrupted by the arrival of a nine-year-old evacuee. It was named most popular TV programme of 1998 at the Bafta Awards for that year.

Gold began working as an assistant studio manager for the BBC in 1954. After two years he transferred to the Tonight programme where he made his name and won his first Bafta for a special programme about fox hunting presented by Alan Whicker.

During the 1970s he alternated between film and TV projects. On the big screen he directed Peter O'Toole in Man Friday, Malcolm McDowell and Christopher Plummer in Aces High and Anthony Hopkins in The Tenth Man.

Thaw tribute

But his most acclaimed work of that period was on TV, with The Naked Civil Servant starring John Hurt as the flamboyant Quentin Crisp. It earned Gold another award from Bafta - this time the Desmond Davies Award for special contribution to TV.

Gold's long and successful working relationship with Thaw over several films and TV series - including the final episode of Inspector Morse - was reflected in his decision in 2002 to personally oversee ITV's tribute documentary to the actor following Thaw's death.

He is survived by his wife, actress Denyse Macpherson and their three children, seven grandchildren and a great-grandson.

 

Filmography

 

Living Jazz (1961)

My Father Knew Lloyd George (1965)

The World of Coppard (1968)

The Bofors Gun (1968)

The Reckoning (1969)

Stoker Leishman's Diaries (1972)

The Gangster Show: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1972)

Conflict (1973; also released as Catholics)

The National Health (1973)

Who? (1974)

Man Friday (1975)

The Naked Civil Servant (1975)

Aces High (1976)

The Medusa Touch (1978)

The Sailor's Return (1978)

Charlie Muffin (1979)

Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980)

The Merchant of Venice (1980)

Praying Mantis (1983)

Macbeth (1983)

Good and Bad at Games (1983)

Red Monarch (1983)

The Chain (1984)

Sakharov (1984)

Me and the Girls (1985)

Murrow (1986)

Escape from Sobibor (1987)

Stones for Ibarra (1988)

The Tenth Man (1988)

Ball Trap on the Cote Sauvage (1989)

The Rose and the Jackal (1990)

The War That Never Ends (1991)

She Stood Alone (1991)

The Lucona Affair [de] (1993)

Spring Awakening (1994)

The Return of the Native (1994)

Heavy Weather (1995)

Into the Blue (1997)

Goodnight Mister Tom (1998)