Carol Reed

"Carol Reed - director of thirty-four films, among them Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, Outcast of the Islands, Mutiny on the Bounty and, of course, the great postwar classic The Third Man." "He is fully revealed here as the complex, reticent, eccentric man of enormous gifts who understood actors and writers (he was both) and was a master of the art of telling stories, and making movies.". "At the center of Reed's life was the fact of his birth: He was the illegitimate son of one of Edwardian England's great character actors, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who for fifty years dominated the London stage and whose flamboyant personality and love affairs were legend. Nicholas Wapshott shows how Reed's response to his heritage - the conflict between his shame and his pride - was reflected in the elusive, enigmatic figure he presented throughout his life.". "Here is Reed as a boy with his father's theatrical colleagues (among them Bernard Shaw, W. S. Gilbert, Wilde, Whistler, Ellen Terry and James Barrie) . . . Reed landing his first job: an assistant to the bestselling thriller writer of his day, playwright and producer Edgar Wallace . . . Reed with his secret love, Daphne du Maurier (she la