Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell (10 October 1921 – 7 September 1994), known as James Clavell, was a British and American writer, filmmaker, and British Army officer during the Second World War. He is best known for writing the Asian Saga novels, many of which were adapted into television shows and movies.
Clavell also wrote screenplays for films such as The Fly (1958), which was based on a short story by George Langelaan, and The Great Escape (1963), which was based on the personal account of Paul Brickhill. He directed the 1967 film To Sir, with Love, for which he also wrote the script.
During his time in the military, Clavell was held as a prisoner of war by Imperial Japan at Changi Prison. This experience inspired his semi-autobiographical novel King Rat (1962) and its 1965 film adaptation.
Biography
Clavell was born in Sydney, Australia. His father, Commander Richard Charles Clavell, was a Royal Navy officer stationed in Australia with the Royal Australian Navy from 1920 to 1922. Richard Clavell's father was Major R.K. Clavell. When James was nine months old, Richard Clavell was sent back to England. Clavell was educated at The Portsmouth Grammar School.
In 1940, Clavell joined the Royal Artillery. He received an emergency commission as a second lieutenant in the Regular Army on 10 May 1941. Though trained for desert warfare, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was sent to Singapore to fight the Japanese. The ship carrying his unit was sunk en route to Singapore, and survivors were picked up by a Dutch boat fleeing to India. The commander, described by Clavell years later as a "total twit," insisted they be dropped off at the nearest port to fight the war despite having no weapons.
Clavell was shot in the face and captured in Java in 1942. He was sent to a local Japanese prisoner of war camp. Later, he was transferred to Changi Prison in Singapore.
In 1981, Clavell said: "Changi became my university instead of my prison. Among the inmates were experts in all walks of life—the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving, the most important course of all."
Prisoners were given a quarter of a pound (110 g) of rice per day, one egg per week, and occasional vegetables. Clavell believed that if atomic bombs had not been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he would not have survived the war.
Clavell did not talk about his wartime experiences with anyone, even his wife, for 15 years after the war. For a time, he carried a can of sardines in his pocket always and tried to resist the urge to search for food in trash bins. He also had bad dreams and a nervous stomach kept him awake at night.
After the war, Clavell was promoted to lieutenant in 1942 and to captain in 1946. A motorcycle crash ended his military career. On 20 July 1948, he was officially discharged from the army due to disability, leaving with the honorary rank of captain. He enrolled at the University of Birmingham, where he met April Stride, an actress, whom he married in February 1949 (sometimes listed as 1951). He visited her on film sets and began to be interested in becoming a film director.
Clavell entered the film industry through distribution and worked in England for many years. He tried to get into producing but had no luck, so he started writing screenplays. In 1954, he moved to New York, then to Hollywood. While trying to break into screenwriting, he worked as a carpenter to pay the bills.
In 1956, he sold a script about pilots to RKO, Far Alert. The same year, Michael Pate bought a story of his, Forbidden Territory, for filming. Neither was made, but Far Alert kept being sold and resold. "In 18 months, it brought in $87,000," he later said. "We kept getting paid for writing it and rewriting it as it went from one studio to another. It was wonderful." It was later sold to Fox, where it attracted the attention of Robert L. Lippert, who hired Clavell to write the science-fiction horror movie The Fly (1958). This became a hit and launched Clavell as a screenwriter.
He wrote Watusi (1959) for director Kurt Neumann, who also made The Fly. Clavell wrote Five Gates to Hell (1959) for Lippert. When they could not find a suitable director, Clavell was given the job.
Paramount hired Clavell to write a film about the Bounty mutineers. It was not made, nor was a proposed movie about Francis Gary Powers. Clavell did write, produce, and direct a Western at Paramount, Walk Like a Dragon (1960).
In 1959, Clavell wrote "Moon Landing" and "First Woman in the Moon," two episodes of Men into Space, a science fiction drama that depicted the near future of space exploration.
In 1960, Clavell wrote a Broadway show with John Sturges, White Alice, a thriller set in the Arctic. It was never produced.
In 1960, the Writers Guild went on strike, meaning Clavell could not work. He decided to write a novel, King Rat, based on his time at Changi. It took him three months to write and several more months to rework it. The book was published in 1962 and sold well. It was turned into a film in 1965.
In August 1960, Clavell announced he would set up his own production company, Cee Productions, to make three films: Unwanted from a novel by James Lindsay,
Novelist
The New York Times said, "Clavell has a special talent. It may be something that cannot be learned or earned. He brings stories to life. He writes in the oldest and most respected tradition of fiction." His first novel, King Rat (1962), was partly based on his real experiences as a prisoner at Changi. When the book was published, it became a top-selling book quickly. Three years later, it was made into a movie. His next novel, Tai-Pan (1966), told a fictional story about Jardine Matheson's success in Hong Kong, as seen through the character Dirk Struan, who became Clavell's model hero. Struan's family members appeared in most of Clavell's later books. Tai-Pan was also made into a movie in 1986.
Clavell's third novel, Shōgun (1975), is set in 17th-century Japan. It follows the story of an English sailor who is shipwrecked in Japan, based on the real-life story of William Adams. When the story was turned into a TV miniseries in 1980, produced by Clavell, it became the second most popular miniseries in history (after Roots), with more than 120 million viewers. A new version of the story, with 10 episodes, was released in 2024 by FX on Hulu and FX. This version won the most Emmy Awards for a single season of television and received the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series.
Clavell's fourth novel, Noble House (1981), became a best-seller that year and was made into a TV miniseries in 1988.
After the success of Noble House, Clavell wrote Thrump-o-moto (1985), Whirlwind (1986), and Gai-Jin (1993).
Peter Marlowe is a character in Clavell's novels King Rat and Noble House (1981). He is also mentioned once in Whirlwind (1986) as a friend of Andrew Gavallan. Marlowe is most important in King Rat, where he is an English prisoner of war in Changi Prison during World War II. In Noble House, set two decades later, he is a novelist researching a book about Hong Kong. Marlowe's ancestors are also mentioned in other Clavell novels.
In Noble House, Marlowe is described as having written a novel about Changi. Although this story is fictional, it is based on real events, like those in King Rat. When asked which character in the book was based on him, Marlowe says, "Perhaps I'm not there at all." However, in a later part of the story, he admits, "I was the hero, of course."
Politics and later life
In 1962, Clavell moved to Vancouver, Canada, with his family joining him the next year. Although he became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1963, he and his wife stayed in Vancouver and raised their daughters there. Politically, he was a strong believer in individualism and supported the idea of laissez-faire capitalism, as shown by the heroes in his books. Clavell admired Ayn Rand, the founder of the Objectivist school of philosophy. In 1981, Clavell sent Rand a copy of Noble House with a message inside: "This is for Ayn Rand—one of the real, true talents on this earth for which many, many thanks. James C, New York, 2 September 81."
In 1972, Clavell moved to Switzerland. While he and his wife mainly lived there, they also had homes in Austria, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Between 1970 and 1990, Clavell owned Fredley Manor near Mickleham, located in Surrey, South East England.
Personal life
Clavell had three children. He and his wife had two daughters named Michaela and Holly. Clavell had a romantic relationship outside of marriage with Caroline Naylen Barrett, who was born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and an American soldier father. They had a daughter named Petra Barrett Brando-Corval, who was born in 1972. Barrett, who worked as a personal assistant for Marlon Brando for many years and later became his girlfriend, raised Petra in England. Brando legally adopted Petra in 1981. Petra currently lives in London with her husband, Russel Anton Fischer, who is a film producer.
Death and legacy
In 1994, James Clavell died in Switzerland from a stroke. He had cancer and was 72 years old. With support from his wife, the library and archive at the Royal Artillery Museum in Woolwich, southeast London, was renamed the James Clavell Library. The library was later closed until a new building opened in Salisbury, Wiltshire. However, James Clavell Square on the Royal Arsenal development near Woolwich riverside still exists.