EDWARD LEWIS

(16 December 1919 - 27 July 2019)

The film producer and writer Edward Lewis, who has died aged 99, was notable for choosing prestige properties to film. His CV probably contains more good films that many other producers would have loved to have on their roster. After he wrote and produced his first film The Lovable Cheat in 1949, then came The Admiral Was a Lady, after which he worked on some TV series until his next films, Run For the Hills, Lizzie and The Careless Years. All these titles were second features, but his movie in 1960 was an epic by comparison, Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, which Lewis co-produced with its star, Kirk Douglas, and for which he employed the Hollywood blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo. There followed a skew of very interesting projects including The Last Sunset, Lonely Are the Brave, The List of Adrian Messenger, Seven Days in May, Seconds, Grand Prix, The Fixer, The Extraordinary Seaman, The Gypsy Moths, I Walk the Line, The Horsemen, The Iceman Cometh, Executive Action and Missing, among many others. With his wife Mildred, who died earlier this year, Lewis wrote books, plays and musicals. Edward and Mildred Lewis have two children.

MICHAEL DARVELL