EVAN JONES
(29 December 1927 - 18 April 2023)
The Jamaican poet, author, playwright and screenwriter Evan Jones, who has died aged 95, contributed much to Jamaican culture, the anti-slavery cause, television plays and documentaries, as well as a number of feature films. Apart from his poetry and documentary work, he wrote screenplays for Joseph Losey, Guy Hamilton, Ted Kotcheff, John Huston and others, as well as giving Bob Dylan his first acting job in the BBC’s TV drama The Madhouse on Castle Street.
Evan Jones was born in Portland, Jamaica, to a Quaker family, Fred Jones, a farmer, and his wife Gladys, a missionary and teacher. After his early education, Evan went to school in Pennsylvania and in 1949 headed for the Gaza Strip in Palestine with the American Friends Service Committee to work for the United Nations. He graduated from Wadham College, Oxford, with a BA Honours degree in English literature. After a spell of teaching, he moved to the UK and began writing for films and TV.
His initial fame came with his poem ‘The Song of the Banana Man’ in 1952 which proved to be universally popular and is still taught in Caribbean schools and published in many anthologies of black poetry. Jones also wrote other books, biographies, textbooks and children’s novels.
Between 1957 and 1990 he wrote ten television plays and began writing for feature films in 1962, with Eva, Joseph Losey’s romantic thriller with Jeanne Moreau. Losey used Jones again for The Damned (aka These Are the Damned in the US), a sci-fi horror film based on H. L. Lawrence’s The Children of Light, with Macdonald Carey. He also wrote Losey’s World War I film about desertion, King and Country with Dirk Bogarde and Tom Courtenay. A fine achievement, it won Courtenay the best actor award at the Venice film festival. The film was also nominated and garnered four Bafta nominations. Modesty Blaise, a comedy based on Peter O'Donnell’s comic-strip, was less successful.
Michael Caine starred in Guy Hamilton’s Funeral in Berlin and Ted Kotcheff filmed Evan Jones’ screenplays for Two Gentlemen Sharing and Wake in Fright (aka Outback), the latter a terrifying account of life in the Australian Bush. Jones co-operated with Spike Milligan on the script of Peter Medak’s Ghost in the Noonday Sun, an alleged comedy with Peter Sellers who was so difficult that the film was not released theatrically. Night Watch was beset with problems when director Brian G. Hutton contracted bronchitis, co-star Laurence Harvey was hospitalised and Elizabeth Taylor demanded changes to the script. John Huston’s Escape to Victory fared better, a soccer saga with Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine and Pelé. Jones continued writing screenplays until 1992, alongside his works for TV which were more personal pieces about racial problems. For his BBC series The Fight Against Slavery he was awarded the Dr Martin Luther King Memorial Prize in 1975.
Evan Jones’ first wife was the actress Honora Ferguson, and in 1963 he married the actress Joanna Vogel by whom he has two daughters, Melissa and Sadie, both novelists. In his time Evan Jones made a definite mark on his own Caribbean community in his poetry and his books. He also contributed to a number of outstanding screenplays for both the cinema and television. The Bodleian Library has a collection of his documents and drafts of his scripts. He seems to have led a very challenging life but was still able to reach out to people and present them in a personal and positive way through his understanding of the human condition.
MICHAEL DARVELL