Jack Gold

Jack Gold began working in the British film industry in 1955 and spent part of the next two decades honing his craft producing and directing specials for British television. He made his feature debut with the well-received war drama "The Bofors Gun" (1968) which demonstrated a flair for eliciting strong performances from actors and a command of camera technique. His subsequent features, however, failed to fully capitalize on this auspicious beginning. Nicol Williamson starred in "The Reckoning" (1969), a modest entry in the "angry young man" school of British filmmaking of the 50s and 60s. Gold's "The National Health" (1972), based on Peter Nichols' stage play, was an uneven comedy that betrayed its theatrical origins. "Man Friday" (1975) was an inversion of "Robinson Crusoe" played as a satiric fable about race relations and distorted by Peter O'Toole's miscasting. Gold wrote, directed and produced "The Medusa Touch" (1978), a wild amalgam of thriller and whodunit, an implausible tale of a man with the power to will someone to death (Richard Burton) and his relationship with a psychiatrist (Lee Remick) trying to cure him. By the end of the 80s, he was reduced to handling modest genre fare like the comedy "The Chain" (1985).