Waris Hussein

Waris Hussein (born December 9, 1938 in Lucknow , Uttar Pradesh in British India as Waris Habibullah ) is a British - Indian film director who has also appeared as a film actor , screenwriter and producer .

biography

Training and first steps

Waris Habibullah, who was born in 1938 in British India into a family of the aristocratic Taluqdar class, spent his early childhood mainly in Bombay . When his father Ali Bahadur Habibullah was appointed to the Indian High Commission in 1946, he came to Great Britain with his family. Habibullah's father returned to India after his homeland gained independence from Pakistan in 1947. However, his mother, Attia Hosain, a writer, chose to stay in the UK with her two children. In addition to her work as a writer, she worked for the BBC 's international service, the BBC World Service .

Habibullah trained at Clifton College and then studied English literature at Queens' College, Cambridge , where he directed a number of plays. There he met with Derek Jacobi , Margaret Drabble , Trevor Nunn and Ian McKellen as well as with Eleanor Bron , David Frost and Peter Cook . Together they worked on several productions, including for the Cambridge University Theater Club for Cambridge students, the Marlowe Society. They revived the play Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw new. After completing his studies in 1960, Habibullah joined the BBC, aiming to train as a director, a career dream that had crystallized early on in him. For a short time he also worked as an actor. At this point he changed his last name from Habibullah to Hussein , as his real name seemed too complicated to him. He later said that he should have used his mother's maiden name, Hosain . At that time the name Hussein was associated with the King of Jordan , but later unfortunately with Saddam Hussein and such a connection is really not helpful.

Director, Doctor Who, BBC

One of his earliest directorial jobs was the British science fiction series Doctor Who , which has been in production by the BBC since 1963, and is about a mysterious time traveler known only as " The Doctor " and with his companions in the Time-space machine TARDIS travels in different time zones and is involved in various adventures. Hussein directed the first storyline of this four-episode television series, titled The Child from the Stars , in 1963. He wasn't sure what effect this work would have on his future career, after all, he was a Cambridge student who had graduated with honors. From 1964 he directed further episodes of Doctor Who with the title Marco Polo . This was followed by more work for BBC productions, such as A Passage to India , a play by the Indian-American playwright Santha Rama Rau, which was named “Play of the Month” in 1965. It is one of the few works that deals directly with its Asian heritage and sensitively shows the misery of outsiders caused by racial segregation. For the 1969 film drama A Touch of Love he came back with Margaret Drabble, on whose book The Millstone the film adaptation is based, and with Ian McKellen who played one of the leading roles. The film is about the story of a single mother, played by Sandy Dennis , and was presented at the Berlinale at the time.

The 1971 film Melody , which was made under Hussein's direction, was a disappointment at the box office in the USA and Great Britain, but it enjoyed great success in Mexico, Argentina and Chile. The film tells in lyrical form a story about school days and summer haze in south London in the 1970s. In the six-part British miniseries about Henry VIII and his six wives , Hussein portrayed Henry VIII in 1972 , who was King of England from 1509 to 1547 and who organized the separation of the English Church from Rome and the establishment of the Anglican State Church . In addition to Keith Mitchell as Heinrich VIII, Charlotte Rampling as Anne Boleyn and Donald Pleasence as Thomas Cromwell could be seen. In the psychodrama The Possession of Joel Delaney , also published in 1972, he worked with Shirley MacLaine . McLaine played a New Yorker whose brother is obsessed with a serial killer. In the two-part American-British television film His Divorce, Her Divorce , Hussein and Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor worked together in 1973 . It was the first television film in which the couple, who were married at the time of shooting, appeared together and at the same time their last film together. Hussein got along well with Burton, but Elisabeth Taylor largely ignored him. Hussein found film and collaboration to be a low point in his career.

Another work by Hussein was the four-part miniseries, a 1974 BBC drama entitled Shoulder to Shoulder , a story about women's suffrage . In the same year, the seven-part miniseries Notorious Woman with Rosemary Harris in the title role, based on the life of the French author George Sand . Hussein directed the drama Daphne Laureola , which was part of a series of films presented by Laurence Olivier in 1978 . A young man falls in love with the exotic Lady Pitts, played by Joan Plowright , whose husband, played by Laurence Olivier, is not exactly happy about it.

Hussein also directed the seven-part television series Edward & Mrs. Simpson , which aired in the UK in 1978 . The series is about the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936, who renounced the throne in order to be able to marry his lover Wallis Simpson , an American who has already been divorced twice. On the latter two pieces, he worked again with Verity Lambert, the then producer of Doctor Who , with whom Hussein had been close friends ever since. He also maintains friendships with the British actors Siân Phillips , Martin Jarvis and Francesca Annis .

Working from the 1980s

In the 1980s and 1990s, Hussein made several television films in the United States. In 1982 he worked with Bette Davis in the two-part television film Kleine Gloria - Poor, rich girl . She is a woman for whom he not only felt an enormous affection, but also great respect. She was incredibly professional, said Hussein. In the shadow of the triumphal arch is the title of a British television film released in 1984 based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque and re-staged by Hussein with Anthony Hopkins , Lesley-Anne Down and Donald Pleasence , after a film adaptation with Ingrid Bergman and Charles in 1948 Boyer was born.

Hussein directed the 1985 musical film Copacabana, starring Barry Manilow , Annette O'Toole, and Estelle Getty . For this work he was awarded the Primetime Emmy . The 1986 mystery thriller he directed Maggie included a collaboration with Stefanie Powers and Ava Gardner . A young woman acts as a tour guide for a Texan family, whom she shows London, and learns that murder plans are being made. The 1987 British television drama Intimate Contact , written by Alma Cullen, starring Daniel Massey and Claire Bloom , dealt with the subject of HIV / AIDS . Hussein later said that he fought for the film. Because he knew why it was going. Nobody on the production team suspected at the time that this was painful work for Hussein, as he had lost his own partner to this illness.

Another work by Hussein was the biographical romance Onassis, published in 1988 , the richest man in the world with Raúl Juliá as Aristotle Onassis , Jane Seymour as Maria Callas , Anthony Quinn as Socrates Onassis and Francesca Annis as Jacqueline Kennedy . In Killer Instinct , a 1988 film drama, Hussein worked with Melissa Gilbert , who played psychiatrist Lisa DaVito and stood up for the rescue of a tortured man whose past had turned him into a violent criminal. In 1989, the first film adaptation of a novel by Rosamunde Pilcher was directed by Hussein for the British-American production The Shell Seekers . Angela Lansbury played the lead role of Penelope Keeling.

In the film drama Forbidden Nights from 1990 Melissa Gilbert was again Hussein's leading actress. This time she played a teacher whose dream of working in China is coming true. Another directorial work by Hussein is the British drama Sixth Happiness , published in 1997 , which is based on an autobiography by the Indian writer and actor Firdaus Kanga and tells the unusual story of a boy whose growth stops abruptly because he was born with a disease that affects his bones can become brittle. The British television film An Adventure in Space and Time , released in 2013, tells the story of how the cult television series Doctor Who came about. Waris Hussein is portrayed by Sacha Dhawan in this film . He himself was a consultant for the film.

Private

Waris Hussein lost his life partner Ian, who was from New Zealand and with whom he was together for twelve years, to AIDS.

Filmography (selection)

- Director, unless otherwise stated -

• 1962: Corrigan Blake (TV series, episode You Can't Win Them All ; as an actor)
• 1962, 1963: Compact (TV series, 10 episodes)
• 1963: Suspence (TV series, episode One Step from the Pavement ; also producer)
• 1963: Moonstrike (TV series, episode A Matter of Trust )
• 1963, 1964: Doctor Who (TV series, 11 episodes)
• 1964: The Indian Tales of Rudyard Kipling (TV series, 4 episodes)
• 1965: The Newcomers (TV series, 2 episodes)
• 1965–1975: BBC Play of the Month (TV series, 6 episodes; episode St. Joan also screenplay)
• 1966: Thirteen Against Fate (TV series, episode The Son )
• 1966–1968: The Wednesday Play (TV series, 9 episodes; episode Days in the Trees also screenplay)
• 1969: W. Somerset Maugham (TV series, episode A Casual Affair )
• 1969: A Touch of Love
• 1971: Melody
• 1972: The Possession of Joel Delaney
• 1972: Henry VIII and His Six Wives
• 1973: His Divorce, Her Divorce (Divorce His - Divorce Hers)
• 1973: Between the Wars (TV series episode Now Lies She There and The Silver Mask )
• 1974: Shoulder to Shoulder (TV miniseries, 4 episodes)
• 1974: Notorious Woman (TV miniseries, 7 episodes)
• 1976: The Glittering Prizes (TV miniseries, 3 episodes)
• 1977: Romance (TV series, episodes Moths and Three Weeks )
• 1978: Armchair Thriller (TV series, 4 episodes)
• 1978: Edward & Mrs. Simpson (TV miniseries, 7 episodes)
• 1979: Then We'd Be Six ( And Baby Makes Six , TV Movie)
• 1980: Sentenced to Death ( Death Penalty , TV movie)
• 1981: Fate Knows No Mercy ( Callie & Son , TV movie)
• 1982: Gulag 2 ( Coming Out of the Ice , TV movie)
• 1982: Little Gloria - poor rich girl ( Little Gloria… Happy at Last , two-part film)
• 1983: Princess Daisy (TV series)
• 1984: In the Shadow of the Triumphal Arch ( Arch of Triumph , TV movie)
• 1985: ... and found no way out ( Surviving: A Family in Crisis , TV movie)
• 1985: Copacabana (TV movie)
• 1986 When the Bough Breaks (TV movie)
• 1987: Intimate Contact (TV series, 4 episodes)
• 1987: Downpayment on Murder (TV movie)
• 1988: Onassis, the richest man in the world ( Onassis: The Richest Man in the World , TV movie)
• 1988: Killer Instinct (TV movie)
• 1989: The Shell Seekers
• 1990: Forbidden Nights (TV movie)
• 1992: The Murderer's Shadow ( She Woke Up , Movie made for TV)
• 1994: Fall from Grace (TV movie)
• 1995: Kidnapped - The Terrible Truth ( The Face on the Milk Carton , TV movie)
• 1997: Sixth Happiness
• 1998: Supply & Demand (TV miniseries, 4 episodes)
• 1998: The Soul of the Party - The Pamela Harriman Story ( Life of the Party: The Pamela Harriman Story , TV movie)
• 2002: Her Best Friend's Husband (also co-producer)
• 2013: An Adventure in Space and Time ( An Adventure in Space and Time , TV film; consultant)
• 2016: Tale of a Timelord (short film, as speaker)

Awards (selection)

• Berlin International Film Festival 1969 :
  Nominated for the Golden Bear with A Touch of Love
• Berlin International Film Festival 1972 :
  Nominated for the Golden Bear with The Possession of Joel Delaney
• BAFTA Awards 1979 :
  Nominated for the BAFTA TV Award in the category "Best Drama" with Edward & Mrs. Simpson (together with Andrew Brown)
• BAFTA Awards 1994:
  Nominated for the BAFTA TV Award in the category "Best Single Drama" with Screen Two , Episode The Clothes in the Wardrobe (together with Norma Heyman and Martin Sherman )
• 1986: Primetime Emmy Awards
  Awarded the Primetime Emmy for Best Director in a Musical Film for Copacabana

Web links

• Waris Hussein in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Patrick Mulkern: Doctor Who's Waris Hussein on William Hartnell, Bette Davis, & Peter Cook loathing David Frost on the RadioTimes website, October 16, 2013 (English). Retrieved March 14, 2020.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Hussein, Waris (1938–) see page screenonline.org.uk (English). Retrieved March 14, 2020.