Tom Priestley, who has died aged 91, knew early on that he wished a profession within the arts. “However my father had lined a lot territory, there wasn’t a lot left,” he stated. He was the sixth youngster and solely son of the playwright and novelist JB Priestley.
The self-discipline he finally selected, and excelled at, was movie modifying. He gained a Bafta for Morgan: A Appropriate Case for Remedy (1966), Karel Reisz’s darkish comedy about conformity and rebel, starring David Warner and Vanessa Redgrave. He was additionally nominated for an Oscar for John Boorman’s thriller Deliverance (1972), with Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. It was tailored by James Dickey from his personal novel about 4 buddies who’re terrorised by Appalachian locals whereas on a canoeing journey.
Boorman recalled displaying a tough lower of the movie to executives at Warner Bros: “The response was one which I obtained used to, which is that individuals simply walked out with out saying a phrase. Individuals had been type of devastated by it.”
Priestley finessed the movie’s air of stress and discomfort, not least in three unforgettable scenes that loom giant within the historical past of suspense cinema: the tense “duelling banjos” encounter, the harrowing ambush throughout which one of many males is raped at knife-point, and the shock ending, which provides each film and viewers an electrifying jolt after the motion has seemingly concluded.
He was additionally alert to moments of spontaneity. “Lots of the river stuff was in impact improvised as a result of they had been truly doing it,” he identified. “Let’s say the canoe taking place a fast would possibly unexpectedly twist spherical or any individual’s hat would fall off – we included that into the ultimate lower.”
Priestley edited Boorman’s earlier movie, Leo the Final (1970), a category satire set in west London and starring Marcello Mastroianni. He labored once more with the director on the ill-starred horror sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) after the unique editor resigned.
His different movies embrace Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade (1967), The Nice Gatsby (1974) starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), Roman Polanski’s Thomas Hardy adaptation, Tess (1979), and the teen-punk drama Occasions Sq. (1980).
For the director Michael Radford, Priestley edited One other Time, One other Place (1983), a wartime love story set in Scotland; an adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, launched in that 12 months and that includes Richard Burton’s closing movie efficiency; and White Mischief (1987), impressed by a real-life homicide case among the many British upper-class in colonial Kenya.
Priestley’s philosophy of modifying prized “the continuity of emotion” over the extra standard form.
He was born in London and spent his early years there in a home beforehand occupied by Coleridge, and at a house within the Isle of Wight. His mom, Mary (nee Holland), generally known as Jane, was beforehand married to the humorist DB Wyndham Lewis. She was a eager ornithologist who later co-authored a number of books on birds together with her third husband, David A Bannerman. The Peter Pan writer JM Barrie was Tom’s godfather. His first encounter with one in every of his father’s performs got here when he was taken as a child to rehearsals of Harmful Nook.
He described his early childhood as “a conventional higher middle-class nursery life … There was a nanny who sorted me and my youthful sister. We had been a separate group. If there have been no visitors, then we had been allowed down for Sunday lunch.”
On the age of eight, he was despatched to Hawtreys, a Kent boarding faculty, the place he was permitted to take heed to his father’s wartime broadcasts, Postscripts, on the radio. Rising up, he was accustomed each to his father’s frequent bodily absences (he by no means visited him at college) and a sure emotional remoteness once they had been collectively. “To be completely trustworthy, he preferred girls,” he stated. “I think they had been extra vital to him than I used to be.”
He went to Bryanston faculty in Dorset, then accomplished his nationwide service with the Royal Engineers. He learn classics and English at Cambridge, the place he ran a play-reading membership attended by EM Forster. After graduating, he spent a 12 months educating English in Athens.
Returning to London, he obtained a job as an assistant movie librarian at Ealing Studios, and moved into sound work. His first credit score was as assistant sound editor on Dunkirk (1958). He was additionally sound editor on Polanski’s claustrophobic horror Repulsion (1965), although by this time he had moved into movie modifying.
He was an assistant editor on Bryan Forbes’s Whistle Down the Wind (1961), about three youngsters who mistake an escaped convict (Alan Bates) for Jesus, and Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life (1963), starring Richard Harris as a brutish rugby participant. He was the supervising editor on two surreal and extremely authentic state-of-the-nation dramas: Anderson’s O Fortunate Man! (1973), with Malcolm McDowell as a espresso salesman travelling by an more and more weird and hostile Britain, and Derek Jarman’s punk gem Jubilee (1978), that includes a time-travelling Elizabeth I.
Within the early Nineties, Priestley give up modifying, having “reached the purpose once I felt I had achieved all I might … I used to be solely utilizing a part of myself, and life appeared to include the flickering photographs I noticed within the lens of my modifying machine. Intuition instructed me I wanted to get out extra into the world and attain out to folks.”
This he did by educating on the Nationwide Movie and Tv Faculty, and by selling his father’s life and work. He had already made a documentary about him, Time and the Priestleys, which was meant as a ninetieth birthday tribute however grew to become an obituary as an alternative when his father died shortly earlier than broadcast in 1984, on the age of 89. He administered his father’s property for the remainder of his personal life, serving to to organise occasions round his centenary in 1994, in addition to changing into president of the JB Priestley Society.
Tom was a classy dresser, even a dandy. To rejoice his Oscar nomination in 1973, the Night Customary ran a double-page unfold on his wardrobe. “He’s assured of his personal type, hardly ever self-conscious, liberated even,” the paper reported, praising the Moroccan kaftan he wore “as an alternative of a dressing robe” and the “hooded Arab cape … when consuming out domestically” in addition to his “winter moustache” and “Byronic” hair.
His look was a minor supply of friction together with his father. “It might be going too far to say he was jealous of me,” he instructed the Oldie in 2016, “however he was deeply offended by my denims.” He was additionally “upset” to find Tom was homosexual, and located it “tough to regulate to”. Tom’s response: “Nicely, so did I.”
He’s survived by 16 nieces and nephews.
