Curtain Call

Peter James Yates was an English director and producer. He was born in Aldershot, Hampshire. The son of an army officer, he attended Charterhouse School as a boy, graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked for some years as an actor, director and stage manager. In the 1950s he... started in the movie industry as a dubbing assistant and later an assistant director for Tony Richardson. Summer Holiday , his first film as director, was a "lightweight" vehicle for Cliff Richard. Yates had directed the original Royal Court production of N. F. Simpson's play One Way Pendulum and was chosen to make the film version released in 1964. Robbery , a crime thriller, is a fictionalised version of the Great Train Robbery of 1963. This led to Bullitt , of which Bruce Weber has written, "Mr. Yates’s reputation probably rests most securely on “Bullitt” , his first American film – and indeed, on one particular scene, an extended car chase that instantly became a classic." After Bullitt, Yates would do action films, but would intermix them with comedy and drama films.
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