The Guns of Navarone

John Lee Thompson , better known as J. Lee Thompson, was an English film director, active in England and Hollywood. Thompson was born in Bristol, England to a theatrical family. After studying at Dover College, he briefly appeared on the stage and wrote crime plays in his spare time. Thompson first... drew critical notice when his play Double Error was staged on the West End of London in 1935, upon which he was hired as a scriptwriter for British International Pictures, acquirer of the play's film rights. During this initial BIP stint, Thompson made his only film appearance in the Carol Reed-directed Midshipman Easy and worked as a dialogue coach for Alfred Hitchcock's production of Jamaica Inn . The small-framed Englishman was occupied during World War II as a tailgunner and wireless operator for the Royal Air Force. He eventually returned to his scriptwriting duties at the Associated British Picture Corporation, a successor of BIP, in 1950. That year, Thompson was given his first film direction opportunity, Murder Without Crime. Murder Without Crime was mostly ignored upon release.
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Alexander Mackendrick was a Scottish American director and teacher. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and later moved to Scotland. He began making television commercials before moving into post-production editing and directing films, most notably for Ealing Studios where his films include... Whisky Galore! , The Man in the White Suit , and The Ladykillers . His films made a gradual decline after Ealing Studios closed and he returned to America to become a teacher of filmmaking. He was the cousin of the Scottish writer Roger MacDougall. He was born on 22 December 1912 and was the only child of Francis and Martha Mackendrick, who had emigrated to the United States from Glasgow in 1911. His father was a ship builder and a civil engineer. When Mackendrick was six, his father died of influenza as a result of an pandemic that swept the world just after World War I. His mother, in desperate need of work, decided to be a dress designer. In order to pursue that decision, it was necessary for Martha MacKendrick to hand her only son over to his grandfather, who took young MacKendrick back to Scotland when he was seven years old.
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