Desmond Davis

Highest Rated: 88% Smashing Time (1967)

Lowest Rated: 63% Clash of the Titans (1981)

Birthday: May 24, 1926

Birthplace: London, England, UK

British director Desmond Davis entered the film industry in 1944 as a clapper loader, a lowly position in the camera crew hierarchy. By the middle of the 1950s, he'd graduated to the role of camera operator, collaborating directly with the director on setting up each shot. His most fruitful collaboration came when he was teamed with Tony Richardson, already famous for works of British realism like play adaptation "Look Back In Anger" and bleak show business drama "The Entertainer." While working on their third and final film together, 1963's Oscar-winning period comedy "Tom Jones," Richardson gave Davis a copy of Edna O'Brien's novel "The Lonely Girl," which would become Davis' directorial debut, "Girl With Green Eyes." A sensitive, low-key drama about a naive young Dublin girl in love with an older married man, "Girl" earned Davis comparisons to contemporaries like Richardson. Subsequent films like 1966's love triangle drama "Time Lost And Time Remembered" returned to the territory of naive young women involved in unsatisfactory relationships to lesser acclaim, and Davis retreated to television throughout the 1970s. In 1981, Davis had a hit of an entirely different nature with the fantasy film "Clash Of The Titans." After that he once again took up television, working steadily until retiring from directing in 1994.