'A
Service of Celebration and Thanksgiving for the Life and Work of David Lean'
From David Lean (1992), by Stephen M. Silverman, p200-1.
David Lean was cremated on April 22, 1991, and his ashes were scattered in India, the South of France, and Tahiti. Plans then got underway for his memorial service, held October 3 of that same year in London. The proceedings, labeled "A Service of Celebration and Thanksgiving for the Life and Work of David Lean," was, perhaps unsurprisingly, of epic proportions.
"One of the most extraordinary men of our age and our generation," was how the filmmaker was described by the Reverend Eric Evans, speaking to the eight hundred members of the congregation, which included Alec Guinness; Anthony Havelock-Allan; Ronald Neame; Fred Zinnemann; Valerie Hobson and John Profumo; Mrs. Jack Hawkins; James Fox; Nigel Havers; Victor Banerjee; Rita Tushingham; Christopher Hampton; the Second Master of the Leighton Park School, John Allinson; and four women who at various times had been married to David Lean.
Ann Todd, who attended, had told the press earlier in the week that when Lean walked out on her in 1954 after eight years of a stormy marriage, "it left me with a feeling of utter failure in life." Kay Walsh departed the ninety-minute ceremony ten minutes before it officially ended.
During that hour and a half, John Mills read an opening passage from Great Expectations; John Box cited Omar Sharif's entrance in Lawrence of Arabia as the prime example of Lean's mastery of his craft and read the lesson from Matthew; Robert Bolt assured his friend David Lean, "I am here"; Sarah Miles recited Celia Johnson's toast to the ship from In Which We Serve; and Peter O'Toole delivered John Donne's Holy Sonnet X, "Death, be not proud." Later Tom Courtenay read from Doctor Zhivago, Omar Sharif from Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and Georges Correface from Nostromo.
Melvyn Bragg delivered the eulogy and called Lean "meticulous and inflexible." David Lean, said the author and television commentator, "made films as if there was nothing else in the world he could do, and he make them with an intensity as if he feared each film would be his last." Lean's favorite word, said Bragg, was "Cut," and he suggested that those three letters could well serve as Lean's epitaph.
Maurice Jarre conducted members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the "Sunrise" portion of Also Sprach Zarathustra as Lean's Oscars and Directors Guild awards were placed before the podium. Other musical selections included Rachmaninoff's "Second Piano Concerto in C minor," "Fagin's Romp" from Oliver Twist, "The Willie Mossop Theme" from Hobson's Choice, "The Spitfire Ballet" from The Sound Barrier, and Jarre's own themes from the later epics.
One bit of music was not allowed inside the house of worship where the ceremony took place, due to the bawdy connotation of its tune. That was the "Colonel Bogey March" from The Bridge on the River Kwai. So the band of Blues and Royals played the infectious march as guests filtered out, which brings us back to the setting for this memorable morning: St. Paul's Cathedral.
Nearly six decades earlier, a similar tribute had been held there. That one was for T. E. Lawrence.
David Lean, Peter O'Toole, and Omar Sharif
Photograph
by Ken Danvers
**This
image was scanned from Stephen M. Silverman's book, David Lean (1992);
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York