David Lean David Lean Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, responsible for large-scale epics such as "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957), "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) and "A Passage to India" (1984). He also directed adaptations of Charles Dickens novels "Great Expectations" (1946) and "Oliver Twist" (1948), and the romantic drama "Brief Encounter" (1945). Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's "In Which We Serve", which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Beginning with "Summertime" in
Peggy Ashcroft Gielgud himself, Tyrone Guthrie and Michel Saint-Denis. Billington considers that this company laid the foundations of post-war ensembles such as the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. The Munich crisis and the approach of the Second World War delayed for a decade the further development of such a company. In 1940 Ashcroft met and married the rising lawyer Jeremy Hutchinson. They had a daughter the following year, and Ashcroft did little stage work while the child was young. Her main appearances during the war years were in Gielgud's company at the Haymarket Theatre in 1944, playing Ophelia in "Hamlet",