XPost: rec.arts.tv, rec.arts.movies.past-films
Frederick Forsyth, Author of Thrillers Made Into Movies
Like 'The Day of the Jackal,' Dies at 86
-------------------------------------------------------
Frederick Forsyth, a British author of thrillers who frequently
made the bestseller lists, sold 70 million books and saw his
novels "The Day of the Jackal," "The Odessa File" and "The Dogs
of War," among others, adapted into films, died on Monday at
his home in Jordans, England. He was 86 years old. The New York
Times confirmed Forsyth's death, which his literary
representative, Jonathan Lloyd, said "followed a short illness."
"The Day of the Jackal" was adapted into a 1973 film directed
by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale.
Fox played the professional assassin known only as the "Jackal"
who is hired to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle
in the summer of 1963. The film was a critical and box office
success, and was also turned into a series in 2024 starring
Eddie Redmayne.
Roger Ebert said of the feature version: "I wasn't prepared for
how good it really is: It's not just a suspense classic, but a
beautifully executed example of filmmaking. It's put together
like a fine watch. The screenplay meticulously assembles an
incredible array of material, and then Zinnemann choreographs
it so that the story - complicated as it is - unfolds in almost
documentary starkness."
(The film was the inspiration for Michael Caton-Jones'
"The Jackal" (1997), starring Richard Gere, Bruce Willis, Sidney
Poitier and Jack Black. The later movie concerns an assassin
nicknamed the Jackal who wants to assassinate a highly
significant target, but otherwise shares little with the
original story. Forsyth refused to allow his name to be used in
connection with it, and director Zinnemann fought with the
studio to ensure that the new film did not share the first
film's title.)
Forsyth's 1972 novel "The Odessa File" was adapted into the 1974
film of the same name directed by Ronald Neame and starring Jon
Voight, Maximilian Schell and Maria Schell. Voight played a
young German journalist who stumbles upon the existence of a
secret organization of ex-S.S. members called ODESSA; he goes
undercover and discovers a plot to send biochemical warheads to
Egypt to use against Israel. Andrew Lloyd Webber did the score.
"The Dogs of War" was adapted into the 1980 film starring
Christopher Walken and Tom Berenger as members of a small,
international unit of mercenaries privately hired to depose the
president of the fictional African Republic of Zangaro so a
British tycoon can mine a huge platinum deposit there.
The British-made Cold War spy thriller "The Fourth Protocol"
(1987), adapted from the novel by Forsyth, starred Michael Caine
and Pierce Brosnan. The latter plays a KGB major whose
unsanctioned mission in the U.K. is to assemble and detonate an
atomic device so that it will appear to be a nuclear accident at
a British military base. The aim is to strain British-US
relations and strengthen the anti-nuclear movement ahead of an
election so the Soviet Union can gain the upper hand.
Forsyth's more recent novel, 2013's "The Kill List," was at one
time in development as a feature, with Lem Dobbs doing the
adaptation and Rupert Sanders set to direct, but the project was
never realized.
Forsyth's 1999 effort "The Phantom of Manhattan," a sequel to
"The Phantom of the Opera," was intended as a departure from
his usual work; the author told Larry King in 2000, "I had done
mercenaries, assassins, Nazis, murderers, terrorists, special
forces soldiers, fighter pilots, you name it, and I got to think,
could I actually write about the human heart?" But while this
novel did not achieve the same success as his others, and
Forsyth subsequently returned to writing contemporary thrillers,
"The Phantom of Manhattan" served as the basis, at least in part,
for Andrew Lloyd Webber's 2010 romantic musical "Love Never
Dies."
Forsyth also received story credit on a number of TV movies made
either in the U.S. or the U.K., including "Cry of the Innocent"
(1980) and "Code Name: Wolverine (1996); he received story credit
and an executive producer credit on TV movies including "Just
Another Secret" (1989), "The Price of the Bride" (1990), "A Little
Piece of Sunshine" (1990), "Death Has a Bad Reputation" (1990),
"Pride and Extreme Prejudice" (1990) and "A Casualty of War"
(1990). The 2005 Hallmark Channel TV movie "Icon" was based on his
novel of the same name, and the TNT TV movie "Avenger" (2006),
starring Sam Elliott, Timothy Hutton and James Cromwell, was based
on Forsyth's novel of the same name.
Frederick Forsyth was born in Ashford, Kent, and attended the
University of Granada, Spain.
At the age of 19, he became the youngest pilot in the Royal Air
Force, serving from 1956-58, but then decided on a career as a
journalist as "it was the only job that might enable me to travel
and keep more or less my own hours." After three years as a
provincial reporter, he joined Reuters and spent the next four
years in Europe, first working in London and Paris from 1961-63,
and then as bureau chief in East Berlin from 1963-64.
In 1965 he joined the BBC and was sent to Biafra to cover the war
raging in Nigeria. What he saw of this brutal and cynical conflict
made it difficult for him to toe the editorial line of the BBC's
coverage so he resigned and turned freelance, later emerging to
publish his highly controversial first book, the nonfiction work
"The Biafra Story."
In 1969 he decided to use his experience as a Reuters reporter in
France as the basis for a thriller. Within 35 days he'd completed
"The Day of the Jackal," which has sold some 10 million copies.
Forsyth's autobiography, "The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue," was
published in September 2015, when he disclosed that he had been
working for Britain's MI6 for more than two decades, starting when
he was asked to provide information about the Biafran War.
The BBC said, "Fans have long suspected that Forsyth, 77, acclaimed
for his highly realistic spy novels, may have been involved with
British intelligence."
The author told the BBC that he was not paid for the information
he provided. "The zeitgeist was different... the Cold War was very
much on."
Despite becoming an established author with the success of "The Day
of the Jackal," which earned Forsyth a three-book publishing deal,
he undertook missions to Rhodesia, South Africa and, at the height
of the Cold War, East Germany.
Forsyth was twice married, the first time to model Carole
Cunningham.
His second wife Sandy Molloy, whom he married in 1994, died in 2024.
He is survived by two sons from his first marriage, Frederick Stuart
and Shane Richard.
<
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/frederick-forsyth-dead-dies-the-day-of-the-jackal-1236423859/>
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)