1962 FIRST EDITION, LATER PRINTING OF "KING RAT" AUTOGRAPH BY JAMES CLAVELL

Description

1962 first edition, later printing of "King Rat" autographed by author James Clavell.  He signed with blue ball point pen.  Clevell(d94)
was an Australian (and later naturalized American) novelist, screenwriter, director, and World War II veteran and prisoner of war. Clavell is best known as the author of his Asian Saga novels, a number of which have had television adaptations. Clavell also authored such screenplays as those for The Fly (1958) (based on the short story by George Langelaan) and The Great Escape (1963) (based on the personal account of Paul Brickhill). He directed the popular 1967 film To Sir, with Love for which he also wrote the script. Clavell entered the film industry via distribution and worked at that in England for a number of years. He tried to get into producing but had no luck so started writing screenplays. In 1954 he moved to New York, then to Hollywood. While trying to break into screenwriting he paid the bills working as a carpenter.
In 1956, he sold a script about pilots to RKO, Far Alert. The same year Michael Pate bought a story of his, Forbidden Territory, for filming.
Neither was filmed but Far Alert kept being sold and re-sold. "In 18 months it brought in ,000", he later said. "We kept getting paid for writing it and rewriting it as it went from one studio to another. It was wonderful."
It was later sold to Fox where it attracted the attention of Robert L. Lippert who hired Clavell to write the science-fiction horror movie The Fly (1958). This became a hit and launched Clavell as a screenwriter.
He wrote Watusi (1959) for director Kurt Neumann, who had also made The Fly.
Clavell wrote Five Gates to Hell (1959) for Lippert, and when they could not find a suitable director, Clavell was given the job.
Paramount hired Clavell to write a film about the Bounty mutineers.[12] It ended up not being made. Neither was a proposed movie about Francis Gary Powers made.
Clavell did write, produce, and direct a Western at Paramount, Walk Like a Dragon (1960).
In 1959, Clavell wrote "Moon Landing" and "First Woman in the Moon", two episodes of Men into Space, a "day after tomorrow"-style science fiction drama, which depicted, in realistic terms, the near future of space exploration.
In 1960, he had written a Broadway show with John Sturges, White Alice, a thriller set in the Arctic. It was never produced.
In 1960, the Writers Guild went on strike, meaning Clavell was unable to work. He decided to write a novel, King Rat, based on his time at Changi. It took him three months and several more months after that to rework it. The book was published in 1962 and sold well. It was turned into a film in 1965.
In 1961, Clavell announced he had formed his own company, Cee Productions, who would make the films King Rat, White Alice and No Hands on the Clock.
In 1962, he signed a multi picture contract with a Canadian company to produce and direct two films there, Circle of Greed and The Sweet and the Bitter.
Only the second was made and it was not released until 1967.
He wrote scripts for the war films The Great Escape (1963) and 633 Squadron (1964).
He wrote a short story, "The Children's Story" (1964) and the script for The Satan Bug (1965), directed by John Sturges who had made The Great Escape. He also wrote Richard Sahib for Sturges which was never made.
Clavell wanted to write a second novel because "that separates the men from the boys". The money from King Rat enabled him to spend two years researching and then writing what became Tai-Pan (1966). It was a huge bestseller, and Clavell sold the film rights for a sizeable amount (although the movie would not be made until 1986).
Clavell returned to filmmaking. He wrote, produced and directed To Sir, With Love (1967), featuring Sidney Poitier and based on E. R. Braithwaite's semiautobiographical 1959 book. It was a huge critical and commercial success.
Clavell was now in much demand as a filmmaker. He produced and directed Where's Jack? (1969), a highwayman film which was a commercial failure.
So too was an epic film about the Thirty Years' War, The Last Valley (1971).
Clavell returned to novel writing, which was the focus of the remainder of his career. He spent three years researching and writing Shōgun (1975), about an Englishman who becomes a samurai in feudal Japan. It was another massive best seller. Clavell was heavily involved in the 1980 miniseries which starred Richard Chamberlain and achieved huge ratings.
In the late 1970s he spent three years researching and writing his fourth novel, Noble House (1981), set in Hong Kong in 1963. It was another best seller and was turned into a miniseries in 1986.
Clavell briefly returned to filmmaking and directed a thirty-minute adaptation of his novelette The Children's Story. He was meant to do a sequel to Shogun but instead found himself writing a novel about the 1979 revolution in Iran, Whirlwind (1986).
Clavell eventually returned to the Shogun sequel, writing Gai-Jin (1993). This was his last completed novel at the time of his death.
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