1952–1959: early career with the BBC After leaving Oxford, Evan Jones was engaged to work at the
Campbell Soup Company by friends in the US. Upon arriving in
Philadelphia, however, he found that a policy decision which had impelled the company to hire non-white persons had been reversed and that his offer of a job had been rescinded. He then worked as the furnace man at a
bubble-gum factory before teaching at Quaker schools such as
The Putney School in
Vermont,
George School in Pennsylvania and
Wesleyan University,
Connecticut. During this period, Jones wrote a stage adaptation of
Vladimir Nabokov's 1947 novel
Bend Sinister. Nabokov read and praised the dramatisation in 1955, calling Jones "a gifted young playwright" in a letter to
Edmund Wilson in which he asked Wilson to recommend people to whom he could forward the manuscript. Despite this, the adaptation ultimately went unproduced. In 1956, Jones married his first wife, the American actress Honora Fergusson, in
J. Robert Oppenheimer's garden. Once married, Jones moved back to England with his wife, intending to begin his literary career in earnest. Jones's father-in-law gave him introductions to
T. S. Eliot,
Sir Stephen Spender and
Stuart Burge. Within six months of arriving in London, Burge produced Jones's television play
The Widows of Jaffa which aired live on 13 June 1957. The play starred
Peter Wyngarde,
Leo McKern and
Harold Kasket;
The Sunday Times praised it as "written with fire and insight". Jones then wrote the television play
In a Backward Country, which the BBC produced in 1959, and which also aired live. It was based directly on his family and adapted the
Biblical story of
David and his son
Absalom, starring Dan Jackson,
Pearl Prescod, and
Wilfred Lawson. Jones's play follows a wealthy Jamaican landowner, resembling his father, and his politician son whom Jones likened to his brother Kenneth. The play is a political parable about the contemporary issue of
land reform. After Jamaica was granted
her independence from the
British Empire in 1962, the call for land reform was a major factor in the incitement of the
Jamaican political conflict. The evocation of his brother in Jones's play proved to be ill-omened, as Kenneth would go on to become Minister of Communications and Works in Jamaica's first independent
Cabinet but died under suspicious circumstances at a retreat in 1964, many suspecting him to have been murdered.
1960–1967: collaboration with Joseph Losey Jones returned to Jamaica after the production of
In a Backward Country to run
FMJ, the family's estates, for a period of six months between 1959 and 1960, taking up the duties of his brother Keith, Kenneth's twin brother. Evan found it difficult to work as a writer during this time and subsequently moved with his wife to
New York City writing a third play for the BBC before returning to London for its production. Upon arrival, however, he discovered it had been cancelled. Through the American pianist
Julius Katchen, a close friend of Jones's from his Haverford days, Jones was recommended to
Joseph Losey, who had been
subpoenaed by the
House Un-American Activities Committee while in
Europe and had chosen to ignore the summons, settling in England. Losey had previously seen
In a Backward Country on television and mentioned to Katchen that he wanted to meet the writer. Losey then found Jones outside
South Kensington tube station, apparently by chance, and commissioned him to rewrite
The Damned (released 1962) the same evening. He planned to begin shooting the film two weeks hence; Jones moved in with him and delivered the redrafted script in time.
The Damned was a
science fiction picture produced by
Hammer Film, adaptating H. L. Lawrence's 1960 novel
Children of Light. It has subsequently been discussed with reference to
Katsuhiro Otomo's
anime film
Akira (1988), both of which deal with
nuclear anxiety, motorcycle gang culture and present
posthuman children as victims of militarised science. Losey and Jones next worked on
Eva (released before
The Damned, also in 1962), a project initially offered to
Jean-Luc Godard. The screenplay was an adaptation of
James Hadley Chase's novel
Eve (1945) and took additional inspiration from
Raymond Chandler.
Hugo D. Butler, another
blacklisted person, was initially tasked with adapting the novel. Losey, however, replaced him with Jones as he felt Butler's vision was too rooted the aesthetics of
Hollywood noir and that Jones could help him place the film within a more "discursively confessional,
auteur-based cinema". Losey decided that he and Jones should retreat to
Italy and then move into his friend
Hardy Krüger's house in
Lugano,
Switzerland, to write. However, Losey at this time was still considered a
persona non grata and had previously been denied entry to Italy several times. Through an associate of the
gangster Albert Dimes, whom Losey had been introduced to by
Sir Stanley Baker, passage to Italy was arranged. In Lugano, Losey made sexual advances to Jones, which he declined.
Eva was described by Losey as a "baroque" film: a
romance set in
Venice, Italy, starring Baker and
Jeanne Moreau, with an intended runtime of around 165 minutes. Jones regarded Moreau as "the finest actress" he worked with in his career but shared Losey's disappointment with the final film, which had been extensively cut on the insistence of the film's producers, the
Hakim brothers, who objected to Jones's deviations from the original novel, as well as re-
scored, with its original
Billie Holiday soundtrack also being cut. Jones's collaboration with Losey achieved the latter's aim to have his newer work be considered alongside that of film-makers such Godard and
Michelangelo Antonioni: Jones recalled an incident in a café on the
Rive Gauche, Paris, where he overheard a group of French
cinephiles discussing the deeper meanings of he and Losey's films. He interjected, attempting to explain how material constraints had led to many of what they believed were tasteful artistic decisions, comments which only served to infuriated them. In 1962, Jones and his wife divorced by mutual consent and he returned to London alone to write "The Lament of the Banana Man". "The Lament of the Banana Man" seemingly brought Jones back to his preoccupation with the
sociopolitical dynamics of his home country. In 1962, he wrote
The Spectators, which ran for a week at the Guildford Theatre in
Surrey. The play was a serious treatment of the relationship between tourists and Jamaicans, a dichotomy that was the premise of his earlier poem "The Song of the Banana Man". Jones also wrote the television play
Return to Look Behind for
ITV, who produced it in 1963–64, about the troubled return of a Jamaican immigrant who had spent much time in England. During this same period, Jones wrote
The Madhouse on Castle Street for the BBC, who produced it in 1963: a now
lost television play featuring the acting debut of
Bob Dylan. The play was about a
boarding house and the director,
Philip Saville, hired Dylan to play the lead. Dylan found acting to be difficult, however; so Jones rewrote his script to accommodate Dylan as a musician, playing the part of the
chorus. After filming, Dylan consulted Jones and Saville for their opinions on his then unreleased single "
Blowin' in the Wind" (1963), which he performed for them at Saville's home. In 1963, Jones also met his second wife, the English actress Joanna Napper (known professionally as
Joanna Vogel), when they met eyes at a party; Jones almost came to blows with another man over which of them would drive her home, but prevailed. Jones and Losey's fourth and final project together was
Modesty Blaise (1966), a
spy comedy based on
Peter O'Donnell and
Jim Holdaway's
eponymous comic strip, starring
Monica Vitti. Jones wrote the screenplay to be a
Surrealistic parody of the
James Bond films, attracting the attention of
Harry Saltzman and
Albert R. Broccoli. The production was fraught with Jones rewriting large portions of the script during shooting; and, although he was uncredited,
Harold Pinter, another of Losey's friends and frequent collaborators, made additional contributions to the script, likely due to Jones and Losey having conflicting ideas on the project. Jones expressed his unhappiness with the final film, stating that he thought it was "dreadful" and "embarrassing", though the film achieved a
cult status, going on to be a major influence on the
Austin Powers film series. Jones offered Losey his screenplay
All the Angels (1968) and interested he and
Dame Elizabeth Taylor in another,
White Witch of Rose Hall, an adaptation of his earlier one-act play written at Haverford, though neither came to fruition. After the production of
Modesty Blaise had ended, Saltzman and Broccoli offered Jones the task of adapting
Len Deighton's 1963
espionage novel Funeral in Berlin. It was the second in a series of films where
Sir Michael Caine would play the spy
Harry Palmer. The director,
Guy Hamilton, planned the film meticulously, an approach that was in direct opposition to Losey's, who preferred to "make the film up as he went along" and to keep his writers—such as Jones, Pinter and
Tennessee Williams—on hand while filming as he felt they "contributed genius". This was Jones's first experience writing for a more impersonal big-budget production and he was surprised to find that his role ended once filming started. In 1967, Jones wrote the play
Go Tell it on Table Mountain for the BBC's
Thirty-Minute Theatre series (1965–73). The play was later performed on stage in 1970, first at The Little Theatre in
Kingston produced by the Jamaican Theatre Company, with Jones waiving his rights to
royalties, and then as part of the Richmond Fringe Festival, where it was the
Orange Tree Theatre's inaugural production. At the Orenge Tree, the play was so popular that director
Sam Walters was forced to make the impromptu decision to put on back-to-back performances on its opening night. The play took
Rhodesia as its setting, on the verge of the state's 1965
Unilateral Declaration of Independence, and follows a group of black actors in their attempt to improvise a melodrama based on the ongoing racial turmoil. The situation is complicated by the arrival of a white actor, blurring the lines between reality and fiction.
1969–1971: collaboration with Ted Kotcheff Jones's next great partnership was with the Canadian director
Ted Kotcheff, with whom Jones made two controversial and critically acclaimed
cult classics. In 1969 Jones wrote
Two Gentlemen Sharing, adapting David Stuart Leslie's 1963 novel of the same name, writing about a successful black Caribbean man and a white Englishman belonging to an impoverished
gentry family. Both were educated at Oxford and are fascinated with the other's background. The film explores
fetishisation,
homosexuality and
racial politics, receiving an
X certificate due to the censors fearing it would incite
race riots. The
British Film Institute (BFI) have since rehabilitated and re-released the film, regarding it as a lost classic and giving it an honourable mention among their selection of the "10 Great British Gay Films". The two would then collaborate on
Wake in Fright, adapting
Kenneth Cook's 1961
novel of the same name. Around 1963, Dirk Bogarde had optioned Cook's novel and brought it to the attention of Joseph Losey, hiring Jones directly to write the script. Sufficient funds were unable to be raised and the project was brought to Kotcheff via
Morris West. The film follows John Grant, an English schoolteacher who loses his money at
two-up and becomes beholden to the residents of the
outback town of Bundanyabba. It is a disturbing
psychological thriller that features shocking uncensored footage of a real
Kangaroo hunt.
Wake in Fright would come to be regarded as the first important work of the
Australian New Wave and is generally considered the movement's finest film. The film premiered at
Cannes Film Festival in 1971 and was nominated for the
Palme d'Or. Until 2009, the film was thought to be lost but miraculously a negative in good condition was found in
Pittsburgh and painstakingly remastered. It was re-released the same year at Cannes where it was again met with universal acclaim. It was selected as a Cannes Classic by
Martin Scorsese, who championed the film, and it remains one of only two films to have ever been presented at the Festival twice.
1973–1981: later work for the BBC and in Hollywood In 1973, Jones was asked to rewrite
Brian G. Hutton's
horror film Night Watch to make the lead actress Elizabeth Taylor's part more to her liking. Jones obliged, finding Taylor's eccentricities amusing. He explained in an interview that he had written Taylor's character as murdering someone and fleeing the country. Taylor then ordered from her designer a costume to wear while murdering and another to wear while fleeing, requesting Jones rewrite the scene again to give her time to change. Jones was then approached by an old friend from Oxford, the producer Christopher Ralling, to write an episode of a
documentary drama about the
transatlantic slave trade which would be jointy released by the BBC and
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the US. He agreed, on the condition that he was given creative control of the entire
limited series—Ralling accepted. The project would be called
The Fight Against Slavery and take two years to produce, it took Jones a year to research, with the aid of an assistant, and Ralling another year to film, being released in 1975. Jones also wrote, with the aid of
Terence Brady, an illustrated book that served as a companion to the series, which was also published by the BBC. Jones considered the project his
magnum opus, introducing each episode of the series in person. The project was groundbreaking as a more nuanced history of the slave trade, with the academic Martin Stollery suggesting it may have been the first piece of British television to depict
Olaudah Equiano since his literary rediscovery in the 1960s. Despite being awarded the
Martin Luther King Memorial Prize in 1976,
The Fight Against Slavery was somewhat overshadowed by the popularity of
Alex Haley's novel
Roots (1976) and its television adaptation, which American audiences found more entertaining. However, the Jones's series has since been re-evaluated by critics and academics who have recognised it as the more "cerebral" and "erudite" offering, anticipating Haley's later
melodrama. Around 1975, Jones was invited to write a
biographical film about
Muhammad Ali, living for a week in Ali's home and accompanying him to
Watts,
Los Angeles, to speak motivationally at the
ghetto's schools. Although a script was completed, there was a failure to raise sufficient funds and the project was halted. Jones then wrote
The Man with the Power for the BBC's
Playhouse in 1977, a television play about a black immigrant labourer, Boysie Fuller, who experiences an awakening of latent
psychic powers; and, in 1981, the first episode of
The Racing Game, a
horse racing crime series adapted from
Dick Francis's novels. Between 1979 and 1980, he also wrote
Kangaroo, released in 1986, adapting
D. H. Lawrence's
eponymous novel from 1923. Jones's next film was his only major foray into Hollywood, a part of the industry he had chosen to avoid so as to live and work in London. Jones wrote the script for
John Huston's
Escape to Victory (1981), starring Caine,
Max von Sydow,
Sylvester Stallone and the
Brazilian footballer
Pelé. The film was a
sports drama set in a
prisoner of war camp during the
Second World War. Jones had been attached to the project through his connection to Hutton who was originally intended to direct the film. The
Polish writer Yabo Yablonsky had previously written a version of the script, though Jones rewrote it completely once he took over the project.
1983–2006: later career and novels After almost 30 years of working as a screenwriter, Jones embarked upon a passion project of his: a
biographical picture on the
jockey Bob Champion that charted his recovery from cancer to his win at the
Grand National. The film was named
Champions (1983) and starred
Sir John Hurt and
Edward Woodward. Jones felt attracted to the Champion's story as his mother, Gladys, and his elder brother, Keith, had both died of cancer in previous years. Jones also had a love of horses, which he bred on the FMJ Estates and trained for
Caymanas Park. The film in its original incarnation was 135 minutes long and Jones regarded it as "the most wonderful thing [he]'d ever seen". However, like
Eva, it was cut down by half an hour. In the mid-1980s, feeling that he was missing out on the writing of prose, Jones began to write his semi-autobiographical novel,
Stone Haven, first published by the
Institute of Jamaica in 1993. The novel revolves around the Newtons, a fictionalised version of his own family.
The Gleaner reported that Hector Wynter, in his speech at the book launch, said:[T]he novel which recounts the story of an affluent Portland family "contributes the novelesque and the historian with strong and beautiful descriptions of Hector's River and Manchioneal. Evan uses history constructively, and gives us an excellent insight into rural life, particularly in Portland, and the mixture of races".
Stone Haven has come to be regarded as "a classic of modern
West Indian literature"; and has been recommended by the writers
Ishion Hutchinson and
Ian Thomson as an aid to understanding
Jamaican history. As a historical novel with its basis in
memoir, it has also been used as an important academic source. The novel, with relation to upper-class Jamaican society, was interpreted alongside the works of other Jamaican writers, such as H. G. de Lisser and
Anthony C. Winkler, in
Kim Robinson-Walcott's text
Out of Order! (2006), although Jones criticised the study as being overly preoccupied with race, ignoring the human condition as a whole. Also in 2006, the novel was used by the
architect Brian J. Hudson to interrogate the social function of the
veranda in Jamaican culture. During this time, Jones also returned to the subject of Australia, writing a screenplay about the 1629 wreck of the
Batavia, a
Dutch East Indian flagship. Jones became an expert on her history, identifying her wreck as the first events of
Australian history. Jones's second novel,
Alonso and the Drug Baron (2006), is a
crime novel influenced by
blaxploitation and the Afro-Caribbean folk
mythology figure of
Anansi. nominated by
Trinidad and Tobago's
National Library. == Other activities ==