Michael Robert Winner (30 October 1935 – 21 January 2013) was a British filmmaker. He is known for directing numerous action, thriller, and black comedy films in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, including several collaborations with actors Oliver Reed and Charles Bronson.
Winner's best-known works include Death Wish (1974) and its first two sequels Death Wish II (1982) and Death Wish 3 (1985), the World War II comedy Hannibal Brooks (1969), the hitman thriller The Mechanic (1972), the supernatural horror film The Sentinel (1977), the neo-noir The Big Sleep (1978), the satirical comedy Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), and the Revisionist Westerns Lawman (1971) and Chato's Land (1972).
Winner was known as a media personality in the United Kingdom, appearing regularly on television talk programmes and publishing a restaurant review column for The Sunday Times. He was also a founder of the Police Memorial Trust.
Winner was born at 40 Belsize Grove, Belsize Park, Hampstead, London, the only child of Jewish parents George Joseph Winner (1910–1975), of Russian-Jewish origin, and Helen (née Zlota; January 1906 – May 1984), who was born in Poland. His mother had emigrated to the UK in 1932 with her parents and a brother, and later anglicised her name from ‘Chana Rosa’ to ‘Helen Rose’. His father—who was a Freemason and belonged to the same Masonic Lodge as Tommy Cooper— was a businessman and company director responsible for running a branch of the Winner's clothing chain founded by his father, who became a naturalised British citizen in 1910. His mother died at the age of 78, in 1984.
Winner was educated at St Christopher School, Letchworth, and Downing College, Cambridge, where he read law and economics. He also edited the university's student newspaper, Varsity, and was the youngest ever editor up to that time, both in age and in terms of his university career (being only in the second term of his second year). Winner had earlier written a newspaper column, "Michael Winner's Showbiz Gossip", in the Kensington Post from the age of fourteen. The first issue of Showgirl Glamour Revue in 1955 had him writing another film and show-business gossip column, "Winner's World". Such jobs allowed him to meet and interview several leading film personalities, including James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. He also wrote for the New Musical Express.
Winner claimed in his memoirs that he avoided National Service by pretending to be a homosexual.
Winner directed his first travelogue, This is Belgium (1957), which was largely shot on location in East Grinstead. It was financed by his father. Later, he wrote, produced and directed a short, The Square (1957), starring A. E. Matthews, and which again was financed by Winner's father.
Winner's first on-screen feature credit was earned as a writer for the low-budget crime film Man with a Gun (1958) directed by Montgomery Tully. He went on to direct the shorts Danger, Women at Work (1959) and Watch the Birdie (1959), and was Associate Producer on Floating Fortress (1959), produced by Harold Baim.
Winner's first feature as director was Shoot to Kill (1960), which he also wrote. Dermot Walsh starred. He followed this with Climb Up the Wall (1960), which was essentially a series of music acts presented by Jack Jackson, but which Winner nonetheless wrote and directed.
Winner's third feature as director was the thriller Murder on the Campus (1961), also known as Out of the Shadow, which Winner also wrote and helped produce. Dermot Walsh starred once again, together with Terence Longdon. Shortly afterwards, Winner wrote and directed the short Girls Girls Girls! (1961) which was narrated by Jackson, and directed the short feature Old Mac (1961), written by Richard Aubrey and starring Charles Lamb, Vi Stevens and Tania Mallet.
Winner directed the shorts Haunted England (1961), It's Magic (1962), and Behave Yourself (1962), the latter of which was based on Emily Post's Book of Manners, and whose cast included Jackson and Dennis Price.
Winner achieved success with a musical he directed, Play It Cool (1962), starring Billy Fury and Michael Anderson Jr., and which was distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated.
Winner's next feature, Some Like It Cool (1962), is the tale of a young woman who introduces her prudish husband and in-laws to the joys of nudism. Filmed at Longleat, Winner was afraid the sight of bare flesh would offend the magistrate for the area, so he confided his worries to the landowner, the Marquess of Bath. 'Don't worry,' said the Marquess, 'I am the local magistrate.' The film cost £9,000 and Winner said it made its money back in a week.
Winner went on to update Gilbert and Sullivan, writing the screenplay and directing a version of The Mikado titled The Cool Mikado (1963), starring Frankie Howerd and Stubby Kaye and which was produced by Harold Baim.
Winner's first significant project was West 11 (1963), a realistic tale of London drifters starring Alfred Lynch, Eric Portman and Diana Dors, and which was based on an adaptation by Hall and Waterhouse of Laura Del-Rivo's novel The Furnished Room (1961).
Winner's film The System (1964), also known as The Girl-Getters, began a partnership with actor Oliver Reed that would last for six films over a 25-year period, and was based on a script by Peter Draper. Winner would later receive an offer from Columbia to direct a comedy, You Must Be Joking! (1965). It starred American actor Michael Callan and a supporting cast that included Lionel Jeffries and Denholm Elliott, while Winner also wrote the script.
Winner was reunited with Reed on The Jokers (1967), a comedy where Reed was teamed with Michael Crawford. It was based on a script by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais from a story by Winner for his own company, Scimitar Films Limited (for Universal's English operations, then under Jay Kanter). The resulting movie was a popular hit.
Winner and Reed then made the comedy-drama I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967), co-starring Orson Welles, Carol White and Harry Andrews, also for Scimitar. Draper wrote the script, which was a spoof of the advertising world, and the film was also done for Universal.