CLARKE, T.E.B.

born June 7, 1907, Watford, Hertfordshire, Eng. died Feb. 11, 1989, London in full Thomas Ernest Bennett Clarke British screenwriter who wrote the scripts for some of the most popular British comedies of the post-World War II period. Clarke worked as a free-lance journalist and novelist before joining Ealing Studios as a writer in 1943. He scripted several dramatic motion pictures, notably The Blue Lamp (1950), but received international fame for such comedies as the Oscar-nominated Passport to Pimlico (1949), Hue and Cry (1950), the Academy Award-winning The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), and Barnacle Bill (1957). After Ealing Studios closed (1957), Clarke turned to Hollywood, where his work included screenplays for A Tale of Two Cities (1958) and Sons and Lovers (1960), which brought him his third Academy Award nomination. In the mid-1960s he gave up script writing to write novels and an autobiography, This Is Where I Came In (1974).