Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 18

Page 18 PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS Saturday, Feb. 20, 1988 Japanese (Prison Freed His RHusei TelevlsionJames Clavell lived a lifetime in 3 years as a POW TUOTHL'MBSUP! AWONDERFLtTIME Then, in 1960, in the midst of a successful career as a screenwriter (the original version of "The with Vincent Price), for reasons Clavell can't explain, stories about Changi began to spill out of him. When a Writer's Guild strike gave him unexpected time off, he locked himself in a room, determined to write at least five pages of a Changi-based novel. Three months later, he'd finished "King Rat" And so began Clavell's "Asian saga," a series of novels that would make him one of the wealthiest and best-known writers on the planet. By BOB WISEHART Special to the Daily News Qn the early days of World War TI, young Capt.

James Clavell of the British Royal Artillery was shot in the face and captured by the Japanese. He spent three years starved and brutalized in Changi, an infamous POW camp near Singapore where 14 out of every IS prisoners died before the war's end. For 15 years, through many bad nights, worse dreams and the occasional urge to raid garbage cans for food, Clavell talked to no one about what happened there. AT THE CAGE MOONSTRUCK PGM swrspua TWCS: INKS: mmw. I I I t.f HSi J-K 5 fTHC COHNEB Of 1 5:40.

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8:30 410:15 $3.00 TILL 12:30 P.M 1 7eimpi tiaiTU tispjt SENIOR CITIZENS $3.00 ALL TIMES tMM.f.l.!l.!:li:l ITRUaTTI fx W3I9 TT XXL ERIC TWIN IARCUV SQUARE KOG Garrett ito.U Dart 'fil'SlisSHIUS arm 13 NtWJERSCr a AMC MARLTON 8 V.t 1cm mac SCC DEPTFORD MAUS OeptlonlCarfHM lOpaosde Sears Mo) DO-AWARE ERICS TRI-STATE MAU a AMC ANDORRA I BR IN MAWD TWIN LaKStErPe alBryiMawAK a AMC GRANITE RUN BaitnnrePM At Grante ftw Ma a AMC LEO MALL 2 AMC ORLEANS 8 AMC 309 CINEMA I baal3BEi it At 63 "Brilliant and absolutely terrifying!" Michael Medved, SNEAK PREVIEWS "An ambitious, entertaining feat of the imagination!" Kevin Thomas, LOS ANGELES TIMES From "King Rat" to "Tai-Pan," "Shogun," "Noble House" and "Whirlwind," each novel was a global best-seller and the first four be-came either a movie or miniseries. Though he continued to work in films after writing "King Rat" writer-producer-director of "To Sir With Love" and screenwriter for "The Great Escape" Clavell eventually devoted his entire life to the Asian saga, researching and writing; then cutting deals for movies or miniseries based on what he'd researched and written. John Rhys-Davies, the bearded British actor with the booming voice who played the blustery Portuguese navigator in the "Shogun" mini-series and shows up again in NBC's eight-hour version of "Noble House" beginning Thursday night (at 9 on Channel 3), knows Clavell as well as anyone outside the writer's family. "But I'm not sure anyone really knows him," admitted Rhys-Davies. "There's a remoteness that exists in all the survivors of those camps.

They know the weakness and folly of man in the most elemental way. think his devotion to the subject of Asia is his way of coming to terms with what he went through." "Noble House," a potboiling yarn of buccaneering capitalism in modern-day Hong Kong, continues through Wednesday (at 9 each night), starring Pierce Brosnan, Deborah Raf-fin, Ben Masters, John Houseman; Denholm Elliott and Nancy Kwan. As with "Shogun," which was seen by more viewers than any miniseries except "Roots," Clavell was executive producer and reassembled most of the "Shogun" production team for "Noble House." Speaking by telephone from his home in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was nursing a "twisted back and buggered knee" from a fall on the ice a few days before, Clavell acknowledged that there's probably something valid to Rhys-Davies' amateur psychoanalysis. "I think it was Hemingway who observed that the best training for a writer was to be involved in war," he said. "You learn what's important in life; what truly matters, if only to yourself.

Changi was my university, not my prison. It's where I learned the art of surviving, the most important course of all." Clavell chuckled that no one should dismiss the possibility he doesn't know what he's talking about and just makes it up as he goes along. As he said, "I tell various people various different stories just to keep the juices flowing. That should give your readers something to think about." Even so, beneath the congenial veneer there's a man who knows what he wants and how to get it. In his moviemaking days, Clavell was known as a tough pro who always finished on time and under budget.

Even now, 21 years later, he can recite the important numbers from "To Sir With Love," from the $625,000 it cost to the $25 million it grossed. The 63-year-old novelist doesn't even let his own work stand in the way. Writers can be ferociously protective of their work in the meat grinder of TV and movies, where the written word often has little in common with what winds up on screen. ERIC TWIN CHESTNUT HILL me Market Square Crrttendei St A Merraard Lfl. ERIC 4 CONCOROVILLE Rl 20? kt US 14 322 ERIC 4 FEASTERVILLE Street Pi.

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