Movies This article is more than 15 years oldObituaryJonathan Bates
This article is more than 15 years oldSought-after sound editor nominated for an Oscar for GandhiJonathan Bates, who has died aged 68, was the most highly regarded film sound editors of his generation. With an unmatched reputation for producing imaginative and complex soundtracks, he was constantly in demand by directors including Roman Polanski, Otto Preminger, Lewis Gilbert and, most significantly, Richard Attenborough. He was renowned for his painstaking and unswerving dedication to his work, his unflappability, his generosity and his ability to work good-humouredly, often under very great pressure.
The youngest son of the writer HE Bates, Jonathan was born in the bedroom of the house his parents had converted from a disused granary in Little Chart, Kent. His childhood was unusually comfortable. His father was enjoying his first huge commercial successes as a writer: the novel Fair Stood the Wind for France was an international bestseller on publication in 1944.
Bates was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, and had early ambitions to be a jet pilot. But his father's friendship with the director David Lean, formed when together they wrote the screenplay for Lean's Summer Madness, had a strong influence on the young Bates, and by his early teens he determined to work in films.
Shortly after his 16th birthday, his father arranged for him to work as a trainee at Ealing Studios, by then based at MGM Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, a job that required Bates, in his own words, to "unlock the gates every morning, switch on the lights and get the kettle on". His very earliest memories included making tea for Alec Guinness on the final Ealing comedy, Barnacle Bill. By the end of 1958 he had switched from the stages to the cutting rooms and was beginning to make contacts with editors and directors. He remained at Ealing under contract until the studios closed in May 1959.
Soon afterwards, he found an early mentor in the great editor Gordon Stone, who helped him get his first job as a freelance assistant dubbing editor on Kidnapped (1959). Stone provided him with a succession of opportunities over the next few years. In 1961 he worked as an assistant on the classic Whistle Down the Wind, where he began two lifelong relationships. Firstly, and most importantly, with his future wife Jennifer Thompson, who was also an assistant editor, and secondly with Attenborough, the film's producer.
In 1962, at the staggeringly young age of 22, Bates gained his first credit as a sound editor, on Station Six-Sahara, directed by another old Ealing contact, Seth Holt. In 1965, again thanks to Stone, he got his first job on a major international picture, the star-studded, now much-loved Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. During filming, Stone died.
Bates was rarely out of work over the following 40 years. In the 1960s he worked with Preminger on Bunny Lake is Missing and with Brian Hutton on the war classics Where Eagles Dare and Kelly's Heroes. Polanski summed up his work on Macbeth (1971) thus: "the pigs were prodigious, arrows impressive, footsteps fantastic, sword clashes sensational and post-synching beyond belief".
In 1972 Bates dubbed Young Winston, the first of his films with Attenborough. They were to work together on all nine of Attenborough's subsequent movies. Their relationship was very close: each was a perfectionist, and understood the other's need for creative freedom. Attenborough later said that Bates was one of only "two technicians he would not consider making a film without ... He was a master of his art."
In 1975 he worked on Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express. Post-production was intense. On one day, Bates took charge of five one-hour, one-off dialogue slots with, in order, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud, Albert Finney and Sean Connery. By the end of the day, all of their dialogue had to be perfect.
His services were, by now, sought after all over the world. In the late 1970s he worked on a succession of commercially successful films, including International Velvet, Flash Gordon and The Eagle Has Landed. In the 1980 and 90s, in addition to Attenborough's A Chorus Line, Chaplin, Shadowlands and Cry Freedom, he provided soundtracks for Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa, Lewis Gilbert's Shirley Valentine and, in a triumphant return to his Ealing beginnings, Charlie Crichton's comedy A Fish Called Wanda. Bates was nominated for an Oscar for Gandhi, and won a Bafta for his work on Cry Freedom.
Always in demand for his wise advice, gentle humour and comprehensive cricketing knowledge, he came out of retirement, at Attenborough's request, to dub one last movie, Closing the Ring (2007).
He is survived by his wife Jennifer, son Tim and daughter Catherine.
Jonathan Bates, sound editor, born November 1 1939; died October 31 2008
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