British filmmaker Ronald Neame, seen here in 2000, has died at age 99.British filmmaker Ronald Neame, seen here in 2000, has died at age 99. (Chris Pizzello/Associated Press)

Prolific British filmmaker Ronald Neame, whose career spanned six decades and 70 movies, has died at age 99.

His wife, Donna, told The Associated Press that Neame died in a Los Angeles hospital on Wednesday, six weeks after breaking his leg in a fall.

"He was such a talented man, and very good at making huge and bold decisions," Shirley MacLaine, who starred with Michael Caine in the 1966 film Gambit, which Neame directed, told the Los Angeles Times.

Neame began his career in 1929, at age 17, as a clapper on Alfred Hitchcock's crime thriller Blackmail, the first British film to include sound.

He spent the next several years working as a cameraman on low-budget British films, and by the mid-1930s had moved on to more prominent assignments such as Pygmalion, the 1938 film directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Leslie Howard.

In the 1940s, he began making his mark as a producer and writer. David Lean's 1946 Great Expectations, which Neame produced and co-wrote, won Academy Awards for best art/set direction and best cinematography.

Neame's first success as a director was The Card, a 1952 comedy adapted from the novel by Arnold Bennett and starring Alec Guinness.

Favourite film

Tunes of Glory was his favourite film. The 1960 movie that he directed starred Alec Guinness and John Mills, in a story about two rival officers in a Scottish military regiment. The actors gave what are considered to be among their finest performances.

He went on to direct the acclaimed 1969 movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which earned Maggie Smith an Oscar for best actress for her portrayal of an unconventional school teacher.

In 1972, Neame directed The Poseidon Adventure. The big-budget, special-effects-laden motion picture was panned by the critics, but was a box office hit and developed a cult following.

His final feature-length film, Foreign Body, a comedy starring Victor Banerjee, was released in 1986.

As a director, Neame shunned the limelight. "I was brought up in a school in which it was an unwritten law that there was no camera," he told London's Telegraph newspaper in an interview.

"You gave the actors everything you could to let them develop their characters. Now directors draw attention to themselves, which I find reprehensible. I want to draw attention to the actor."

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times last year, Lawrence Turman, who produced Judy Garland's final film I Could Go on Singing, described its director Neame as "a real long-lived, old-timey pro who came up the hard way doing everything. A lovely man, by the way — very gentle, never somehow raised his voice or got angry."

Neame was nominated for three Oscars.

He is survived by his second wife, Donna; his son, Christopher; three grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

With files from The Associated Press