Woman of Straw (1964) starring Sean Connery; and Masquerade (1965) with Cliff Robertson. He was then hired to replace Lewis Gilbert as director of Khartoum (1966), with Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier. Two films were then made for release by Paramount: Only When I Larf (1968) and the Edwardian era black comedy The Assassination Bureau (1969), again with Michael Relph; it was the 25th film they had made together. His last film was The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), which he wrote and directed, starring Roger Moore, made for EMI Films. With Moore, Dearden made three episodes of the television series The Persuaders!: Overture, Powerswitch and To the Death, Baby. He had two sons, Torquil Dearden and the screenwriter and director James Dearden. Death Dearden died on 23 March 1971 at Hillingdon Hospital, London after being involved in a road accident on the M4 motorway near Heathrow Airport, in which he suffered multiple injuries. His death was coincidentally foreshadowed in his final film, which opens with a sequence in which Roger Moore's character almost dies in a car accident after driving recklessly at high speed along the M4. Reputation The film critic David Thomson does not hold Dearden in high regard. He writes: "Dearden's films are decent, empty and plodding and his association with Michael Relph is a fair representative of the British preference for bureaucratic cinema. It stands for the underlining of obvious meaning". More positively, for Brian McFarlane, the Australian writer on film: "Dearden's films offer, among other rewards, a fascinating barometer of public taste at its most nearly consensual over three decades". Regular Ealing cinematographer Douglas Slocombe enjoyed working with Dearden personally, describing him as the 'most competent' of the directors he worked with at Ealing. Filmography References External links Criterion Collection Essay Film Reference biography Screenonline biography Fandango filmography 1911 births 1971 deaths English film directors English film producers English male screenwriters English television directors People from Westcliff-on-Sea Road incident deaths in London 20th-century English screenwriters 20th-century English male writers 20th-century English businesspeople