Director Peter Yates was born on July 24, 1929 in the village of Ewshot, near Aldershot, Hampshire, England to Colonel Robert Yates and his wife, Constance. He attended Charterhouse School and later the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, intending to be an actor. In the late 1940s, Yates acted in regional theater around the United Kingdom before becoming interested in direction. He spent a few seasons as a racecar driver (which would come in handy in several of his films) and at one point was the manager for famed British driver Stirling Moss.

Yates entered the film business working on foreign film dubbing and became an assistant director beginning in 1958 with uncredited work on The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), the Laurence Olivier film The Entertainer (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961), The Guns of Navarone (1961) and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961). Yates directed two plays in 1961, The American Dream and The Death of Bessie Smith at the Royal Court in London.

In 1963, he directed his first film, Summer Holiday, starring Britain's most popular singer, Cliff Richard. Yates got the job when Ken Russell dropped out of the project because he didn't like the script. The film was a musical confection featuring Richard as one of four London double-decker bus drivers who makes a deal with London Transport that they will turn a bus into a mobile hotel and drive it across Europe. If they succeed, they will be put in charge of a fleet of buses. Barbra Streisand was considered for the role of the American singer "Barbara", who stows away on the bus, but the producers realized that she was too big a star for the role and the part went to Lauri Peters. Yates would work with Streisand a decade later in For Pete's Sake (1974). Cliff Richard had a number one record in the UK with the title track to Summer Holiday, and in 2007 saluted the film by launching a fragrance called Summer Holiday.

For two years, Yates directed several episodes of the television series The Saint (1962-1969) starring Roger Moore, while doing a feature film One Way Pendulum (1964), starring Eric Sykes and George Cole. From 1965 to 1967, Yates directed episodes of the television series Secret Agent, a revamped version of Danger Man. In 1967, Yates helmed the feature film Robbery, based on the 1963 Royal Mail robbery known as "The Great Train Robbery." The film included an intricate car chase, which was noticed by actor Steve McQueen, whose production company was in pre-production of a film called Bullitt (1968). McQueen was impressed and Yates was hired to direct.

Working with McQueen, an actor known for his tough guy persona, was a hair-raising experience. McQueen played a San Francisco detective who pursues murder suspects through the streets of the city. The climactic car chase has become a classic and an influence on every car chase to come. While McQueen did not do all of his own stunt driving in the film, he did drive in many of the sequences. Yates rode with him in the dark green Mustang during one shot. "I was in the back of the Mustang and Steve was going about 120 mph. We came to the last downhill section and when we got to the top of the hill, Steve was still going pretty fast. I tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'We can slow down now, we're almost out of film.' Steve very calmly said, 'We can't. There aren't any brakes.'" McQueen stopped the car by driving up an embankment. "If it was anyone else, we might not have made it. Steve was a great driver." Bullitt earned Yates a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television) Award nomination as Best Director.

While Bullitt was a hit and Yates could have gone on directing action films, he made the conscious decision not to be stuck in any particular genre. "After Bullitt, I was determined not to do another action film. That may have been a mistake, but my theory was, perhaps selfishly, it's much more interesting to be involved with different kinds of genres. If you're just one kind of director, people will get tired of you. But if you make different films all the time, hopefully you'll be judged on talent."

Yates' follow-up to Bullitt was the romantic drama John and Mary (1969), starring Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow as two young people who meet, have sex, and fall in love before learning each others' names. Throughout the 1970s, Yates continued his deliberate move between genres: he directed Peter O'Toole and his then wife, Siân Phillips in the World War II film Murphy's War (1971), Robert Mitchum in the Boston mob film The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), the Barbra Streisand comedy, For Pete's Sake, the medical comedy-drama Mother, Jugs, and Speed (1976) with Bill Cosby, Harvey Keitel and Raquel Welch, and the deep sea skin-diving adventure The Deep (1977) that featured Jacqueline Bisset's iconic wet t-shirt shot. While Yates made several outstanding films, his refusal to allow himself to be pigeon-holed did not create a particular style for the critics to consider him as a serious auteur.

Perhaps the most beloved film Yates helmed and produced was Breaking Away (1979), the coming-of-age drama of a lower-class boy who dreams of being an Italian cyclist. Starring Dennis Christopher and Dennis Quaid, the film examines adolescence and the simmering resentment of the American class system, which is based on education and income rather than family position. Steve Tesich (whose 1977 play Passing Game had been directed by Yates) won an Academy Award for his screenplay, and Yates, actress Barbara Barrie, composer Patrick Williams, and the film were also nominated. Yates would reteam with Tesich in 1981 for the thriller Eyewitness (1981) starring Sigourney Weaver and William Hurt.

Breaking Away was not Yates' only brush with Oscar®. He directed and produced The Dresser (1983), a drama about a womanizing English actor (based on real-life actor Donald Wolfit) and his gay dresser touring the provinces with King Lear during World War II. The film was nominated for Best Picture, Yates for Best Director, Albert Finney for Best Actor, Tom Courtenay for Best Supporting Actor, and Ronald Harwood for Best Screenplay.

Throughout the next three decades, Yates continued to move between features like the sci-fi fantasy Krull (1983), the courtroom drama,Suspect (1987) with Cher and Dennis Quaid, the 1950's HUAC thriller, The House on Carroll Street (1988), the romantic action film Year of the Comet (1992), and in television films, with Don Quixote (2000), starring John Lithgow, and his final picture A Separate Peace (2004).

Yates was once asked in an interview if he minded that he would be remembered for a car chase (Bullitt) and a wet t-shirt (The Deep). He replied, "My son accused me of exactly that. He told me recently that I'd contributed two things to American culture -- the car chase and the wet T-shirt. It's better to contribute something than absolutely nothing."

When Yates passed away in London on January 9, 2011, Jacqueline Bissett was quoted as saying that he was "a very civilized and cultured man, which certainly added to his cinematic contribution. He was courageous, even intrepid, during the shooting of The Deep and Bullitt. I value the long friendship with Peter and his wife, Virginia."

by Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:
Baxter, Brian "Peter Yates obituary; Versatile British film director known for Bullitt, The Deep and Breaking Away" The Guardian 10 Jan 11
Beauchemin, Raymond "Peter Yates, Director of Summer Holiday and Bullitt" The National 15 Jan 11
Gritten, David "Peter Yates: a filmmaker of grace" The Telegraph 10 Jan 11
The Internet Movie Database Langman, Larry Destination Hollywood: The Influence of Europeans on American Filmmaking
McClellan, Dennis "Peter Yates dies at 81; director of 'Bullitt'" The Los Angeles Times 11 Jan 11
Weber, Bruce "Peter Yates, Filmmaker, Is Dead at 81" The New York Times 11 Jan 11