Alexander Mackendrick; British Director

Alexander (Sandy) Mackendrick, director of such disparate films as early Alec Guinness comedies and the decadent tale of an American struggle for power, has died.

F. X. Feeney, film critic for L.A. Weekly, said Mackendrick, the former dean of the film school at CalArts in Valencia, was 81 when he died of the complications of flu Wednesday night in Los Angeles. Feeney was a friend and former student.

From his directing debut in “Whisky Galore” in 1948 (released in the United States as “Tight Little Island), to the Alec Guinness films “The Man in the White Suit” and “The Ladykillers,” which gave Peter Sellers his first major film role, Mackendrick became a major force in modern British comedy.

Son of a draftsman who died in the flu epidemic of 1918, Mackendrick was born in Boston but moved with his mother to Scotland where he attended the Glasgow School of Art.

He struggled as a free-lance writer of film scripts, worked on documentaries for the British Ministry of Information and wrote leaflets and drew cartoons in Italy for the Allies during World War II.

After the war, he was given an opportunity to direct at Britain’s Ealing Studios, famed for mining the resurgent vein of postwar British comedy.

There he helped mold the careers of Guinness, Sellers and an elderly actress named Katie Jackson, who many critics said stole “The Ladykillers” from Guinness.

For Ealing, he also directed “Mandy,” titled “The Crash of Silence” in America, a poignant tale of a young deaf girl learning to speak and “The Maggie,” called “High and Dry” in the United States. The latter picture was praised as an insightful look at the crafty Scot character.

Mackendrick moved to the United States in 1955, and two years later made “Sweet Smell of Success,” starring Burt Lancaster as a megalomaniac newspaper columnist and Tony Curtis as a deal-making press agent.

With dialogue by Clifford Odets, the picture was praised for its photography (by James Wong Howe) and its gritty portrayal of moral deterioration.

He directed three more films: “A Boy 10 Feet Tall,” “A High Wind in Jamaica” and “Don’t Make Waves.”

In 1969, Mackendrick was named dean of the film school at CalArts. He resigned in 1978 but remained a teacher until he died.

His years teaching were the most rewarding and exciting for him, his wife, Hilary, said in a telephone interview with Associated Press.

“He found his true metier and that was teaching,” she said. “His last 10 years were the most fulfilling.”

“‘His remarkable critical faculty was more appropriate to teaching than to filmmaking perhaps.”

Mackendrick also is survived by three sons.