Aug. 2, 1963 - Director David Lean (left) and screenwriter Robert Bolt will be teamed again on a motion picture to follow the multiple Academy Award-winner, “Lawrence of Arabia.” Lean will direct and Bolt will write the screenplay for the film version of “Dr. Zhivago,” from the Nobel Prize novel by the late Boris Pasternak, in association with producer Carlo Ponti. “Lawrence,” a Columbia release, was the first film scripted by Bolt, author of the play “A Man for All Seasons.” The novel “Dr. Zhivago,” first published in 1957 in Italy, is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, and it takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and World War II. Owing to the author's independent-minded stance on the Russian Revolution of 1917, “Doctor Zhivago” was refused publication in the USSR. The manuscript was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year, an event that embarrassed and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
