Associated with the film industry for over fifty years, Hughes was
a television playwright and novelist. Most of his films were crime thrillers,
including a bizarre version of Macbeth transposed to American gangland,
Joe Macbeth (1955). The success of The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960)
with Peter Finch led to bigger-budget projects. His most ambitious work
was Cromwell (1970), in which the dictator of the Commonwealth was seen
as a seventeenth-century Castro, leading his freedom fighters. Hughes
did score back-to-back successes with the bond spoof Casino
Royale (1967) and Disney's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). Later
he directed Alfie Darling (1975), a 70s sex-comedy follow-up to the
Oscar-nominated Alfie
(1966).
