British director Jack Lee studied photography at Regent Street Polytechnic, and in 1938 he was hired by GPO Film as a documentary cameraman. He shot a lot of footage, at great personal risk, during the Nazi bombing campaign during World War II against London, known as "The Blitz", and began his directorial career with two wartime documentaries, The Pilot Is Safe (1941) and Ordinary People (1942). He made his first feature film in 1947, The Woman in the Hall (1947), followed by a picture about the sport of speedway racing, Once a Jolly Swagman (1949). In 1950 he directed the well-received The Wooden Horse (1950), about British prisoners in a German POW camp plotting an escape.

In 1963 he moved to Australia, and shot several films there. His wife, Isabel Kidman, was a distant relative of actress Nicole Kidman.