‘It happened, as most good topical TV features seem to happen now, on ITV’s “This Week”’ – Daily Mirror.

Fusion thought it might be interesting to learn just how these eulogies about a “This Week” item on Santo Domingo were earned. So here programme director PETER ROBINSON tells how bullets stopped him mowing his lawn.

Emotionally, at least, it all began with a satellite called Early Bird, a tune called, ‘Hey, Look Me Over’, ‘whooping’ red Indians, a New York restaurant where the waitresses didn’t wear too much, and my lawn at home in Epsom.

Early Bird was my reason for crossing the Atlantic on April 21 – to film and make technical arrangements for Rediffusion’s first programme via the satellite. It was called ‘Tonight in America’, and was transmitted on May 3, at 6.00 p.m., New York time, 11.00 p.m. in London.

‘Hey, Look Me Over’, was the title music for the show – a catchy, exhilarating tune, chosen by Cyril Bennett, the producer.

The ‘whooping’ red Indians were what we heard every time we cut to George Ffitch, on the steps of the Capitol in Washington during rehearsals – a totally inappropriate noise, funny at first, then more jarring and frightening as we came nearer and nearer to transmission time. We were connected soundwise to a Western being screened for early evening viewers! The American Broadcasting Company who provided the technical facilities did a swell job, including laying on the OB unit in Washington at 3.00 a.m. that morning, but things go wrong in the best regulated families. So we heard George’s voice only during transmission.

The restaurant with the sexy waitresses was where we went to celebrate the successful transmission of the programme in a great wash of relief and self-congratulation. It was also the place where Russell Spurr, Bryan Fitzjones and I were asked by Cyril Bennett, sober, whether we’d like to do a film piece on Santo Domingo for ‘This Week’- transmission May 13.

My lawn in Epsom was my conscience, and my therapy for the last two weeks’ work in Washington, Philadelphia and New York, the scenes of the Early Bird programme. That programme had also contained the latest news film from the Dominican Republic – a distant nebulous place, now looming large as my lawn receded.

Tuesday, May 4 – Russell took off for San Juan, Puerto Rico, the nearest airport to Santo Domingo to which the airlines now flew. I spent the day in New York buying suitable clothing for the location and trying to obtain a film crew from ABC. In the evening Russell phoned – San Juan was lovely, big hotels, swimming pools, beaches, palm trees, but Santo Domingo didn’t sound so good. Please purchase water bottles, tin plates, knife, fork, and spoon for the crew and ourselves.

Wednesday, May 5 – Bryan and I had a long conference with Jeremy Isaacs in London about the storyline and the plans for the location. Bryan was to stay in New York and do the dull and thankless job of maintaining contact with London and San Juan (whence we would send messages and exposed film), arranging interviews if necessary in Washington, and searching out historical library film. Then Jack Busch of ABC called to say that he had a crew. It had been difficult finding one – Morgan Smith (sound), Manny Longueira (camera assistant) and Ralph Mayher (cameraman).

Thursday, May 6 – at 6.30a.m. Russell and I met the crew at the naval air base at San Juan. As well as finding out the latest news from Santo Domingo and the conditions in the city, Russell had arranged with the US marines for a flight in one of their Navy Transport DC 4s. We met in a hangar together with three press men, one of whom was Roy Perrot of The Observer, and several members of the Organisation of American States, who were to travel with us. It was a self-conscious meeting. We were all tired, breakfastless and unshaven – none more so than Mayher, who had the beard as well as the stature and visage of one Fidel Castro. He wore an American field uniform and flashes on his shoulders labelled Vietnam. Apart from Russell and I none of us knew each other, or quite what we were in for. The marine colonel, Buffkins, informed us that we were going to a city where a ‘shooting war’ was going on, did we understand? Yes, we were beginning to. Here were our travel documents, which would entitle us to pass freely in the American security zone when we got there. They were important and should be carried at all times. On the one hour and 20 minute flight I tried to get acquainted with the crew, and to explain our methods of working. Ninety per cent of our shooting would be hand held, nothing would be set up or staged, and there wouldn’t be time for the usual pleasantries of light readings and sound levels. They understood. Mayher was used to it that way, Morgan Smith less so. We had three cameras, a 400-ft Auricon (for sound filming) with shoulder pod and a 100-ft Arriflex and a Bell and Howell for silent; also a small tape recorder for wild tracks. The two cameras not in current use must be kept loaded at all times, each film roll must be slated, and I would keep rough continuity sheets. ‘All righty.’ But had we got a script? No, we hadn’t got a script, but Russell would fill them in on the situation. From 1930 to 1961, the country had been ruled by the dictator, Rafael Trujillo, who, backed by the army and the big landowners, made millions for himself and his family. He was feared, hated and eventually assassinated. Chaos reigned and the rest of the Trujillo family were thrown out. A series of stop-gap governments followed, but in 1962 democratic elections were held for the first time in 30 years and Juan Bosch won a landslide victory. Bosch, a left of centre reformer, had been exiled for 25 years – now he was President. But the vested interests which prospered under Trujillo cried ‘communism’ – a military coup and Bosch was out, exiled again to Puerto Rico. A military junta took over and, in 1963 a motor car salesman, Donal Reid Cabral, backed by the army, and principally by General Wessin y Wessin became boss. On April 25, a group of younger officers, including Colonel Caamano, rebelled. They overthrew Reid Cabral and captured Santo Domingo, the capital. On the following day the Dominican air force under orders from Wessin y Wessin bombed the military barracks and the Presidential Palace. Several civilians were killed including a six-year-old child. This more than anything else probably accounts for the hatred that the Dominican people felt for Wessin y Wessin and his junta.

The biggest airlift since Berlin brought thousands of American airborne troops into the Dominican military base at San Isidro, and from there they linked up with the seaborne marines. Already there were more American service men in the Dominican Republic than in Vietnam. We had heard President Johnson in a television broadcast while we were in New York say: ‘We support no single man, or no single group of men in the Dominican Republic. Our goal is a simple one; we’re there to save the lives of our citizens, and to save the lives of our people. What began as a popular democratic revolution moved into the hands of a band of communist conspirators.’ However, the impression of the Dominican people and of the majority of the press was different. They felt that although the Americans had undoubtedly prevented a massacre they were patently siding with Wessin and the military junta against the ‘rebels’, or the ‘Constitutionalists’ as they call themselves.

The Americans had carved a military corridor which connected San Isidro airbase (where we were to land) with the Security zone around the new diplomatic quarter on the other side of Santo Domingo. This corridor cut straight through the rebel-held part of the city and the bulk of the rebel forces were penned into about two square miles of the business quarter. Already about a thousand soldiers and civilians had been killed and another thousand wounded.

When we landed at San Isidro the evidence of what Russell had said began to confront us – planes of every type; hundreds of American troops on foot and in jeeps and many others, just flown in, dossed down in the nearby hangars. We decided to try to reach the El Embajador Hotel, about 15 miles away on the other side of Santo Domingo, where we were to be accommodated with the rest of the press and television, as soon as possible. We spoke to a young US lieutenant … there would be no transport for at least two hours … OK, we’d start filming here … how about some food and a jeep in which to get round the airbase? Grab what you can – we did.

The bus to take us to the hotel was a beat-up old vehicle with all the outward appearances of a colander – it had been shot up two days before. As we moved off, Ralph saw an American pick-up, and confirmed that it was going to the hotel, jumped into the open tray in the back and filmed all the way into and through the city. The scenes were fantastic, soldiers everywhere, every kind of equipment from artillery to field hospitals, and then more troops and the occasional tank or armoured car on the shanty town street corners … the poor Dominicans trying to lead some sort of day-to-day existence, and children playing with the spent shells of yesterday’s sniping. At the hotel, the scene was equally bizarre. Surrounded by soldiers and guns, refugees, with their children and odd belongings, shacked down on the patio and in the central lobby. We went to the reception desk … there were no rooms. On to the military press office just down the corridor. We explained who we were. Yes, we could have one room for the five of us and our equipment … they would try to find others. They needn’t have bothered, Russell was in his element. Familiar faces appeared everywhere, old press friends from Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia … he’d been around the trouble spots of the world. Within half an hour he’d got promises of four more rooms by nightfall … requisitioned half a hundredweight of American ‘C’ rations and, since everyone else was drinking the hotel swimming pool, six Coca Colas – there’d be more later. As well as being an admirable quartermaster, Russell had also made his contacts to get filled in on the story on the ground. He set off into the city, and the crew and I filmed scenes in and around the hotel, ending with a military press briefing, one portion of which sounded ominous: ‘This morning at approximately 10.30 Al Burke and Doug Kennedy of the Miami Herald were wounded when they were caught in the cross fire between a US and rebel outpost. They were returning to the US line from the rebel-held section of the city when the rebels commenced firing … I want to say that all members of the American press here have repeatedly risked their lives in an effort to report fully to the people of the world all facets of the political and military situation. The tragic and unfortunate wounding of these two men should point out to everyone in the world who listens to a radio, reads a newspaper, or watches television, of the outstanding job that you courageous people are doing.’

That evening, we sat in a bedroom in the semi-darkness – the electricity flickered on and off – canning up the day’s exposed film, writing continuity sheets and deciding what to do next day. Russell had made several contacts, including one in the rebel sector, who had agreed to take us to Caamano, the rebel leader. The crew did not show immediate joy at the prospect of this. What safeguards did we have? What about the two press men who’d been shot that morning? True, but many others hadn’t been shot. First we must get a car, and write ‘press’ all over it in large letters, then, when we’d got to the rebel zone, we’d drive very slowly, five miles an hour, to the place where we were to meet our contact. Once with him we’d be OK. The crew were happier, but still sceptical. Two would go, one was doubtful. OK, sleep on it. We arranged with one of the taxi-drivers outside the hotel for a fat price to have him and his car for the next three or four days.

Friday, May 7 – we met William, our driver, at 7.00 a.m. – all of us. He drove us to the edge of the rebel sector, explained how to get to our destination, got out and suggested that we drove ourselves from now on. Russell drove, we smiled and waved out of the windows at the suspicious looking civilians and scrappily uniformed rebels standing about in doorways and at street corners. After five minutes we were lost. We decided to stop, and I got out and spoke to a rebel holding an old carbine. He looked no more ferocious than any of the others we’d passed, but he never actually took his finger off the trigger. After a short conversation in pidgin-Spanish, many protestations that we were Inglese and not bloody Yankees, he ordered two youths to come with us and show us the way. Beside the building which was our rendezvous, the two boys pointed proudly to an American jeep which had been captured the day before. The three Americans who had been in it were now prisoners, they said. We were shown up and met Russell’s contact, who thankfully spoke English. After much palaver and explanation that we were from English Television and wished to present both sides of this unhappy story equally fairly, it was agreed that we should see Caamano in the afternoon. The fact that the three members of the crew were obviously not Inglese (although Ralph had now shed his conspicuous field uniform which we had persuaded him would be a sure target for every rebel rifle) proved something of a drawback to begin with. However, once it was understood that they were merely a technical crew working for English Television, all was well. We were welcomed warmly and asked what we would like to film during the remainder of the morning. First we would like to look around the rebel sector, film whatever scenes seemed interesting, and interview our English speaking contact.

The poverty of the place at the best of times was obvious and shameful. Add to that days of accumulated rubbish piled high in the middle of every street … a grotesque charred body lying on a pavement (they couldn’t bury all the dead) … battle-scarred buildings … shot-up or burnt-out vehicles standing about like so many deserted waifs … children of 14 carrying rifles (the new-found symbols of their manhood) … starving dogs and sounds of intermittent gunfire … and you have a Caribbean city under revolution. We turned a corner near the sea-front. A hail of shots surrounded us. Our contact, Hugo, was first out of the car and into a nearby building … we followed. We were greeted by our hosts with peels of laughter … there must have been a funny side to it … and, as we were soon to find out, the population had become so used to gunfire that they no longer considered it worthy of much excitement. Several times we poked our heads out of the door in an effort to see who was shooting at whom, but without much success. We decided the situation was too good to miss, and after finding a way out of the back of the building, we clambered over a wall and into a street running at right angles to the one where the firing was going on. We were protected by the buildings on our left and could see the bullets striking another building with a Red Cross flag on it about 20-30 yards away. The marines, it appeared, were firing at some rebels in the building and one had already been shot in the stomach. I decided that this was the time and place for Russell to interview Hugo. The result was unusual – Russell and Hugo in the foreground, Hugo protesting violently that he and the other rebels were not communists but Constitutionalists who only wanted free elections and a return to democratic government. In the background there were American bullets hitting the Red Cross building, and on the corner, just behind Russell and Hugo, a little cluster of rebels firing back. Every now and again another rebel would run across the street to join them, and across the way, one over-exuberant Dominican was carrying on a private war running backwards and forwards firing from behind a tree. The interview continued for about eight minutes, including two magazine changes, and then Russell also did a camera statement crouched down on the pavement beside the rebels.

In the afternoon we went to see Caamano. We had to pass six guards on the way into the dingy headquarters, and were frisked twice. We had a drink, some dreadful pink liquid, tried to collect our senses, and filmed a few minutes of the shambolic press conference which was going on. Eventually, when it had ended, we got our interview with the rebel leader – an extraordinary interview punctuated by the personal interpolations of his Minister for State, who was also acting as Caamano’s interpreter.

News travels fast in situations like this, and that night at the hotel there was much envious rumour and gossip of our scoop of an interview with a rebel under fire that morning. We were all delighted, and felt that while we had been lucky, we had got it because we had gone it alone, rather than filming with the main pack of camera crews who stayed together most of the time. The crew were as delighted as we were, but felt that we’d pressed our luck far enough. Russell and I agreed that we seemed to have covered the rebel zone and that there should be no need to return.

Saturday, May 8 – Manny, the camera assistant, went down with ‘gyppy tummy’. Russell went off to arrange interviews with the American Ambassador and the head of the local Peace Corps. I took Ralph and Morgan filming along the corridor and in the security zone – Junta troops, US marines and strongposts, military convoys, checkpoints, a mobile Red Cross unit. On the way back Ralph sat on the bonnet of the car hand-holding the Auricon, for a 10-minute tracking shot through the centre of the town.

We met Russell at the American Embassy. The Ambassador was unfortunately engaged. OK, we’d do the Peace Force. Robert Satin, the local head, had set up his HQ at a school two miles away. He’d be delighted to talk to us, but some other time. He was on his way to the rebel zone to relieve three captured American service men. Could we go, we asked? Yes, but only three could fit in the car. It was decided that Russell, Ralph and myself would go, taking Morgan Smith’s sound gear and leaving him to guard the remaining equipment with the driver. Satin, a romantic Pimpernel figure in a large Spanish straw hat and yellow cape to make him easily distinguishable, was the only man in Santo Domingo whom both sides trusted, and who could, therefore, undertake a mission of this kind. An American himself, it would be fair to say that he was not entirely uncritical of the American position in Santo Domingo. We were soon with the rebels, but not until our papers had been checked and our purpose explained would they lead us to the prisoners. On the way, as we walked through one of the rebel-held streets, one of the leaders tried to explain the rebel cause to Russell in Spanish. Satin interpreted, and we filmed as we went. The rebels here were so courteous and obviously sincere that one could not feel other than sympathetic towards them. Perhaps my early West Indian upbringing – I lived in Trinidad till I was 14 – made for a certain affinity.

The three prisoners, two petty officers and one private would say little to us, understandably. They gave us their names and confirmed that they had been well treated. The atmosphere between them and their captors was friendly, and one of the rebels complained that the only trouble they’d had was that the little fat petty officer ate too much. We stayed there at Cuccaraca 20, the name of the rebel headquarters, for about three hours, while they tried vainly to contact their main headquarters for permission to release the prisoners to Satin. The lines were blocked, no communication was possible. We suggested sending a runner, it was only two miles away. That would mean their man crossing the security zone, a risk they were not prepared to take. Could we do it for them? ‘No’, they said, it was too risky, and it was getting dark. We should really return to the security zone at once. The prisoners would have to wait for their release until the next day. As we were filming a final camera statement outside Cuccaraca 20, a rebel arrived to say that a junta 50mm machine gun was trained on the street where we were, and that a large number of rebels were ready to return fire from a building just across the street … we really should go. We did, but after 20 minutes’ driving we still could not get out of the rebel zone, barred everywhere by road blocks. Eventually we came full circle, and the members of Cuccaraca 20 undid a road block to let us out. That really was our last visit to the rebel zone, but not the end of the excitement for the day. As we neared the American Embassy, we ran into some sniping, which caused Satin to take to a side street. At the Embassy, American troops were active, kneeling behind trees, and taking up positions of advantage. It seemed mild compared to the events of the last two days. I sat on the Embassy steps investigating a blistered toe. A medical orderly insisted on disinfecting and bandaging it. The humour of the situation did not strike him.

That night, Russell and I took stock of what we had, and decided that next day he would film the re-arranged interview with the American Ambassador, and an opening camera statement on the border between the security zone and the rebel zone. I would catch the morning plane to San Juan and thence home to London to help identify and assemble the film. Russell would catch the evening plane, film an interview with Juan Busch, the ex-president, in Puerto Rico and then follow on to London too.

Sunday, May 9 – I missed my plane, the arrangements for transportation to the airport had been changed. When Russell returned to the hotel, having completed his filming, not without further incident (during his camera statement firing had again broken out, but he’d completed it nonetheless, and so filmed what must be the most unusual camera statement on record) we agreed that we would all take the evening plane. Back in our luxurious hotel in San Juan that evening, a bath, clean clothes, and a good meal at last in the penthouse restaurant from which there is a view of the whole city.

Monday, May 10 – 7.00a.m. call. ‘Breakfast is nerved by the swimming pool.’ What am I going back to London for?

3.00 p.m. – ABC New York – where all the in negative film was processed before shipment to London – ‘It’s good quality, you’ve got a humdinger’.

6.00 p.m. – a drink and a chat with Bryan FitzJones. ‘New York’s been in the nineties, Jeremy wants me to stay here till tomorrow. I’ve booked your flight, a BOAC VC 10, take off Kennedy Airport 9.30 tonight.’

Tuesday, May 11 – 9.45 a.m. – landed London Airport. I still had a wife – or perhaps she still had a husband.

11.00 a.m. – back at the mill (TVH) … rushes at 3.00, everyone delighted, but feel flat.

Wednesday, May 12 – more rushes – rough cut – script conference – rough cut. Jeremy and I left Peter Mills and Roy Jordan, the editors, to it at 3.00 a.m. on Thursday – transmission day. They worked all night.

Thursday, May 13 – 8.00 a.m. See another rough cut. Russell back … discussion … another cut … Jeremy asks Cyril Bennett for an extra five minutes on the running time … OK, 31′ 30″ it is. Finalise picture, Russell writing commentary … recording commentary … laying tracks … dubbing … Freddie Slade has to do it without rehearsal, take first time. Somehow the him gets on the air with five seconds to spare. Thirty-one minutes later we’re on the Hollywood Crawl – roller caption in American jargon – and that’s where it all began.

Saturday, May 15: I still have a lawn – I’m mowing it – a friend calls. ‘How’s the telly?’

‘Fine.’

‘What are you working on?’

‘This Week.’

‘That’s on a Thursday, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you do the rest of the week?’

The post Bullets stopped him mowing lawn appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

The following article has been written by ROLLO GAMBLE and is about some of the incidents which hare brightened his days as a director.

I remember making a film for the Army in India called ‘Hold Your Fire’ (until you see the whites of their eyes) – this entailed among other elaborate details, a platoon of Gurkhas dressed up in Japanese uniforms (their resemblance to the Japanese is remarkable), crossing a river and being ambushed. The river I chose was only about three feet deep and 25 yards wide in the jungle near Dehra Dun. The Gurkhas were most co-operative, for when the sun started sinking below the fringe of the trees and our cameraman shouted for lights, a Gurkha would shin up and remove the obscuring branches with his kookri [more usually spelt ‘kukri’ in English, a curved knife – Ed]. Their technique filled us with admiration – they would sit on the end of the branch and hack it at a point nearer the trunk – we would shout warnings, but these were never heeded. Sometimes they were 200 feet from the ground then, with a wonderful sense of timing as the branch cracked, they would grab part of the main tree and remain aloft hanging by an arm, roaring with laughter. We siting a rope across the river and lined the bottom with small explosives to be electrically operated by the sappers. At the word ‘action’ the Gurkha ‘Japs’ emerged from the jungle and started crossing the river holding the rope and squatting to make the water seem deeper.

Then on cue orders were given for the Indian Army ambush to go into action and the explosives were detonated in the river. To avoid the explosions the actors had been told to keep strictly to the rope. However, a few decided to act the part of dying more realistically. They flung themselves away from the rope and were carried down by the stream. It was too late to stop the explosives. At the end I had half a dozen casualties, one of whom, sadly, died – a piece of metal from a detonator easing had penetrated his anus. Every reasonable precaution had been taken and the film showed exactly what had happened, so we were all exonerated at the Court of Enquiry – however, I vowed I would never have anything to do with filming again.

Of course I did.

One of the most frightening experiences was making a film on mountain climbing at Banff Springs in the Rockies. The commentary and dialogue was in French since the television film was intended for the French-Canadian population. I had two Swiss guides to assist me, Bruno Engler and Walter Lippman (not of course, the doyen of American political commentators).

The pay-off was the successful arrival on the pinnacle of the tyro, a young French Canadian called Gil La Roche. We chose one of the minor peaks and were duly roped together by the Swiss guides. The cameraman had an auricon [16mm sound-on-film motion picture camera] in a rucksack strapped to his back. In another a clueless electrician carried the battery — upside down, so that the acid ran out and ruined a suede jacket lent him by Bruno Engler. We also carried with us a large, round, empty biscuit tin.

When reaching a well-climbed summit, it is the custom among mountaineers to sign a book which is kept inside a tin ensconced in a cairn of stones, thus proving that they have been there. Though this peak was steep enough, it was not considered by genuine mountaineers to be worthy of a cairn of its own — so we provided the tin and book and were prepared to build a cairn.

I was fat and extremely out of condition in those days — so I had more or less to be dragged to the top by the guides and the rest of the crew. On the way we filmed Gil La Roche suspended over various vertiginous chasms. One was particularly terrifying. There were two pillars bending towards each other. The gap between their tops could not have been more than 3 ft. 6 in. but the drop between was at least 2,000 feet, a mere step but what a step and a step we all had to take to reach the top.

All preparations were made for the pay-off scene when Bruno had to come in on cue with the book. But Bruno, brilliantly agile mountaineer and splendid ad lib. actor, was no good at coming in on a cue. After 17 takes tempers were frayed. Exasperated beyond endurance he shouted ‘Merde’ and punted the biscuit tin high into the air. In dismay we watched it bump down the rocky slope, plunge over the precipice, to hear it no more as it dropped thousands of feet into the valley.

French-Canadians are volatile — there are plenty of Gallic elements left in their genes. This could have started a fight, which in that precarious situation could have been dangerous. Since I was the only Englishman there, and everything is blamed upon the director anyway, it could have been especially dangerous for me. If I had not exercised tact I would no doubt have been forced to follow the biscuit tin. Luckily someone saw the funny side and all ended in laughter. Our dilemma was solved by rewriting the script. To everyone’s astonishment we won a certificate from the Canadian Government – for the best television film in French Canadian made on top of a mountain by a foreign director over 45.

Talking about prizes, I remember an extremely active year, sometime ago now, when I had collaborated with Daniel Farson. We were sent letters telling us we had been short-listed for a prize at the Television Ball. In fact several people told us (on the ‘very highest authority’) that we had a very good chance and we were advised to attend. Dan and I both loathe functions of that sort. However, for my part, vanity prevailed, I got quite excited and went off to Moss Bros for the necessary clothes. Somehow, at enormous cost, we got two returned tickets at the last minute and turned up at the Ball.

We were shown to a table already occupied by rather a sinister group of middle-aged and were received, as we introduced ourselves and sat down, extremely coldly.

Opposite me sat a stout man with an ill-fitting wig, which he adjusted from time to time. Next to him a pretty, but stern woman of 45 or so smoked from a long cigarette holder. She gave me not the flicker of a smile of welcome and I quickly realised that one of her eyes, which did not move, was glass. To add to my embarrassment, I remember, something very hard kept grating me. I began to suspect that the lady sitting next to me was rubbing my shin with a metal brace attached to her leg. There were also curious squeaks coming from under the table. I was forced to drop my napkin only to discover it was the leg of the table I hail been trying to avoid and the squeaks were coming from a sort of metal fastener the lady wore on her brogues. As I rose again to my seat, she looked at me severely and said she had been ‘observing my work of late’. Whether this was intended as praise or blame it was impossible to tell. I can never forget the unfriendly stare of those eyes around that table; if there was a relenting gleam it was in only one and that was the glass eye.

Eventually the silence was broken, a few names were dropped – a very tall, very thin man, with a finely pencilled moustache winked at me evilly — the word ‘corporation’ figured from time to time – and then, sickeningly, it dawned on me that we had blundered into the case-hardened cadre of the BBC.

Alas. They have all seceded now, some to rest forever, some to retirement with the O.B.E. and others to commercial television – for the young have taken over.

Very soon the speeches began and it became apparent we had not won a prize. The lady with the brogues bent over and whispered: ‘Better luck next time – I like your shows – jolly good live.’ ‘Not live – filmed’, I hissed. With that she turned her back and I slunk away. Dan had of course made his escape long before and I joined him at the bar, horribly disappointed. So much for prizes.

If I suffer from folie de grandeur it is only in my dreams.

I am John Huston and I am getting a long shot composed of Canyons, Kraals and 40,000 cattle. My assistants are my PA, the clapper boy (a part often doubled by me) and two or three Africans who don’t speak a word of English. We are all shouting and beating reflectors to get the cattle to stampede in the right direction. The Indians on horseback (my dream is very mixed up) who are supposed to do this only create chaos. Eventually it happens, the cattle stampede – straight at the camera and we are all immolated under pounding hooves. I then wake up with a pounding heart to meagre reality – sweating and disgruntled.

One sometimes has moments of vicarious grandeur – when one visits the houses of the great to obtain interviews. Usually, of course, one is admitted by appointment through the tradesman’s entrance. The butler who lets one in, invariably expects a large tip – and who should blame him, for the disruption of the household regime will be appalling.

There is the preliminary discussion with the VIP involved. He or she will always ask: ‘How much time does it take, how much machinery will you bring and will it make a mess, etc.’

If one has any sense, one always asks for twice as much time, describes the machinery as gigantic and dangerous and the mess disgusting. Luckily for TV most people are so vain they will put up with anything, for a chance to appear – and if one can get out fairly cleanly, it is gratifying to hear one’s victim say: ‘That wasn’t so bad after all’.

An exception to this was our visit to Barbara Cartland’s country mansion. I had been received graciously in her boudoir where she was putting the final touches to her make-up. When she asked the usual questions I exaggerated everything according to plan and told her it was unlikely we could be finished before lunch time. ‘Then we’ll all have a jolly lunch together afterwards’, she added with her immense charm.

I did not reckon with the wiring of Camfield Place. During a shot there was an appalling flash, all the lights went out and we were told the cooking stove had fused. Miss Cartland, though she must have cursed us, seemed unruffled – imperiously she summoned a man from the electricity board. We lunched off cold cuts and vitamin pills and got home shattered, exhausted and filled with admiration long past midnight. That was an ill-fated story – the programme was transmitted out of sync on its first showing and it has taken me about three years to explain to Barbara Cartland what happened.

Another occasion nearly ended in a far more sinister tragedy.

With enormous difficulty we had got permission to film an actual wedding. It wasn’t so much the church service we were interested in as the wedding breakfast, which was to take place, at lunchtime, in the Dog and Fox in Wimbledon. We had two crews, one to handle the orange blossom, confetti and all that in the morning, and the other to set up in the D. & F. for the breakfast.

The breakfast, I may say, consisted of champagne, soup, turkey, gaufrettes trifle and wedding cake. I suppose there must have been places laid for 250. At any rate it was a vast area to light and we had to hire a special generator. The crew spent the whole morning trying to start the infernal thing without success. We had our camera set, the toastmaster in his special and stentorian voice was already announcing the guests – the bride, groom, mothers and fathers were all lined up to receive – but there were no illuminations and it was useless to ‘Roll’. We were all in despair, the electrician was going mad. In a paroxysm of temper he seized a hammer and clouted the generator, intending to smash it.

It started.

The lights went up and we filmed, surf-riding on a wave of elation. But sudden transitions from despair to relief in circumstances of that sort can be dangerous. The electrician was so pleased with himself that he drained all available glasses (there were hundreds) and was seen staggering about among the lights. The baby of the bride’s sister was crawling on the carpet and was just saved from instant death as someone caught a falling 2-K inches from its head. This had the effect of sobering everybody up.

But I digress – I was talking about celebrities. I once asked the Duke of Marlborough if I could film at Blenheim. He told me of a BBC crew which had been there (with Dimbleby I think) when the sound assistant pushed his fish-pole through the face of a Holbein portrait. The Duke had the canvas sewn up by a picture restorer and apparently there is nothing to be seen of the damage – accidents happen in the best regulated societies.

With this by way of warning he gave us permission to film – I’ve always regretted that we never did. The project was cancelled.

I am reminded of a great house in Smith Square, its reception rooms walled with impressionist paintings – part of the valuable Courtauld collection – and the home of the then Home Secretary.

Mr [Rab] Butler received us with his famous sophisticated charm. We had admired the pictures and punctually were all set to go. ‘Cut, I’m sorry’, called the sound engineer. There was a strange buzzing in his cans, some electronic fault we supposed. The delay was appalling, for Mr Butler is one of those politicians who is genuinely very busy. I left the engineer, his screwdriver poking about in the entrails of the tape recorder, to make my apologies. A half-hour had gone by attempting small talk, when I noticed clustered over the microphone a swarm of flies. It was obviously the fly mating season and this was the cause of the noise. We shook the mike and fanned it, but it must have been very sticky because the flies returned every time – the only answer was to get a flit gun [a hand-pumped insecticide sprayer]. After searching the house, Mr Butler produced a very rusty flit gun from his basement. I was photographed applying the flit and this photograph made the national dailies with the caption, ‘The Home Secretary gets a flitting’. I expected to be clapped into gaol, as was the Good Soldier Schweik, who remarked in a pub in Prague as he observed a portrait of his Excellency, that flies had settled on the Archduke Ferdinand.

Now from the homes of the famous to the homeless.

Without warning I was flying towards Latin America, my mission to film the 150th anniversary of the Argentine’s liberation from Spain. Large sums of money were concealed about my person – I had to find and finance cameras, crews, film and the rest. Our contact was an American beachcomber, called Rossiter. He met me in Buenos Aires, sweating with moral disintegration – no cameras were available, only a Kodak, designed for amateurs with an automatic light meter – automatic in that it was unnecessary to set the stop. The cameraman, Pepe le Moko, only had to point, focus and squirt. We were doing this at a vast, ominous, military parade, when the news of the Chilean earthquake broke. Two hundred miles of coast had dropped three metres, a great fissure in the Pacific sea-bed had collapsed causing a tidal wave and destruction never before experienced.

Michael Ingrams and I were again in the air, our Lufthansa plane soaring over the Andes and circling endlessly the aerodrome at Santiago de Chile.

The American hotel block stands in a square opposite a Ruritanian Palace – the manoeuvres of the President’s guard causing us macabre amusement as we watched from our 17th storey suite. In the foyer of the hotel highly organised American aid airmen and WACS [US Women’s Army Corps] swarmed, with a scrum of international journalists at the bar.

Our aim, therefore, was to get to the scene of destruction as early as possible. We found a camera somewhere and a cameraman, Orlando Furioso. At 4 a.m. the next morning we were on an aerodrome in the office of the American commandant asking him to let us fly 1,000 miles south in a Globemaster. The Americans with their wonderful sense of international charity had sent a fleet of these transport planes with cargoes of medical supplies, blankets, etc. There is a wide shelf behind the pilot’s cabin. Here we lay, given cocoa and cigarettes by gum-chewing airmen resembling Hollywood extras. Michael and I were in lounge suits (his Savile Row) and had urban and effeminate footwear. We had left our bowler hats and umbrellas in the Santiago hotel.

The Chileans complain they cannot have an interesting sex life because the country is so long and narrow, they all have to stand in queues. However, it’s a marvellous country to fly down. At dawn the snow-capped peaks of the Andes are rose and the range is dotted with volcanoes in semi-eruption. The lumbering plane throbbed along. Asking Orlando Furioso for pictures of passing mountains, we discovered to our horror he had no idea how to operate the camera, let alone speak English. Having read a few ‘do-it-yourself’ pamphlets on both photography and Spanish, I was able to give him rudimentary instructions. Calculating the exposure, since this camera had no built-in meter, sent the three of us into committee every few minutes.

The plane settled, a fat turkey, at a place called Puerto Mont, or Puerto Meurt – (Port of death?) if it had been called Puerto Merde it would have been more fitting.

Shivering with cold, we trudged across the aerodrome in six inches of mud, our suits and pansy shoes suffering. In the drizzle, Michael, suave and diplomatic, persuaded the Chilean Army to lend us a jeep.

It was as if the fields and woods of Kent had been shattered and rent. Huge slices had been carved out of the road. The railway line had been whipped like a child’s skipping rope and broken up in hummocks. Hillsides had slipped into the valleys, a rich man losing in three minutes his 40,000 acre ranch as it slid cowboys, crops and stock into Lake Rinnehue [sic – Riñihue].

We reached the pathetic, broken town. Resigned figures were picking in the ruins. The boulevard, a dual carriageway along the embankment had sunk into the river, the lamp-posts and trees sticking regularly through the water. Orlando filmed soup kitchens organised by nuns, relief camps, bodies collected from ruined homes, and funerals slowly processing away.

In the hotel, cracked, still standing, but disembowelled, there was a room for us. There was no electric light, no lavatory working, no water, only wine, which somehow had survived in large quantities.

In the back an electric fan, not revolving, swayed from the ceiling. Seeing it, I remarked that it must be very draughty to move such a heavy object – not at all, I was told it was the building which was swaying, for tremors are felt for weeks after a severe earthquake.

To light us to bed we were allowed one candle. Every half-hour or so the building shook and we could hear deep in the earth, a steady thrumming. We wanted to film Michael during an earth tremor in the hotel bedroom, on the site writing his report.

So we used the candle for a key light (about six inches from his nose) and Orlando persuaded the landlady, who reluctantly let us have another candle for a filler. We ran the camera at its lowest speed, wide open. Michael did the action in the slowest of slow motion and lo-and-behold the shot came out and was used in our story on ‘This Week’. The next day I was invited into a crippled house. The old couple, their faces browned like worn ivory, lined with suffering and stoicism, insisted on giving me a glass of their local liqueur. We could not talk. I filmed them in their hopeless and dimly lit kitchen and parted in tears. A rusty old taxi took us to the aerodrome. There the ever kindly Americans squeezed us into a Globemaster, already overloaded with heart-rending refugees, and flew us back to Santiago.

After this the rest of the story filmed in Santiago was as stale as margarine is to butter. The anti-climax was intense and led us to all kinds of extremes of relaxation. However, that is a story for St Peter at the Gates of Heaven.

The post Digressions of a director appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

‘The yellow submarine is like an information-cum-lost-persons-cum-marriage-cum-personnel office.’ So says Mrs Peggy Davidson, manager of production in Ray Dicks’ section about her yellow-painted office on a corner of the fourth floor – like a submarine, it has no view.

Peggy Davidson’s job is to assign teams of directors, PAs and stage managers to programmes and allocate the rehearsal rooms. It sounds simple but working with creative people sometimes presents problems and in particular the problem of personalities.

‘Some people don’t like working with others, some people work better on a certain kind of programme and some haven’t the ability to do what they want,’ says Peggy Davidson. ‘All this has to be taken into account when considering a team for a programme. When I started this job, I was very worried about matching people up, and found that all my best ideas seemed to come in the middle of the night. The answer was to keep a pencil and notepad by my bed, and when I woke up shouting “Of course – put her with him” I would jot it down immediately. I’ve still got a notebook by my bed, but it’s only used in moments of great stress.’

The manager of production’s job has changed a lot over the past four years. In 1965, Peggy Davidson had 40 staff directors and brought in perhaps a dozen freelancers for specific assignments over a year. Now there are 22 staff directors and the rest, over half, are contracted. This involves much work as there are agents to be contacted, contracts to be negotiated and fees to be arranged and the whole to be passed by the controller of production, Ray Dicks. The position of PAs has also changed during this time. All PAs are on the staff and must be kept working all the time. ‘The days of a durable partnership between a director and a PA are going to become rare,’ says Peggy Davidson.

To keep them busy PAs must now be moved from one director to another. This means matching them with a book showing what a director is doing at any time and when he will be free or available for a programme. There are also minor problems like making sure that the contract directors have offices, that PAs have stop watches and that programmes have rehearsal rooms. The number of rehearsal rooms at Television House are dwindling as they are converted into offices. Part of Peggy Davidson’s job is to find new rooms outside, which means more negotiations. This can sometimes produce unexpected complications like: ‘You can have the room all week except Thursday afternoon when we have our jumble sale’.

Theoretically, once the members of the unit are selected Peggy Davidson’s responsibility towards that programme ceases. In fact it doesn’t, because her office (known to the inmates as the Yellow Submarine and to outsiders as Ray’s Aviary) is a clearing house of information concerning the whereabouts of people, the availability of freelancers and general problems.

‘The job has developed a great deal over the past four years,’ continues Peggy Davidson. ‘I think one of the biggest changes has been the advent of producers. When I started, there were really only two – one for “No Hiding Place” and one for “This Week”. Now there seems to be one for almost every programme. It makes the job more complicated, because there is one extra channel to go through. Setting up a show used to involve the head of a section and his manager, but now there is a third person to cater for – the producer. All three have their own ideas, their own preferences and their own dislikes. Matched up with the creative ability of directors, plus the opinions of the PAs and SMs, one has an awful lot of combinations to play with.’

The job of being a director, a PA or an SM are among the most sought-after in television. Peggy Davidson sees on average three would-be SMs and a PA each week. ‘They go onto a waiting list or my files,’ she says. ‘I also see directors and arrange for Ray Dicks to interview them too. SMs are usually trained when they come, as are directors, but PAs are more often trained with Rediffusion. ‘We have a board of PAs to help select the girls – but vacancies are few and far between. They are in all three jobs.’ Peggy Davidson is an ex-PA herself. She joined Rediffusion in 1955 and after two years went to Canada. She returned in 1959, worked on ‘Hippodrome’ and the following year went into advertising. At Stella Ashley’s request she returned, for the second time, in 1962 and worked on ‘The Somerset Maugham Hour’ series. Then she took over from James Butler who had been manager of production for three months on a temporary basis. ‘It’s the longest I have ever been in one job,’ she says. ‘I love dealing with people and this job involves a great deal of it.

‘Our humorous and tragic moments come and go,’ concludes Peggy Davidson. ‘Usually they are of the moment, and are neither funny nor important by the following week. The one that does stand out in my memory though was a director announcing he would interview all the SMs before deciding which one he wanted to work with. He so floored me that I let him see four and choose his own. It’s never been done before or since.’

The post The yellow submarine’s periscope appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

‘My wife and I would very much like to get tickets to see one of your programmes as we are trying to be in London for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary on a second honeymoon. When we got married the only way we could get the family car for our honeymoon was to take my mother and family along, which consisted of a pet monkey and seven children. Most of our honeymoon was spent looking after the seven children and chasing the monkey who was always getting loose. We do hope if we can make it that the second honeymoon will be less eventful than the first.’

Letter addressed to ‘Commercial TV London, England’, from Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S.A.

‘A massive slice of ham was cut off by Associated-Rediffusion last night in the play “Family on Trial’’.’

Nancy Spain, Daily Express

‘“Family on Trial” was one of the most worthwhile ITV plays I have seen for a long time.’

Phil Diack, Daily Herald

‘Your programme is a very good one. I like it very much. I enjoy the music page best. Will you have some more animals because I like animals. I enjoy your programmes because there is a lot of variety in them. The programme is not too long. That is why I like it.’

Edenbridge, Kent, viewer, aged 9, on ‘Lucky Dip’.

‘I would be very interested to know who are the twelve most popular BBC television actresses considered by the BBC, in order of popularity and, also, I wondered if you could tell me if there is a new panel game to take the place of “What’s My Line?” If so when is it due to start.’

South Devon viewer’s letter addressed to Associated-Rediffusion – one of the few which we couldn’t answer

‘Surely the oddest thing about television is the fear, prejudice and open hostility which it seems to arouse. There is a widespread feeling among educated and responsible people that it is something more than a new means of communication; that it is a sinister influence undermining educational standards and social life.

‘I believe this to be nonsense, and I am certain that the same things were said about the printing press and other inventions in their nursery days.’

L. Marsland Gander, Daily Telegraph

‘As a member of Associated-Rediffusion’s Educational Advisory Council and a headmaster who has been using television programmes for schools since their inception in 1957, I was interested in your readers’ letters on schools TV.

‘It was reassuring to see that most of them agreed with the policy adopted in this country; namely, that at present television programmes for schools should be supplementary to the work of the teacher and make no attempt to replace him.

‘There is no danger of standardization, because teachers receive sufficient advance information – by means of Teachers’ Notes – to enable them to select and use programmes according to the particular needs of each class.

‘I, too, am “cool” about the closed-circuit “master-teacher” technique sometimes used in America. In this country the teaching profession still has a big job to do in making fuller use of the existing service and helping the two broadcasting organizations to produce the best possible programmes for schools.

Letter to News Chronicle from Fielden Hughes, Wimbledon

‘I should like, now that our bookings have temporarily come to an end, to thank you all for your most valued support and co-operation.

‘There is no doubt at all that this particular department is still fired with the old “pioneering” spirit, and the manner in which you nurse such a diverse range of peculiar products in each programme fills me with admiration.’

Letter from an advertising agency to advertising magazines.

‘Despite the slight discrepancies, Cyril Coke’s production extracted every ounce of entertainment from a smooth plot and a neat, if not witty, dialogue.’

Neville Randall – Daily Sketch, on ‘Skyline for Two’

‘By handling the main idea respectfully and playing down the marginal incidents, the director, Mr Cyril Coke, made something stilted and humourless of the whole.’

The Times

‘We have had our TV set for four months now and after looking in at your programmes almost every evening I thought I would like to thank you for such good entertainment. One hears people criticise television but I can only think they must be very hard to please. We have three young children so can very rarely go out of an evening. We think the children’s programmes are very good, our children will never miss any of them. Please thank everyone concerned for giving us such good viewing in such a friendly way.

Letter from Thornton Heath, Surrey, viewer

‘When I grow up I would like to be the mother of eleven athletic boys. Then I could start a football team of my own and sell them to Gateshead, because they need some help.’

Letter from 12-year-old Blaydon-on-Tyne viewer.

‘I would like to make a suggestion about the programmes when you get the extra viewing time. Is it possible to have a record programme similar to the one Joan Edwards used to introduce in the early days of commercial TV? There have also been some really good shows that could bear a repeat. How nice it would be to see the “Father Knows Best”, “Sir Lancelot” and other series we enjoyed so much over again.

‘I must be one of your most devoted TV viewers as I am handicapped and I pass many a happy hour watching TV. So you see I for one would welcome the extra hours of TV.

Letter from Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, viewer

‘Having viewed television both here and in Canada I have come to the conclusion that your network cannot be surpassed and I must thank you for the fine plays that we, the viewers, appreciate.’

Letter from viewer in Hyde Park Gate

‘As a play it held me just about as closely as an animated story in an American magazine and, oh, so seldom animated.’

Nancy Spain, Daily Express, reviewing ‘ The Winner’

‘“The Winner”, directed by David Boisseau, turned out to be one of the smoothest plays of the year.’

Richard Sear, Daily Mirror

‘Why must such delectable programmes as “Private Secretary”, “Dick and the Duchess”, and “African Patrol” be screened at such unreasonable time as 6.10 p.m.? They are fresh and amusing and such a change from the eternal westerns. At 6.10 p.m. housewives like myself are cooking dinner with one hand and putting the youngsters to bed with the other. It makes me hopping mad to have to miss them, just catching a glimpse in passing. Surely programmes such as “This Week” or “What the Papers Say” could be switched to this time instead. After all, although these programmes are interesting, I do not think it would seriously upset anyone to miss them.’

Letter from Leyton viewer

The post They Say… August 1959 appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

‘I believe you are the right person I should write to on the following matter. It concerns the film entitled ‘Christmas in Cyprus’, which as you know was made out here largely under the direction of Peter Hunt, and shown over your network on Christmas Day in England.

‘You have very kindly sent us a 35 mm copy of the film and this has been seen by a large number of the security forces in Cyprus. I would like you to know what a very good impression indeed this film has made; it does not overstate the case and it shows very vividly the part played by the Security Forces. I am sure that it has been a big factor in raising the morale of the soldiers.

‘I would, therefore, like to thank you very much for all the trouble taken in preparing this film and for your kindness in letting us have a copy.’

Letter to Captain Brownrigg from Major-General Kenneth Darling, Director of Operations in Cyprus.

‘It is so very nice of you to reply to my letters. I expect you think it is quite mad for a happily-married mother to be writing after photos of TV heroes. But at least it proves what a good job you are all doing. Keep it up!’

Jean Swain, Coventry (Viewer’s letter to programme correspondence).

‘Congratulations and thanks for these very fine programmes. Daniel Farson’s interview with (R.C.) Fr. Christie; “The Killing of the King” – First Class!!!’

Edward O’Hara, Yorks. (Viewer’s postcard).

EXPRESS LIFT

‘Yet for all the fortune he has made in Associated-Television he is still a man of the people. His humour is lusty. His manners are adequate, but not impeccable. When he goes up to his close-carpeted suite in Television House he will still pat the lift boy on the back and know his Christian name.’

Extract from Daily Express story on Mr Lew Grade. We have been asked to deny reports that as a result lift boys are now going to be employed.

‘I would like you to know how much I appreciated your “Hallé at Work” programme. I thought the sound was handled particularly well.’

Viewer’s ‘phone call to Night Duty Officer.
Director: Cyril Coke; sound balancer, Tony Couch.

‘The lady in the programme should be shown off a bit more because she is good looking.’

A 14-year-old boy’s comments on Muriel Young’s appearance in ‘Lucky Dip’.

‘As it turned out we were given a production which can truly be called distinguished. Ronald Marriott directed with the deftest blending of sensitivity and passion, and the acting was good down to the humblest member of the 40-strong cast.’

Denis Thomas, Daily Mail on ‘The Killing of The King’.

‘Please forgive this rather long letter, I know you are busy, but being a strong supporter of commercial TV long before it became a reality, I feel I must let you know my observations of the viewing public.

‘I am an insurance agent and have to call on people in their homes and as my pet subject is TV I know you would be pleased to know that 90 per cent of the people who have a choice of programmes choose ITV. But the biggest let down is the much vaunted ‘‘Play of the Week”’.

‘In contrast, “Film of the Week” is very popular and the general opinion is a film is better than the average play…. So take less notice of M.P.s and enemies of ITV, many of whom haven’t a TV set.’

Letter from Tooting viewer.

‘Being a young housewife whose main pleasures are derived from a three-year-old son and a one-year-old TV set, you may be sure that my choice in programmes is confirmed to those which give the highest degree of entertainment.

‘Therefore, although I have never in all my days written to any personality (not even in my film-struck teenage days) I felt that I must write to you on a superb programme “Look In” which has only one fault – it is too short! Hoping you will continue indefinitely to give myself and others so much pleasure for many a Tuesday evening to come.’

Letter to Michael Ingrams from Mrs Lois D. Morris, Middlesex.

‘Why not have a separate channel for kids. That would suit everybody and please all of us. If that fails, the other alternative rests with the parents. Why do they allow the kids to sit up? They seem to be allowed to do as they please. That is why there is so much delinquency about.’

Letter from Redhill, Surrey, viewer complaining about ‘Mark Saber’ being taken out of the early evening because of the large number of children viewing.

‘I like “Lucky Dip” because you get so many personalities.

I have never written to “Lucky Dip” before because today was the first time I have seen it.’

Young Isle of Wight viewer.

‘Usually the show succeeds: it has some of the drive and guts of Fleet Street, and is not afraid of being brash now and again. I think most viewers would welcome a quarter of an hour’s extension here.

Henry Turton, Punch, on ‘This Week’.

“This Week” turned from men to rabbits and gave us one of those cleverly-cut interviews with children which grip the heart.’

Colin Frame, The Star.
Director: Sheila Gregg; interviewer: Michael Nelson; scriptwriter: Colin Willock.

‘… the people who put on television entertainment have a sense of responsibility appropriate to those who pour shows nightly into the home, where children may be watching. After inquiry into current stage plays I reject with scorn all complaints about TV violence and puerility.’

L. Marsland Gander, Daily Telegraph.

‘I want to hand a belated pat on the back to Associated-Rediffusion…. Associated-Rediffusion was the first company to transmit commercial television programmes in Britain and it has been well aware of its responsibilities in the field of culture from the start. One of its first acts was to place the Hallé Orchestra under long-term contract and for nearly five years it has featured this orchestra in televised performances and on the concert platform. AR-TV also embarked on the ambitious scheme for staging classical plays at the Saville Theatre and, after short runs, transferring them to the television screen. The company is now offering more life drama than any other programme contractor.

The half-hour news feature programme, ‘This Week”, has been maintained in a peak-hour time every week since January, 1956. AR-TV also introduced the first regular television broadcast for schools ever seen in Great Britain, but the Beaverbrooks and the Mayhews prefer to forget about the good things and think only of the Westerns, the variety shows and the advertisements.

‘The Beaverbrook Press has backed many losers in its time but its campaign against television may well turn out to be its biggest failure.’

Ernest Kay, Time and Tide.

With all these faults the play still had some highly entertaining moments. Gladys Young (Aunt Ben) was a delight, and the meetings of the Irish M.P.’s full of life. Costumes and camera work excelled.’

Dick Sear, Daily Mirror, on ‘Parnell’, Play of the Week.
Director: David Boisseau; Costumes designed by Ernest Hewitt; Cameras manned by Vic Gardiner, Jeff Sheppard and the rest of crew 1.

Illustrations by Geraldine Spence

The post They Say… April 1959 appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

How would you take it if I said that Associated-Rediffusion was the most BBC-like of all the programme contractors? As a compliment or as an insult? I suspect that some of you would take it one way and some the other, and if this suspicion is well-founded, then surely it tells us something interesting about Associated-Rediffusion.

I do say it, and I mean it as a compliment. The BBC have their funny little ways, and I, for one, have not been exactly bashful in pointing out what have seemed to be their errors of judgment. But, somewhere, submerged beneath the attitudinizing and the patronage and the rather pathetic intermittent yearning to be all things to all men, there is a solid stratum of nineteenth-century progressiveness and its invariable concomitant, integrity.

The BBC’s earnest wish to improve our shining hour is, to me, the permanently splendid thing about it, the British miracle; a fundamentally benevolent institutional integrity which survives the indifference of its beneficiaries, the variable quality of its servants, the derision and malevolence of its enemies. Some of this unquenchable nineteenth-century belief in the perfectibility of mankind and the entire rightness of ‘improvement’ rubbed off on to Associated-Rediffusion. I get a strong impression of it – not least when I talk to people who pride themselves on being free from it. Several of the veteran programme companies have their streak of nervous quasi-didacticism. Uneasily they slip in a few things plainly designed to ‘improve’, rather like a pickpocket slipping a contrite farthing into the collection box.

But whereas Granada are pickled in old-fashioned North Country radicalism diluted by modern scepticism, and ATV find it difficult to dissociate merit from money, Associated-Rediffusion are still without a characteristic corporate posture, and give an impression of benevolent amorphousness which suggests a rather deep-seated case of committee-ism.

This is common knowledge, perhaps. But is it a bad thing? I think not. Vagueness is itself a characteristic, and it can even be a useful and a healthy one. I do not belong to the school of cultural neo-fascists who scream for a dictator to impose his will on the organization (any organization). God forbid that a cult of Caesarism should encourage ‘strong men’ and their inevitable sycophants. I do not subscribe to the cult of the ‘strong man’, which is disturbingly widespread. The fuhrer principle is abominable wherever it is met, and the most disturbing of all current manifestations of defeatism is this pitiful urge to be marshalled, the almost pathological desire to conform. It is indistinguishable from the death wish.

Associated-Rediffusion gives the impression of being a civil organization, in which the individual voice is given a hearing. This is so very much preferable to the para-military set-up, dominated by one will, that I freely forgive a certain lack of definition, a touch of fuzziness, which can sometimes be discerned in the end-product. Time is on the side of Associated-Rediffusion. Over the long haul the inherent reasonableness of Associated-Rediffusion’s way of doing things will prevail, when we have become a little tired of the power-dominated approach, which makes a clearer-cut, stronger short-term impact, but of which one tires so soon. At least, I hope that this will be so.

Whatever the shortcomings of this almost metaphysical approach to the mechanics of corporate responsibility, in terms of day-by-day programme output Associated-Rediffusion holds its own pretty well. Your school programmes are, to my mind, uniformly good, and when you turn schoolmaster in the evening you rarely put a foot wrong. Most, if not all of your features, are informed by a spirit of pure reasonableness worthy of the BBC at its best: responsible television-making on the conscientious or above-navel level.

‘This Week’ is somehow permanently one pace behind ‘Panorama’ – not at all because you just can’t do it, but simply (I think) because ‘This Week’ tries so desperately hard, as if over-conscious of its massive rival, and just misses the calm certitude which comes of relaxing. Your drama is in the same boat as everybody else’s – that is to say, always on the lookout for capable writing, of which it finds its fair share if not a bit more – and in the weird twilight region of light entertainment you just about hold your own. Associated-Rediffusion television always reminds me of the London Evening News. No one would call that a boulevardier’s paper. It lacks that shine of smartness.

But it goes into a great many homes precisely because it is somehow homely, the product of slightly but not conspicuously above-average minds and spirits. It is essentially suburban. It reflects the average householder’s outlook quite faithfully. It can be corny but it is always comfortable. In fact, it is comfortably corny. It gives you the illusion of being in the swim, but you never feel out of your depth.

There is nothing contemptible about this. The avantgarde is very important, but not all-important. An organization devoted to mass-communications need not be ashamed if it acts as a sort of filter, straining off what is palatable to the average palate. Averageness is a fact of life, as inescapable as straight hair, and as blameless. So long as you remember that practically everyone aspires, and keep on the right side of complacency, I don’t think you will go far wrong.

Maurice Wiggin

The post They Say… Maurice Wiggin appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

An outsider looks at A-R … for a start, that fusion introduction makes me sound like Colin Wilson. So let’s state here and now that I’ve no intention of being horse-whipped. Still that Outsider tag is probably justified, since this article arose out of a lunch date I had with your editor. I was sounding off about A-R in the approved John Osborne AYM manner when he pulled me up.

‘Don’t waste it on an audience of one’, he said, ‘put it on paper and tell the whole company.’ Let’s get one point straight. When you’re an outsider looking in it always seems easy to do the other chap’s job. But let the theorizing end and the practical business begin and the snags queue up. We can all be Stanley Matthews until the ball’s at our feet.

My newspaper work brings me in touch regularly with four ITV companies – each of which is taking on a distinctive personality. To my mind A-R is the least easily identifiable of the Big Four.

Think of ATV and the picture is of show business, variety, gimmicks, professionalism, the big drum, visiting Americans and Val Parnell. Turn to Granada and you sec Sidney Bernstein ruling the roost and hatching out a lot of good ideas and programmes, with here and there a bad egg in the entertainment basket.

ABC conjures up fast-talking Howard Thomas, a mixture of good and indifferent shows, and a general air of slow but steady progress.

Which leaves A-R. How do you sum up the company? It gives no impression of onemanship. Who is the single individual who can be cornered and asked for a quick answer to the 64,000 dollar question? This is important to everybody writing about TV because when key questions are being asked we look for an answer today. Tomorrow or later on is useless. And by answer I don’t mean a diplomatically phrased ‘it could well be that…’ or ‘when the consideration arises A-R will take due notice’ piece of nonsense.

Of course there are times when A-R prefers to play it strong and silent. However, when facts are getting out and questions being asked then let us please have a quick and definite answer. That way A-R will get a better Press than by letting limited information and guesswork produce half a story.

TEAM SPIRIT?

Does the same team spirit and enthusiasm exist inside A-R that is found in your competitors?

This isn’t a matter of individual outlook. Some of the nicest people to be met in TV nestle under A-R’s wing. But collectively does the vitality and urgency which marked those invigorating early days of Channel Nine still exist?

Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that the spirit is there and kept for private consumption rather than the public gaze. I hope it is so.

For my money you’ve slowed down. Some of the fun seems to have gone from life – which is surprising to an outsider when TV is so obviously one of the most alive-o industries with thousands of lookers-on-and-in only too keen to break into it.

Ignoring the financial side of things A-R snatched the viewing plum when it landed the London Monday-to-Friday contract.

But what unique contribution has the Company made to the service? Whatever your answer, here is a further question – has that contribution been as important as you expected?

I’ve been disappointed. A-R as one of the pioneering companies had to pay the penalty for the many and expected mistakes. It seems you stockpiled too much and these ‘canned’ shows played too big a role in your programme schedules. If you’re loading schedules with film it doesn’t leave much space for the live products of your staff.

So the impression gained from the screen was that A-R was more interested in the ready made product than in do-it-yourself shows. This impression remains. I’d like to sec A-R come out with a lot more live shows devised and mounted by the staff.

They couldn’t all be winners but a fair proportion might ring the bell.

HOLBORN AT EIGHT?

It is in variety that I believe A-R needs a boost. Where is your Palladium show or ‘Chelsea At Eight’? Where are your Maria Callas’s or Bob Hope’s?

From time-to-time you get the celebrity names but usually it is left to ATV or Granada to scoop the pool.

Where’s your comedy rival to ‘The Army Game’? I’m not forgetting those Top Ten quizzes ‘Double Your Money’ and ‘Take Your Pick’. A-R screens them, yet can hardly claim credit for either.

I’d like to see better scripting in variety, better productions, less tclcrccording, more showmanship and, well – glitter.

You’ve had your successes with offbeat shows like ‘Fred’, ‘Son of Fred’, etc. – but they are no longer around. More’s the pity.

Drama has hit the heights. I remember Pete Murray in ‘The Last Enemy’ … some of the Ted Willis plays. Lately, the impact has seemed less strong.

I don’t put that forward as a necessarily correct view. However, it’s mine. I realize that A-R’s drama maintains a good standard and it’s not easy finding unusual stories popular with the mass.

In documentaries and features A-R has been seen at its best. Here you have had intelligent, first-class programmes which other companies must have envied and which assaulted the BBC where it thought itself unchallengeable.

You found an outstanding interviewer-reporter in Michael Ingrams, screened two talked about and enjoyed ‘Look Out’ and ‘Look In’ series and promptly forgot about him.

I’m not forgetting those major documentaries of Russia and America – both highly praised but using him once every six months or so seems a waste.

I’d also like to mention Caryl Doncaster, Dan Farson and Nick Barker. They’ve all added to A-R’s reputation.

Do you recall the documentary that the Company did on fan fever? I still remember it and I’d like to know why A-R hasn’t turned out many more like it.

Can I pay a well-earned tribute next to weatherman Laurie West? It’s not the easiest of jobs telling viewers why it was wet yesterday, was wet today and it’s going to be wet tomorrow.

I like Mr West’s friendly personality, his commonsense and understandable explanations about deep depressions and the like, and I’m sure the majority of viewers prefer his performance to that of the BBC’s weather team.

But let’s take a look at the programmes which follow him in a typical week this summer. On Mondays the London viewer gets two Granada shows and one from ATV.

A-R’s contribution? The ‘My Wife and I’ series, the American originated ‘Wagon Train’, ‘Murder Bag’ and ‘Undercurrent’ – I’m leaving out advertising magazines. That’s a reasonable bunch. Three live shows and one film.

Tuesdays it’s not so good a story. Two live shows from Granada and two more from ATV. A-R chips in with youth-club show ‘Who Knows?’, Bob Cummings and Late, very Late Extra.

Better on Wednesdays – two from Granada and three from A-R. A play, a quiz and musical variety.

Thursdays? Equally good. Two from Granada and the rest from A-R. These are ‘Cool for Cats’, ‘San Francisco Beat’, ‘This Week’, a ‘Jack Hylton Half-hour’ and ‘Palais Party’. Finally, Friday. Three from ATV, one from Granada, and ‘Gun Law’, ‘Turnabout’ and a Jack Hylton show out of the home stable.

Where is the highlight to the A-R week? Where are the shows that are adding something lasting to the development of TV?

Maybe I’m being too critical? A-R is pleasing millions of viewers with the existing schedules. I believe it could please many more and give fresh incentive to the staff by working on new shows and ideas.

However, until you strike your own path and present many more live programmes I don’t think A-R will increase its stature.

Jogging along in the middle of the road with a passable but not exceptional collection of shows makes for an easy life.

Personally, I’d like to see the resources of writers, designers, directors and the rest tapped much more frequently.

Does it matter that some ideas might fall by the wayside? Much more likely is that half-a-dozen shows will emerge which are worth staying home for.

Do I qualify for that horsewhipping?

The post They Say… James Green appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Q. – Kindly state your name and occupation.

A. – Peter Black, television critic Daily Mail. Began journalism on Letchworth Citizen, 1937-39. Film and theatre critic, Brighton Evening Argus 1946-9. Theatre critic Brighton Herald 1949-52.

Q. – If you had to describe your opinion of Associated Rediffusion in one word, what would it be?

A. – Wellmeaning.

Q. – Perhaps you’d better take some more words.

A. – None of the programme companies has better intentions. But with A-R there is a damaging tendency to mistake the intention for the deed. My impression is that programmes are mounted in a quick rush of enthusiasm, before the difficulties and weaknesses have been cured. Too many go off at half-cock, and contain obvious misjudgments that should have been spotted earlier. My impression is of too many executives shouting brisk decisions down dictaphones. But I know it is a false one.

Q. – How do you account for it, then?

A. – Probably it’s the nature of A-R’s organization. When you think of the other companies you think of one man in each: Sidney Bernstein, Val Parnell, Howard Thomas. When you think of the BBC you think of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the MCC, the Foreign Office and the Polytechnic. When you think of A-R you think of a Board of businessmen directors.

Q. – Is that bad?

A. – Of course not. But it could lead to some oddities.

Q. – Name some.

A. – Light entertainment, for one. It seems to me an extraordinary decision to buy most of it from an outside organization.

Q. – Why?

A. – Because you lose at once full control over it. You have to take what you’re given. And you’re given shows like ‘The Lady Ratlings’.

Q. – Would it surprise you to know that ‘The Lady Ratlings’ figure in the Top Ten?

A. – No.

Q. – Continue.

A. – Because your own output is small you have nothing to replace shows that ought to be taken off. Do you remember ‘Highland Fling’?

Q. – Yes…

A. – And the department’s authority suffers. The last Lyon series, in my opinion, was frankly not good enough, and they should have been told so. Yet when A-R’s own men back shows, they have done some fine things. They gave Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan their chance and TV comedy received an entirely new twist.

Q. – How about being constructive – what would you do?

A. – Look for a man who would forget about the spectaculars, the running-about dancing, the acrobats and conjurors, and find something that would extend the range of light entertainment. His job would be to create programmes that were recognizably an A-R contribution, just as ‘Chelsea at Eight’ carries Bernstein’s bold signature.

Q. – You’re saying, in effect, that the more responsibility a department has, the better it functions?

A. – Of course. Look at A-R’s programmes for schools. Here a sense of responsibility is at its keenest. The result is that these programmes are the best thing A-R does.

Q. – Don’t forget that it’s easier for schools TV. The audience is around the same age, and at that age differences in taste are negligible.

A. – I was just going to say that. We must remember, too, that television is at its most interesting when it is frankly teaching. Only fools think that it mustn’t teach. The new term’s series on music is one of the best things of its kind that I’ve seen. I wish we were lucky enough to have it in the evening schedules.

Q. – Say something about drama.

A. – All TV drama has had a stroke of luck. It’s now been proved that audiences will take almost any subject, no matter how serious, if it’s in play form – unless it’s in poetry, fancy dress, introduces ghosts or plays tricks with time. All the drama departments are fruitfully exploiting this popularity, and none more than Norman Marshall and his team. There is a steady trickle of good, new writing coming out of A-R.

Q. – What do you call good writing?

A. – Plays that are about our own people in our own time. But I don’t mean comedies in which lazy writers try to catch atmosphere by sticking a bottle of tomato sauce on the table and talking about a ‘caff’. Jack Pulham’s ‘You Can’t Have Everything’ was an example. It was topical, grown-up drama, full of suspense though nobody got shot; and the actors and production fell on it like hungry men on a good meal.

Q. – What about features?

A. – I’m glad you asked that. All ITV features have suffered to a varied extent from ratings fever, a malady caused by too much exposure to the graphs supplied by TAM. Symptoms are, in the beginning, a rush of words to the head, a preference for the close-up and a tendency to talk loudly and to confuse fidgety cutting with speed. During the crisis the sufferer has the obsession that if a features programme slows down for a split second an executive will jump in and kill it.

Q. – The cure?

A. – Two. The short-term remedy is to move features away from peak time periods. This gives devisers, producers and performers a better target to aim at, allays their morbid fear of an inferior TAM rating, and restores their self-confidence. Hence programmes like Bronowski’s ‘New Horizons’, Wolf Mankowitz’s ‘Conflict’, and Dan Farson’s ‘People in Trouble’, all of them outstanding current affairs series.

Q. – And the other? How about ‘This Week’, for example?

A. – ‘This Week’ found the long-term cure. For months it gave you the impression of trying not to break into a run, like a man hurrying down a dark alley who sees behind him the shadow of the upraised cosh. Then, about six months ago, it seemed to acquire confidence in itself. It was as though it had realized that its position, as ITV’s only weekly serious feature to get a peak time, was more secure than it had thought. This sense of feeling necessary is of great value. Because of it ‘This Week’ is not only a key programme, it behaves like one.

Q. – How do you see the future of ITV, and A-R’s share in it?

A. – There is no doubt whatever but that ITV will become less frivolous. For one thing it can afford to – the undertaking is enormously profitable. For another, the market will change. Advertising and programming follow each other, and in ITV’s first two years we had cheap, mass-selling commodities being advertised around mass-market entertainment. Advertisers will now want to catch the smaller, particular markets, and programmes will match them. They’ve wooed the Smiths: now they’ll go after the Smythes.

This will suit A-R down to the ground. I suspect that its heart has never really been in ‘The Lady Ratlings’.

The post They Say… Peter Black appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

At the start it is necessary, I think, to say this: there are TV critics whose sole job is criticism from off the screen; there are others whose work incorporates in addition the duties of “TV Correspondent”. The latter types, of whom I am one, inevitably bring to their viewing a great deal of inside knowledge about the organisations and people behind the programmes. As with most circumstances in life this can be an advantage or not. It can breed prejudices in criticism; or it can rear understanding of what is involved in TV programming.

But because of this, when I am asked what I think of A-R I cannot honestly attempt an assessment based on screen output alone. I know a great deal more about A-R than meets the viewer’s eye. You inside can lament this, or be glad about it. It’s just a fact nobody can now change. Hence inevitably I recall those first impressions gained when A-R opened its doors to the newspapermen. I think most of us, reared on the BBC beat, expected the commercialism of independent TV to avoid the development of glossy offices occupied by legions of suave and arty young men and luscious young women, all chattering intellectual snobbism about “the medium”. But not a bit of it; A-R handed us this same story all over again!

The old stock BBC jokes about admin types running the decks, with the able-bodied producers and creative types battened down in the hold, all came up again. A-R looked more precious than it was. It could never have survived if it had lived up to its original chi-chi attitudes.

Even discounting these things as weaknesses of human organisation, the Fleet Street hunch that a lot of people had been appointed for no precise programme jobs inevitably sharpened the screen critic’s teeth. Unfortunately, the screen output to start with did nothing to remove this hunch.

But much which caused our early amusement with A-R has been sensibly and efficiently cleaned up. It is rapidly putting away childish things. But as it grows up there is one thing I keep seeking in A-R but still do not find. This is its own distinctive flavour; its one, main, undeniable contribution to TV. I think it undeniable that the other companies of the first four in ITV have developed a kind of “brand” quality. A-R’s screen output inevitably ranges through all and no degrees of quality and achievement. It has done some very fine programmes; some atrociously bad ones; and kept up a middling standard of competent TV entertainment and interest bravely. But what has it developed as nobody else has developed? Where is its major impact?

It is my belief that A-R has so far missed the one big opportunity in commercial TV which all other companies have missed, but which A-R is peculiarly suited to taking and using well. This is the extension beyond what the BBC has done in documentary programming, using outside broadcasting as well as studio and film.

The next leap-forward in TV documentary has got to tailor outside broadcasting techniques into the others. I know the BBC is aware of this, and is making steps; but A-R could have gone ahead by now, and got a lead. You can be justly proud of Dan Farson’s programmes. “This Week” is painfully erratic, always raising hopes of out-doing “Panorama” but taking so long to find the way.

But all these ventures, often stirring and good, arc set in too narrow a vision of TV documentary. The tools of the game arc not being used; the field of programme subjects is not really being extended. It is here, I think, that A-R could really make a major and lasting contribution. “USSR Now” was a peak—but one which by its nature must stand alone as an occasional triumph.

On the light entertainment side it seems to me that A-R has at times touched the exciting verge of new uses of TV in comedy work. The Tommy Cooper series promised this; the Alfred Marks series has established a good, solid and worthwhile new-kind melange of light entertainment. But where is the new A-R comedy-writing team?

A great deal of publicity was originally devoted to creating glamour stars for A-R. Two or three young actresses were treated to the build-up works. Where are they now? With my most gallant regrets to them, I have to say that their names do not today electrify the populace.

Of course the “TV star” business has been overdone. Indeed I believe “TV stardom” as such to be possible only by absolute exclusivity to one programme company. To-day the most popular TV performers swap channels regularly; and there is a free market for bookers. This is a good thing. But if A-R wants to breed “stars” of its very own, it can only be done by keeping its pets strictly to itself; the public will then know that it must shop at A-R to see its idols. Personally, I don’t think this is worth the trouble—and probably A-R has come to the same conclusion.

I have left to last the programme department which has received most of the glossy publicity, and let’s admit it, most of the chi-chi talk—drama. I happen to believe that TV plays are over-publicised and surrounded by a great deal of window dressing which matters not at all. All viewers like a good story. A competent play will always be popular. Drama experiment is worthy and useful, but Joe Public rarely recognises it.

A-R’s plays seem to me to oscillate between the very fine and the competent time-passers every bit as much as do the BBC’s. In fact, in TV, whoever is producing it, I doubt whether drama can ever be anything more than this.

There is always the chance that some TV company will find a new play with a new actor or actress in it, which will not merely cause us TV critics to rave, but will set the whole world of drama afire. That will be the day — and some day it will happen.

Kenneth Bailey

The post They Say… Kenneth Bailey appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Friday, November 22. At 17 minutes, 32 seconds past seven o’clock the first news flash about the shooting of President Kennedy was transmitted. At 19.40.30 the President’s death was reported as a fact. Normal programmes were abandoned.

This is how four members of the staff recall that evening:

‘We were having a drink in the club when someone telephoned to say that Kennedy had been shot. Less than an hour later we had got the go-ahead for a special programme – and two hours, 40 minutes after that we were on the air…’

‘There were about six people up in features when I went off to the TV Ball at the Dorchester with the news. When I got back there must have been dozens – and every phone was in use…

‘Studio 9 was bare – but all sorts of people turned up and offered to help. We didn’t have a complete crew but someone phoned Wembley and every available person was diverted to Television House…

‘A switchboard operator returned of her own accord because she guessed how busy it was going to be. Pretty well everyone in features section either phoned in or came back to the office from pubs, clubs and homes…’

This is how the general manager saw it:

‘Associated-Rediffusion, as the “Nominated Contractor” of the Network, recast the whole evening’s programmes, dropped many advertisements, put on a special “This Week” and behaved with great responsibility. My thanks are due to all those members of the staff who, of their own volition, returned to the office or the studios so that this emergency could be met.’

This is how James Green, television correspondent of the Evening News saw it:

Now that the senseless tragedy of President Kennedy’s assassination is moving slowly into perspective, it is pertinent to consider how well or how badly British TV acquitted itself.

The moment of crisis could not have happened at a worse time for the two British networks. Almost to a man, the policy-making, programme-planning executives of both the BBC and the ITV companies were arriving at the Dorchester Hotel for the annual ball of the Guild of TV Producers and Directors.

Some 70 of the guests left at once for their respective offices and studios. Every telephone at the hotel was in demand and calls were even being made from the kitchens.

(Incidentally, what bad luck the organisers of this TV Awards ball do suffer: one year a clash with the Suez invasion, other times marred by the Lewisham train disaster, start of a newspaper strike, and the heaviest fog of the year.)

The Kennedy news presented British TV with the biggest surprise crisis it has handled in many years. Suez. Hungary. These involved major actions and quick thinking, but nothing compared with the impact of a bullet at Dallas.

The fact that so much of the ‘top brass’ was travelling to the ball accounts for the uncertain manner in which both networks handled the opening moments of the disaster. But within a few hours reasoned decisions were being taken.

The ‘breakthrough’, which must have struck all who looked to Associated-Rediffusion, ITN, and ATV for up-to-the-minute information and pictures, was in the way that published programmes were thrown out as situation demanded. Various ‘specials’ were hurriedly assembled and screened morning, afternoon, or evening as they became available.

Most of the pictures arrived through a pooling arrangement. The American networks providing material which was beamed on to London via the ‘Relay’ satellite. ‘Relay’ (and I’m told it will no longer be working by the end of the year) was able to pass pictures three times a day and ‘passes’ of around 30 minutes each were possible.

From Britain the American material was sent right across Europe, not only over Eurovision, but also the Iron Curtain’s equivalent, Intervision.

As a critic I viewed as many as possible of the emergency shows screened by ITV and BBC. I was left with a definite impression. First, beyond any doubt, Mr Geoffrey Cox and his team at ITN proved more than capable of meeting the challenge of the BBC’s news division. This is not to say that the BBC fell below their usual standards. Nor is it my intention to belittle their achievements.

The second is that, and I wish I could explain this better, somehow – before your very eyes ITV grew up, came of age, matured, found developing dignity. In the past, if you will accept a personal opinion, I think that the inclination has been to turn auto- matically to the BBC in times of emergency. It was as though the BBC spoke as the voice of the nation. Now that, I suggest, is what has been altered. As a result of ITV’s excellent public face during the four or five days of crisis, much has been done to remove that prejudice which favoured the BBC.

The British public, which likes to take its time, is correspondingly much closer to the day when it will accept ITV’s voice as nationally authoritative in days of trouble.

Not that the BBC were second-rate. What I believe is that the events in November have established as fact that they must now bear comparison with a challenger of powerful stature and increased responsibility.

It was also interesting to see the various ITV companies working together so smoothly and acting fast in disrupting normally inviolable programme schedules and advertising.

Summing up, Independent Television’s brand image has been considerably enhanced and a claim that the BBC are no longer monopolists of broadcasting in critical times can fairly be made.

The pity is that something similar in the way of emergency did not arise while the Pilkington Committee were in session. It would surely have had immense influence.

The post The assassination and TV appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

How do we stand now, those of us engaged in making programmes, at the start of the fourth year of the company’s operation as a programme contractor?

Have we lost our originality, our fire? Has complacency taken the place of ingenuity? Are we, as one journalist put it, “playing safe” with our programme pattern?

If one is to believe what some of our Press-men are writing, then in fact ITV is just coasting along picking up its millions of profit with effortless ease.

Let us examine this suggestion, and take a glance at some of the shows we have been “coasting” along with in the past few months.

Take drama for instance.

This company’s contribution to the ITV network in 1958 was forty-one plays – far in excess of any other contractor. Two-thirds of these plays were British in every sense of the word, eighteen of them being adaptations of British stage successes, and eleven of them specially commissioned TV plays by British authors. This is quite apart from the tremendously successful half-hour British series, “Murder Bag”, which has consistently appeared in the top ten ratings. “Television Playhouse” and the “Play of the Week” series have become firmly established and represent a most important and successful contribution to the ITV programme pattern.

We intend to increase our number of British TV plays in the future and encourage more writers to work exclusively for us.

And then light entertainment can claim to have made its contribution towards originality in 1958.

“The Jubilee Show” succeeded in combining music, comedy and nostalgia in a blend of the old and new, regularly rating in the top-ten, and bringing many letters of appreciation from all kinds of people.

“Rush Hour”, “East Side, West Side”, “Free and Easy” and “Hotel Imperial” all stepped out of line and gave us new ways of presentation. “Cool for Cats”, still on the air and gaining in popularity, will continue with us into the New Year. And the two original ITV quiz shows, “Take Your Pick” and “Double Your Money”, are surely the most successful of them all, and remain the most consistently highest rated quizzes. I only mention these few shows because they are company originations, which is all we are concerned with.

How about features?

Dan Farson’s “People in Trouble” scries has brought him to the front rank as a personality interviewer. “This Week”, coming up to its fourth year, is the only programme of its kind on the ITV network and remains the most informative of all programmes with a behind-the-news format. “New Horizon”, “Conquest of Space”, “Undercurrent” – which brought Gerard Fay to the fore as a new TV personality -“Out of Step” and “Keeping in Step”, “Only Yesterday”, “USSR Now” and “America Now” make an impressive line-up of programme effort and achievement. Difficult to detect any lack of fire in this section.

How about the children?

Are we relying on cowboys and Indians for our high ratings? The facts show just the opposite. Currently the most successful live children’s British serial, “The Red Dragon”, written and produced by John Rhodes, recently passed the viewing figures of “Pop-Eye”, “Fury” and “Rin Tin Tin”. Three of our recent serials were specially written by members of A-R children’s team, and in no programme section is there more zeal and dedication to their work. It is in this section that an important new method of animation “Visimotion” has been developed and is proving of great value, as seen recently in the “Alexander the Mouse” and “The Enchanted House” programmes.

Schools programmes, in their second year, have widened their horizons and with the introduction of “The Dordogne River” programme, specially filmed on location, they stepped out of the classroom to bring the reality of the lesson to the individual. The new programmes planned for the spring term are designed to further this conception of TV education. And then, of course, there are the programmes that do not fall into any particular category — the outside broadcasts, 105 of them, in addition to the Wimbledon Tennis coverage; the “Close-Up” and “Spotlight” scries; the rapidly produced tributes to personalities, such as Mike Todd, Robert Donat and Jack Buchanan, usually mounted in a few’ hours.

So perhaps this suggestion of “coasting” is merely Press talk. Why should we expect anything other than severe criticism from a medium which is more and more finding itself in conflict with Independent Television?

We are sure of our brief. Let us keep our sights high and make quite sure that the things we do are done as well as they can be.

Let us surround ourselves with the best possible talent; let us treat every programme we do as a means of finding out how to do it better next time. Good luck to all of you who contribute to the making of our programmes. Look out, 1959, here we come!

The post Floor Four says… Keep our sights high appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

“A result of the developments in Independent Television since we last met is that this will be our last Annual General Meeting as an independent television programme company. In February of this year the Independent Television Authority invited applications for new programme contracts to take effect after the expiry of the existing contracts on 29th July, 1968. The Authority had decided to make certain changes in the general pattern of the contracts for the three major independent television areas known as the London, Midland and Northern areas, each of which has since the beginning been served by two contractors, one on the five weekdays and one at the weekends. Under the new pattern, only the London area will be served by two contractors, with the weekday contractor’s responsibility ending at 7 p.m. on Fridays, when the weekend contractor will take over.

The London weekday contract has been held by your company and its predecessor, Associated-Rediffusion, since the inception of independent television and we confidently applied for renewal. The Authority decided against us, however, and offered the new contract conditionally to a new programme company to be formed jointly by your company and ABC Television Limited, currently the weekend contractor for the Midland and Northern areas. The Authority’s decision not to renew our contract was a great shock and wholly unexpected. It affected not only you as shareholders but some 1,350 of your employees, whose lives and careers were sadly and cruelly upset.

We had assumed that a statement by the Postmaster General, made when the Television Bill, now embodied in the Television Act, 1964, was being debated in the House of Commons, meant what it said. The Postmaster General’s precise words as recorded in Hansard were as follows: —

‘Meanwhile, I hope that the House will remember that the risk of non-renewal of a contract is very slight unless the company has completely failed to make the grade.’

Your Board took the view that we had not ‘completely failed’ and would not ‘completely fail to make the grade’ and I must add that we had not at any time been given any indication that the Authority took a different view; accordingly we proceeded to prepare for the future by increasing the staff and undertaking large scale capital expenditure commitments to convert our operation for colour and the new 625 line standard. As shareholders, however, you will naturally ask the question ‘have we completely failed to make the grade?’ This question is, I think, best answered, not by an expression of my own opinion, but by facts and by tributes from outside the Company.

The facts may be briefly summarised as follows. Rediffusion, in company with Associated Television and with the valued support of Sir Kenneth Clark, the first Chairman of the I.T.A., and Sir Robert Fraser, the I.T.A. Director-General, was responsible for building up independent television from nothing, through serious initial trials and tribulations, into a first class public service. Rediffusion, in the difficult pioneering days, introduced the first regular television service for schools in this country and has since been the leader in that field. Rediffusion took the initiative in forming the International Television Federation, an association of major television organisations in the English speaking world for the production, exchange and distribution throughout the world of high class documentary programmes on world problems. Rediffusion has always played a leading part in the independent television network, providing the central production services and key staff for state occasions and other national events and its general programme contribution to the network has not been surpassed by any other company. Rediffusion has won over 40 awards in international and national competitions for its programmes and publications in every field of broadcasting activity. The list of ITV Awards in the I.T.A. 1968 Year Book, covering the years 1956 to 1967, records that Rediffusion has won more awards than any other programme company. This surely cannot be a company which has ‘completely failed to make the grade.’

But let me now offer you a selection of tributes from outside on the Company generally and on its programmes, including some from the I.T.A. itself.

From ‘The Observer’ –

‘Rediffusion is the most BBC-like of the companies, full of people who really know and care about TV.’

From the ‘Television Mail’ –

‘But – though perhaps it’s a bit early for tributes and similar goo – it does seem appropriate at this time just to say how much, in our opinion, A-R, together with the other pioneers, has contributed to this vast industry. It took some courage, in those days, to hang on and keep a brave face while watching all those millions of pounds pouring out of the window; A-R at one stage not only lost nearly £4 million, as well as its original partner. Associated Newspapers. But the original management’s faith in commercial television eventually paid off, and many of the later entrants into ITV were able to take advantage of the spadework -and the risks – undertaken by A-R in the very early days.

And since that time the company’s record has been pretty impressive. It has been associated with Intertel, ‘This Week’, Studio 5 at Wembley, E-Cam, and many other advances in the technical and creative fields. Sure, it’s had its failures, too; but at least it’s been man enough to admit them; last year’s balance sheet includes some thousands of pounds written off in untransmitted programmes (some people would have transmitted them).

On the sales side, too, A-R has done a great deal for the advertising world. At the time of the announcement of the new contracts, it was installing a computer timebooking system; and many initiatives in the time sales field have been taken by the company.’

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Rediffusion’s ‘This Week’, the then Chairman of the I.T.A., Lord Hill of Luton, wrote –

‘For a decade ‘This Week’ has been a regular illustration of Independent Television’s determination to provide a well-balanced service. ‘This Week’ has faithfully provided information, educational and not seldom entertaining material about the contemporary world with unfailing skill and imagination. Its ingenious methods of presentation have consistently made sense of complex current issues without distortion, over-simplification or playing down to the audience.’

On the same occasion, the Prime Minister wrote –

‘A pioneer in this field has been ‘This Week’. Its integrity is undoubted, its professionalism obvious. I congratulate its producers and all who play a part in its presentation.’

The Leader of the Opposition wrote –

‘Television has been largely responsible for stimulating the public appetite in this respect. During the past 10 years, ‘This Week’ has played a notable part in providing commentary news headlines.’

I have already referred to our initiative in the formation of The International Television Federation and I think our standing in the principal English-speaking countries overseas is well illustrated by the following extract from a citation recently presented to us by our fellow-members of the Federation. It is as follows:—

‘Intertel, at the eighth annual meeting, accepts with profound regret the resignation of Rediffusion Television Limited and gratefully acknowledges its wise leadership and generous contributions to the common effort.

(Signed) T. S. Duckmanton, The Australian Broadcasting Commission
Eugene S. Hallman, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
John F. White, National Educational Television (USA)
MALTA, September 30th, 1967.’

May I now give you a few extracts from the I.T.A’s own Year Books about Rediffusion programmes?

1963 ‘If this gradual and intelligible introduction to television on behalf of children could be achieved, no better start could be made than with ‘Small Time’, a short programme appearing from Monday to Friday between 4.45 p.m. and 5 p.m. on most stations of Independent Television.’

‘In the winter of 1960-61, Associated-Rediffusion transmitted a French language series ‘Chez les Dupre’ in the early evening and found an immediate and substantial response among viewers in the London area.’

‘The play should speak to the condition of a television service. In so far as it does so, in the case of Independent Television, it reveals it to be in good heart. Each of the four largest companies (A-R, ATV, Granada and ABC) has made and continues to make, serious contributions to television drama . . .’

1964 ‘Nevertheless, the serials have been very good in recent months . .. ‘Sierra Nine’ and ‘Smuggler’s Cove’ from Associated-Rediffusion, all accurately described as adventure serials, with children taking the major parts.’

‘Melodrama, which may cover all other kinds of fictional series, is entertaining enough to deserve its considerable place in television. Lively who-done-its such as ‘No Hiding Place’ … are the essence of quick-moving, intelligently planned entertainment.’

1965 ‘To take one example alone, the much acclaimed production by Rediffusion of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in June, 1964 was seen by almost 4,000,000 viewers.’

‘Rediffusion has launched ‘Towards 2000’ a major series on the development of technology . . .’ ‘These are essentially action stories rather than plays of ideas, and they include some very popular programmes such as ‘No Hiding Place’ and ‘Crane’ (Rediffusion) . . .’

“‘Double Your Money’ and ‘Take Your Pick’ (Rediffusion) have been running as long as Independent Television itself and continue to be enjoyed by vast audiences.’

1966 ‘A notable programme seen throughout the country was ‘The Music Man’ (Rediffusion) . . .’

1967 ‘Although it was first felt that television’s chief contribution would be to the work of the secondary school, its potential value to primary schools was recognised as early as 1959 when Rediffusion produced ‘The World Around Us’.’

Finally, a selection of press comments on individual programmes:—

‘Laudes Evangelii’ (two quotes from the American press)

‘A magnificent harbinger of the many productions on religious themes that this season of the year will be bringing to our television screens. Some may be as good as this one but I hardly see how any could be better.’

‘Leonide Massine’s Laudes Evangelii surely will stand as one of television’s lasting accomplishments, a work of breathtaking reverence and beauty that has enriched the home screen as much as any single programme in recent years.’

‘Design for Living’

‘. . . beautifully simple, it revives one’s faith in the use of television.’

‘This Week’

‘. . . report on South Vietnam and the round-up of the modern Israeli Army were both prize-winning pieces of TV journalism.’

‘Children of Revolution’

‘. . . television at its best.’

‘No Hiding Place’ – ‘A Bottle Full of Sixpences’

‘Lord Hill of ITA must be plaintively asking himself why the rest of the boys can’t make programmes as wholesome and morally sound as the sentimental homily we got last night in London.’

‘One In Every Hundred’

‘A compulsive and socially valuable use of the television screen.’

‘Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn’

‘It is clearly obvious that ITV is capable of producing such first-class material as Rediffusion’s James Mason Film ‘Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn.’

‘Seven Deadly Virtues’ – ‘The Good and Faithful Servant’

‘This was a play that put some life back into my loss of faith in ITV drama.’

‘This Week’ – ‘The World of Nigel Hunt’

‘This kind of television, lightening superstitious corners of human prejudice, is high among TV’s most worthwhile achievements.’

It is common knowledge that not all comments about the Company and its programmes have been in the same vein as those I have quoted to you. But whatever adverse comment there may have been, such comments as I have quoted surely could not apply to a company which had ‘completely failed to make the grade.’

Small wonder is it, therefore, that your directors, management and staff are at a loss to understand the Authority’s decision. Even that decision cannot destroy our pride in our achievements over the past 12 years.

The Authority did, however, offer us an opportunity, on the conditions that we completely sacrifice our identity and any control over the development of independent television, to acquire a 50 per cent financial stake, but no effective say, in a new company, to be formed in partnership with ABC Television, to serve the population of the London area for a little over four days a week instead of the five days for which we shall alone have been responsible for the 13 years up to 29th July, 1968.

You will have seen from the Directors’ Report that arrangements for the formation of a new company have been agreed between the Company and ABC Television and approved by the Authority. The establishment of a joint company in such circumstances is a very complex matter; when all the necessary matters of detail have been settled, you will be informed of the overall position.

We shall in future have a 50 per cent stake (but a minority of the voting shares) in an operation covering four days plus part of a day in place of our present exclusive five day operation. In effect, we shall have been reduced from five day operation to marginally more than two day operation. Nevertheless, we have always had the most friendly relations with ABC Television and we shall certainly do everything we can, as I am sure will ABC Television also, to make the new company an outstanding success.

Whatever reasons Lord Hill of Luton (whose appointment to the Chairmanship of our competitors, the B.B.C., had, according to press reports, been decided months earlier) and his part-time colleagues of the I.T.A. may have had for crossing our name off the list of effective contributors to independent television, I and my colleagues on the Board will remain forever grateful to the men and women who built up Rediffusion Television with so much devoted skill, energy and enthusiasm. We believe they have done a magnificent job of work. Although the Company is under sentence of death, every valiant effort is being made, in spite of the obvious difficulties, to keep our flag flying right up to the end.”

The post Sentenced to death appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

The year 1966 started with political praise being heaped on the head of ‘This Week’ when the programme celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 6. A publication to mark the event carried messages of goodwill from the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Liberals. Later that night a programme title ventured into the realm of the astrologer with what at that time seemed an amazingly rash prediction… The World Cup – England to Win?’ Then on January 31 the first of a new series called ‘The Rat Catchers’ started to win predictably high ratings.

In between, however, had come the death of a member of the board of directors – Sir Bracewell Smith, a former Lord Mayor of London, chairman of Wembley Stadium and an honorary vice-president of the Football Association. February brought yet another award to the company when ‘Children of Revolution’, the Intertel production on young people growing up in Czechoslovakia, won a Silver Dove from the International Catholic Organisation for Radio and Television (UNDA) at the sixth Monte Carlo International Television Festival. Another award came the next month when Hughie Green and Michael Miles received a joint special award from the Variety Club of Great Britain at the Show Business lunch on March 8 for the continuing popularity of their programmes.

March 31 once again saw Studio 9 as the hub of the ITV network when everybody went into action to cover the General Election.

Mr Wilson was given ‘A View from the Bridge’ shortly after on April 4 with the transmission of Arthur Miller’s play. Meanwhile the ITA announced that its present three-year contracts with the programme companies would be extended until the end of July, 1968, as no decision had been taken on whether to extend the ITV service.

A flurry which was to extend for quite a few weeks hit the Wembley studios when the first of the colour ‘Hippodrome’ series went on the floor on April 19.

In the business world, company chairman John Spencer Wills became the chairman of The British Electric Traction Co. Ltd, on April 21, following the death of Harley Drayton.

On May 9 the first of the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ series was transmitted. Pride, gluttony, sloth, avarice, lust, envy and wrath subsequently achieved the distinction of all getting into TAM’s Top Ten.

Three days later the first of the adult education series ‘Royalist and Roundhead’ was screened. While not hitting the Top Ten, it rose high in the opinion of educationalists.

May also saw the drama section of the club take over Studio 9 to stage ‘Ring Round the Moon’ and achieve high audience ratings. Meanwhile Fusion made its own dent in the award stakes by receiving a certificate of merit in the British Association of Industrial Editors’ contest, a top award of excellence in the International Council of Industrial Editors’ competition and the Block and Anderson Cup from the British Direct Mail and Advertising Association.

The International Television Federation – Intertel – reached the fifth anniversary of its foundation on June 14. Behind it were 34 programmes and a coveted 1965 Peabody Award for making ‘the first continuing contribution towards international understanding through television.’

Also in June came an award for ‘Stage One Contest – Caroline’. This children’s programme won the Munich Prix Jeunesse.

The Mountbatten series also made news in June when it was announced that this exclusive story of the life and times of Lord Mount-batten would be made in colour.

July started with the news that the first episode of the ‘Hippodrome’ series on July 5 had gone straight to the top of Neilsen coast-to-coast ratings when screened by CBS in colour.

This was the month of the World Cup which England won on July 30 and which stretched the joint resources of BBC and ITV in providing coverage for the world. Rediffusion contributed its share of equipment and executives.

The day after the final at Wembley historians gathered at Television House for a conference with ‘History on TV’ as its theme.

August 1 brought the first programme in ‘The Informer’ series which regularly knocked on the doors of the Top Ten during its run.

The month was shadowed by the death of Bernard Rickatson-Hatt on August 7. He had been on the board of the company since July, 1958. A former Guards officer, he had been editor-in-chief of Reuters, adviser to the governor of the Bank of England and to the Bank of London and South America on public relations.

In September came two club events. On the 10th there was the annual sunlit sports day for the children of club members at Shepperton and on the 17th the football team took part in the TV Cup knock-out competition. For the second year running the Rediffusion XI lost to Scottish, the eventual winners.

On September 21 it was announced that Sir Richard Thompson was joining the board. A former M.P., he has held various government appointments.

A conference for educationalists was held at Wembley on September 22 at which, for the first time, teachers were allowed to produce their own programmes in a television studio. September 26 saw the start of the new autumn schedules with 15 new programme presentations, the sequel being six out of TAM’s Top Ten for the week. As part of this schedule the first production of the new Rediffusion Films Ltd was transmitted on September 28 – ‘Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn’ with James Mason and Jill Bennett. The Frost Programme’ series also started later that night.

Appointments in features came in October. First there was the announcement of the appointment of Barry Westwood as producer of the networked Thursday edition of ‘This Week’. Then, on October 27, it was announced that James Butler had been appointed head of features from November 1.

During October and November, three joint Rediffusion/Talent Association productions under David Susskind passed through Wembley to be recorded in black-and-white and colour for America.

On November 8, it was announced that the present series of ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ would end on December 23.

On November 11, the announcement came that managing director Paul Adorian had been appointed managing director of Rediffusion Ltd. John Spencer Wills, chairman of both companies, relinquished his managing directorship following his appointment as chairman of The British Electric Traction Co. Ltd upon the death of Harley Drayton.

The annual general meeting of the company was held at Wembley on November 28 and at it, the winners of the 1965-66 Golden Stars were presented with their awards. Independent Television presented ‘A Royal Gala’ before the Duke of Edinburgh at the Palladium on November 29 in aid of the CTBF and the Bowles Rocks Trust.

From December 7-16, an exhibition of the work of graphic designers was held at the Upper Grosvenor Galleries.

Finally – and still to come – is ‘The Royal Palaces of Britain’, the joint Independent Television and BBC production on December 25.

The post Tele marks of 1966 appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

THAT was a decade that was. That was a decade that was…

Oh, put the emphasis where you like. The fact remains that all of us who were there on the night when Rediffusion and ITV first flickered on to the screen are now 10 – no, 11 – years older.

I’ve changed. How about you?

Rediffusion has certainly altered. For a start it is no longer ‘Associated’.

Incidentally, dear editor, it would be interesting to find out just how many people at present on the pay-roll were with the company on Night One (still known to some as the night they invented champagne).

The answer is 252 – Editor.

From my own memory book I recall Sally Sutherland, Red Lyle, Dennis Atherton, Richard Hawkins, and the late Hugh Finlay – all part of the Press Office over the years.

Where the nostalgia really hit me was at the ITA’s white-tie Guildhall banquet when 10 glorious years and all that were celebrated.

It might have been the wine and brandy but sitting there under the stony stare of Gog and Magog I suddenly realised that 10 years (and part of a hair line) had vanished since I was in almost the same seat for ITV’s curtain-up.

The instant reaction was to check for ‘old familiar faces’ along the tables around me. Of 40 or so TV ‘professionals’ within range only four, perhaps five, had been there back in ’55.

Now I know how Greybeard felt. If my memory is right was Lord Hill, now ITA chairman, at that September 22, 1955, dinner as Postmaster-General?

And at that time didn’t ABC TV consist of just Howard Thomas and a secretary?

Before quitting that particular celebration I wonder if the champagne would have flowed so freely had it been known that within one year Rediffusion would be over £3 million down?

By the way, hasn’t that been perhaps the most important change of all – turning those colossal losses of the early years into a profit?

As a privileged spectator seeing much of the game from close quarters it seems to me that Rediffusion’s development has been in three stages.

The first, naturally, was that somewhat daffy unreal period when the newly recruited army worked excitedly to get the company on the air and keep it there.

Forgive me if there is an overlap for so many shows have been crammed into the decade, but those were the days of Gordon Harker and ‘Sixpenny Corner’. Of Ralph Reader’s ‘Chance Of A Lifetime’.

The weekly sports magazine. The Granville Melodramas. And of Sgt ‘I Only Want The Facts, Mam’ Webb and ‘Dragnet’.

Wasn’t there a freakish series called ‘You’ve Never Seen This’? Book reviews in the morning. Sheila Matthews as Friday’s Girl. Wasn’t this, too, the Jack Hylton variety era… the names which occur being Arthur Askey, Tony Hancock (he once did a one-man show in an emergency), Rosalina Neri, Bryan Michie, Ivor Emmanuel, the Crazy Gang and the Water Rats?

Roland Gillett was the programme controller, Lloyd Williams was on the production staff, and the whole period was like the froth on top of a pint.

The second stage was marked by the appointment of Paul Adorian as managing director and John McMillan as programme controller.

Now the workaday face and output of the company was being established. On went the old originals in ‘Take Your Pick’ and ‘Double Your Money’.

But morning TV disappeared. Much of the early pioneering excitement went with it. And the staff settled down to a more orderly existence.

Schools programmes started – remember Enid Love? Was it in this spell or even earlier that we had those Michael Ingrams’ series? How about those Goonish shows like ‘A Show Called Fred’, ‘Son of Fred’, and ‘Idiots’ Weekly’? Not only Sellers, but Milligan, too.

The work of putting in the foundations went on continuously.

‘Cool For Cats’ caught popular fancy and brought Joan Kemp-Welch’s name to the forefront. ‘This Week’ was going strong. Somewhere around this point Cyril Bennett and Elkan Allan began contributing to the company’s fortunes.

Peter Cotes is one more name I associate with this sector of Rediffusion’s fortune. And was I alone in liking America’s ‘Johnny Staccato’ jazz-thriller series?

I went down the Thames on one Rediffusion birthday party – and across to Paris for another. That was the day that George Sanders, then working on a special programme called ‘Women In Love’, helped to play host. Although only a voyage down the Seine, Captain Tom Brownrigg was also on hand.

So we had ‘No Hiding Place’ and ‘Intertel’, ‘Wagon Train’ and ‘Rawhide’. But where was Tig Roe? Whither Alan Morris? Goodbye Kingsway Corner.

Out went advertising magazines. Out went ‘Jim’s Inn’ – after setting the standard for all shows of this type. But in came the many successful Pinter plays.

The most successful, of course, being ‘The Lover’, with Alan Badel and Vivien Merchant. It must have won almost every award possible… actor, actress, author and director. Surely Rediffusion’s most successful production in all those 11 years?

Just as the TV scene was growing contentedly sedate on came ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ to give half the nation convulsions and the other half blood pressure.

Visiting the ‘RSG’ studio at TV House brought back all the din of 1955 and that drilling year when Adastral House was being converted.

By now Rediffusion was part of life. Dan Farson, always prominent in company affairs on the screen (his ‘Time Gentlemen, Please’ show was not only entered at Montreux but must have been responsible for the introduction of ‘Stars and Garters’), was a notable departure.

But phase two was drawing to a close too. On went John McMillan to general manager and in came Cyril Bennett as the new programme controller.

This is now part of the latest story… come in David Frost, Stella Richman, Benny Green, ‘Three After Six’, ‘The Rat Catchers’, and David Jacobs.

Pausing only to nod a farewell to Buddy Bregman and a friendly greeting to Europe’s favourite TV ‘uncle’ Eric Maschwitz, it scarcely seems credible that Monica Rose was hardly walking when ‘Double Your Money’ was first televised.

Yes, you’ve changed all right. Some more memory jogs… Stuart Hood, that ‘Arabian Nights’ opening for Wembley Studios, ‘Hippodrome’ in colour, the American deal with David Susskind, ‘Dial M For Music’, ‘Alfred Marks Time’, Keith Fordyce, Groucho Marx, Dickie Henderson, and on, and on.

It’s been a long time. Perhaps after all it should be that was a decade that was? What’s more Gog and Magog are still waiting.

The post That was the decade that was appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Next week, with the Thursday programme at its peak, they are to hand over to a new producer, Jeremy Isaacs, so that Bennett, a former national newspaper journalist, can devote all his time to his appointment as head of an ITV company’s feature department, and Morley can concentrate on the production of special documentaries.

Tall, dark-haired Morley, who began his working life in the projection box of a West End cinema, lit a cigar as we talked in his office six floors above London’s busy Kingsway. There was a two-hour delay on the phone to Moscow, no impending Cabinet crisis, and the cigar smelled good.

“These have been two exciting years for us,” he said. “During our ‘reign,’ This Week has visited every continent and has had as guests, world leaders in politics, industry, commerce and royalty.

“We’ve spotlighted race riots in America’s Deep South, troop trouble in Minden, rocket bases in Cuba and conditions under Communism in Poland.

“We’ve had interviews with Mr. Nehru, the Shah of Iran, the Prime Minister, and every member of the Cabinet. And we’ve put out a 45-minute programme with Prince Philip on his tour of America. Without doubt, this was the highlight in our two years with This Week.”

Another programme which brought praise for the Bennett-Morley partnership from both critics and viewers, was one taking the lid off the unemployment position in Hartlepool and the North East.

“This was the first time the public had really been made aware of the poverty and hard times in that area. The programme had a tremendous impact,” said Morley.

“But” he added, “when one has to produce a topical current afFairs programme once a week, one steps unavoidably on a number of toes.

“We had an altercation with the War Office following our coverage of the British troop skirmishes in the German town of Minden. And we were not too popular with the Polish Embassy after our pro gramme on conditions in their country under the Hammer and Sickle.”

Another programme which raised the prestige of This Week was one pin-pointing violence on TV. Naked City, one of ITV’s own programmes came in for criticism. And no punches were pulled.

In recent weeks, This Week scooped Fleet Street with a revealing pre-arrest interview with Dr. Stephen Ward, the society osteopath and friend of Christine Keeler. The following morning, the world’s top newspapers carried the interview on their front pages. A fitting retirement compliment to Bennett and Morley.

Past successes notched by the partnership include Tyranny (the years of Adolf Hitler), Heartbeat of France, Two Faces of Japan — which has been shown by every television network outside the Iron Curtain — and their famous documentary about British trade unionism called United We Stand.

Peter Morley also directed the only full length opera ever to be shown on independent television, Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.

But both of them are justly proud of the part they have played in raising the prestige of independent television in the field of current affairs. They leave This Week in a position of strength and influence.

The post Last week… THIS WEEK… next week appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

The last time I saw President Diem in Saigon he took me aside and said – ‘What programme is this one?’ And when I said ‘This Week’ he considered the words rather carefully and came back: ‘You are lucky to be thinking of this week.’

A few weeks later he was dead. I talked with the priest in Cholon, who saw him go through the process of ‘accidental suicide’; Diem and his brother-in-law, Nhu. The two had worked their way from their palace to the Chinese quarter and the little Roman Catholic church there. I had the impression, from what I was told, that Diem knew that he had come to the end of his particular road.

Diem was dead. The street was empty. People took care not to be around. They were watching but they were not going to get involved. A Vietnamese friend of mine said: ‘You may not have thought much of him. Now wait and see what happens.’ And we have waited, and we have seen. That was my last assignment with ‘This Week’. The producer who asked me to go back to Saigon is now with the BBC; so is the reporter. There may be a moral in this somewhere, but I doubt it. There is a wonderful line from Don Ameche in Silk Stockings.

‘What is your theory?’ asks the Russian girl.

‘My theory is that there is no theory!’

This renders the approach to the world we live in empirical and I suppose that this is a fair assessment of the way we used to and indeed had to organise ourselves when ‘This Week’ started, in 1955.

There were no rules; only ‘Panorama’.

The assignment given us by the then controller, Roland Gillette, was to produce a lively half-hour (minus commercials) for January ’56. There were to be many items, some political, some social, some lighthearted. It was agreed that we would try to end with a short ‘sting’, a one minute semi-sardonic commentary on our ways of life.

Just after the kick-off we had a major accident. Our man in Paris phoned me (in what is now the canteen) to say that he had found a night-club in Paris, already made famous by Time magazine, in which French waiters were dressed as cowboys.

Later, Caryl Doncaster, then producer of all features and I viewed the ‘rushes’ in ITN. These consisted of some 40 minutes of synchronised and beautifully lit extracts from the club’s cabaret. There were girls undoing zips everywhere. It was riveting stuff and I was later to be amazed by the number of people who felt that the film had to be seen. That item was a hard night’s day.

A jolly time was had by some when we took the programme to Paris for our first Eurovision link. Stephen MacCormack, now in Mauritius, was location producer. The programme was sent out from the Palais de Chaillots, into which Stephen cheerfully imported some Bluebell girls. That caused a tableaux with the diplomats. We also learned, on the day of transmission, that the French had views about the use of commercials. This, in turn, had repercussions in our own network. As a result I as editor, was instructed to provide two separate programmes for simultaneous transmission. This turned out to be a record, if not necessarily an achievement.

There can be a lot of fun in a programme if you have to learn as you go along. When we started the staff couldn’t be assembled according to experience in television because there were limits. Some of us came from the BBC, some from films, some from Fleet Street. We had to shake down as best we could.

One transmission day Mrs Alfred Hinds sent us (through Geoffrey Hughes) a taperecording of her husband’s voice. He was currently on the run from gaol. There were no rules. We didn’t know whether we should use it or not. There were risks. Scotland Yard was interested. I consulted the one man who could give us a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It was ‘yes’ and we were plastered all over the front-pages next morning. That was the first time I met John McMillan. The rules evolved. One particularly exasperating one was the 14-day rule governing comment on things to be dealt with in the Commons. We ran into a blow-torch over this during the Suez affair. Two particularly prominent politicians had to be told that they could not discuss what they had come to discuss. One left. The other one stopped and temporised. He is, at the time of writing, Chancellor of the Exchequer. There have been embarrassing moments with politicians. One such, who has since been a prime minister (and demanded cash as soon as the programme was over) was invited to cross our red carpet into the studio, via, as was intended, one of the five star offices in Television House. I posted ‘sentries’ at both entrances. At one I eventually met the august gentleman. At another my sentry welcomed a coloured gentleman, took him upstairs to the five star area, handed him over. This was, in fact, an Egyptian journalist, destined for another item in the programme. That took some sorting.

The Prime Minister of Australia came in to see the interview we had filmed between President Nasser and Frank Owen. It was a good interview. When it was over we had the impression that the Prime Minister was about to say something fundamental – like ‘thank you’. At that point a voice in the dark said – ‘You can’t trust these politicians can you?’ When the lights went up I noticed that Mr Menzies looked amused.

I went to Athens with Elkan Allan, to interview Archbishop Makarios. Staying in the same hotel were Elizabeth Taylor and the late Mike Todd. It seemed a good idea to try something with him. We were invited to the Todd suite and bedroom in particular, where we found Miss Taylor less than dressed. Her husband was pacing the room using the dialogue from Lady C. ‘Liz,’ he said, ‘here are two English Lady C’s.’

‘Yeh!’

‘How do you do, Mrs Todd.’

‘Hih!’

Says Todd – ‘Sit down on that Lady C bed over there.’

Later that day I was on the roof of the hotel with his beautitude.

Todd comes out on the roof and says, in his not less than megaphonic voice – ‘Who is the Lady C with the hat!’

Such situations are delicate.

All this might suggest that we acted more frivolously than now seems evident. That is not so. Our brief was different. ‘This Week’ has not grown up to be 10 years old: it has grown to be different from what it was. All my ex-companions on the programme can probably top the trivial stories I have told, and they would all have to stop short of some of the truths we could all tell. I refer to Michael Ingrams, Dan Farson, Ludovic Kennedy, Richard Gould Adams, Michael Westmore, Tom Hopkinson, William Hardcastle, Jeremy Thorpe, Rollo Gamble, Cyril Bennett, Elkan Allan, Kenneth Harris, Al Capp, and so on and on. In more than 500 issues there is a lot of heat, some dust, occasionally a lot of fun.

A lot of people cut their wisdom teeth on ‘This Week’, and some got them knocked out. The programme has come a long way from the days when Spike Milligan sang ‘I’m Walking Backwards For Christmas’ and Peter Sellers did time as Professor Smith Grant Hetherington, having seen, heard and secured hairs from the Abominable Snowman. We even once tied ‘This Week’ to ‘Late Extra’, which has its own story. I wrote and spoke the commentary for the yearly report on Noisivelet and a few people spotted how we had found the country.

Serious things happened. We have, after all, been living in the latitude of great events. I think that most were faithfully recorded. So long as you don’t take yourself too seriously you stand a good chance of staying short of a rest-cure.

I remember in the studio, Dr Verwoerd and Sir Roy Welensky, Khrishna Menon and Yehudi Menuhin, Harold Macmillan and Dr Banda, Father Huddleston and so many others.

One event I remember with personal pleasure, since this is only my version of ‘things wot used t’be’ as editor and producer and executive producer and head of features, and all that. I was sent, to my utter delight, to Monte Carlo, to interview the glittery Tina Onassis. The now Duchess will excuse me if I refer to her as a ‘dish’. However, we talked of Grace Kelly and life as lived by those who want for nothing. In my pocket I had a letter from my mother saying that my father was very ill in Canada and needed comfort. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t afford the air fare to go out and was floundering for an answer when I saw someone at Nice airport whom I thought could help. This particular VIP was first on our plane and, incidentally, occupied the little room to the discomfiture of the other passengers for a very long time.

During the flight home I wrote him a note and asked if he would consider sending my father a word of encouragement, since they knew one another well. A day later I received this letter to send on –

‘My dear Commander Hunt,

I am indeed sorry to hear from your son of your illness. I hope you will accept my earnest good wishes for your recovery. I remember well the good work that you did in the War Room.

Yours sincerely,
Winston Churchill.’

I am grateful to ‘This Week’ for that opportunity. And it helped.

The post This Week is 10 – part 1 appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

It was about three years ago that I arrived on the 6th floor to work with Cyril Bennett who was producing ‘This Week’. And I was apprehensive. Until then, I had worked for Cyril Butcher in admags. ‘This Week’ meant no more to me than a paragraph in the TV Times, occasional glimpses of Brian Connell and a few bars of the Karelia Suite by Sibelius.

Down on the 2nd floor, where my days had revolved round ‘Jim’s Inn’, the world of current affairs programmes was a mystery. I didn’t know how they worked or who worked them. It wasn’t very long before I found out. Looking back, now, I remember very little about the content of the programmes when I first began. I do, however, remember that each week began quietly and ended in a blurr of running feet, harassed faces, raised voices and the latest editions of the Evenings.

I shared an office with Cyril Bennett then. It was small and airless. This had an interesting effect when it was subjected to hour-long production meetings with six chain-smoking programme makers. These meetings at first would fill me with terror because the telephone would always ring, stopping conversation and often heralding a very persuasive P.R.O. trying to sell his client’s programme idea. These ideas were always completely unsuitable for a weekly current affairs programme and their very suggestion would leave me paralysed and nearly speechless. My symptoms must have been taken to mean disinterest for when not faced with the usual barrage of reasons why his idea was hopeless, the poor man would soon ring off.

It is very easy to compare the programmes now with the programmes then – how ulcer-making it was with last minute additions on Thursdays, very little forward planning and two or three items in each half-hour. How comparatively more leisurely it is now, with two or more one-subject film programmes being shot and put together at the same time for forward dates. This means that today, studies can be made in greater depth.

All I remember about what I actually did in those days was typing and circulating the features bulletin twice a week and keeping Cyril supplied with endless cups of coffee and codeine, though I suppose I must also have done something else with my time – perhaps some of it was taken up avoiding the two wolves of the section who I had been told by my predecessor to beware of at all costs. She must have impressed me for I never got past the ‘Good morning’ stage with either of them.

Though it seems now that I worked for Cyril in that office for years, it was only four months later when he told me he had been offered Lord Windlesham’s job as head of features but that until he could find somebody else to take over, he would still produce ‘This Week’ with Peter Morley. I stayed with him as his secretary.

So we moved up to the office of head of features with fitted carpet, armchairs and space for me at the end of a Plan 7 in the next room and our double duties began.

During the next few months, Cyril spent quite a lot of his time interviewing people for the producership of ‘This Week’. I met countless interviewees at the 6th floor lifts and ferried them along to Room 601 and back again afterwards.

‘This Week’ itself seemed to have evolved slightly from less of a battle into more of a steady struggle but never did it become tedious. I cannot remember one moment of boredom for, not only was the business of being with a weekly programme time consuming, but the very fact that it was current affairs, newsy and real made it absorbing. And I was always impressed by the importance of it all, by the people we spoke to on the phone and the people we had in the studio; that Lord Montgomery was actually on the other end of the line and the Archbishop of Canterbury and so many MP’s who up till then had been only names in the papers. And I still have a very vivid memory of Stephen Ward being interviewed in one of the offices and then being hurried out the back way to avoid recognition and the police. And that Prime Ministers should also come to Studio 9…

Jeremy Isaacs arrived as producer of ‘This Week’ seven months after Cyril’s promotion. I moved over to work for him. Jeremy concentrated on racier film reports with the reporter on the story doing any commentary that was needed, obviating the necessity for the studio linkman.

The one and a half years I spent as Jeremy’s secretary I enjoyed enormously. He left more and more of the administrative side for me to do. I remember him beginning very quietly – nobody noticed him, few heard him and his presence was only felt in the department by those working closest to him. But by the time he had settled in, his voice was the most distinct in the front corridors of the 6th floor. Without moving out of his chair, he would summon the current production team into his office, vocally, and also without moving he would pick up the threads of any conversation we were having in the office next door and offer his opinions on the latest dresswear, hairstyles or whatever.

Programmewise, I was scarcely involved in the making of film stories. My job was in the initiating stages and in the commentary writing and editing. Jeremy would decide on Vietnam say, for the next week’s programme and I would check film crew availability, have the travel and hotels booked and generally see that the machine was set in motion. On the Thursday, Jeremy, or the reporter, would write the commentary and I would type it, often several times before it was either down to the length or as he wanted it. As often as not it was only by the skin of our teeth that the commentary would be recorded and dubbed on to the film in time for transmission at 9.10 p.m. Thursdays would mostly develop into a nightmare fight against time – but the nightmare was the producer’s, not mine – the feeling of not having the responsibility was elating.

And then Jeremy Isaacs left in July this year to see what impression he could make on ‘Panorama’ and ‘This Week’ fell back into the overworked lap of Cyril Bennett. At the time of writing, I am now bossless and typewriterless – both Isaacs and Bennett having decided that typing is no longer for me and I have been given some aweinspiring title like programme liaison or programme organiser, I keep forgetting what exactly, but in any case, it just means that I am doing the same job only more so. And that is almost everything to do with ‘This Week’ that is not directly the producer’s or director’s problem, from programme correspondence to chasing film rushes from overseas locations into the labs. No more commentary typing on Thursday evenings – the reporters do their own – but Thursdays often involve the meeting of journalists and Government spokesmen, escorting them to the guest room for drinks, down to the studio for transmission and back to the guest room to recover, leaving us all slightly wilted by 10 o’clock.

But of all the departments for which I have worked in Television House, this has been the most exciting, eye-opening and intriguing and ‘This Week’ itself the most rewarding. It is at the time of writing in the hands of Alasdair Milne, formerly editor of ‘Tonight’. But nothing ever changes – only the names and the faces.

The post This Week is 10 – part 2 appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Cyril Bennett, director of programmes. A 37-year-old Londoner and former producer of ‘This Week’, he was editing his school magazine at 13, and a year later, on impulse, he telephoned the Evening Standard to ask for a job. He was delighted on hearing he could start the following Monday at 27s 6d a week in the ‘Correspondents’ department. After a happy weekend envisaging himself as Foreign Correspondent and mulling over the pros and cons of being Moscow or Istanbul based, the Monday anticlimax of having a filing tray thrust in his hand, was acute. Undaunted, however, he found an outlet for his ideas during the following nine months in the ‘Correspondents’ department, by sending memos to Michael Foot (then writing for the Standard) suggesting subjects for the following day’s leader. His enthusiasm won attention, and despite his youth, gained him a reporting job with the Bedfordshire Times at 15½.

On returning to London he worked for a group of Dominion journals and at 19, as a result of a ballot run by the Empire Press Union, became the youngest lobby correspondent. Later, on the strength of a successful interview with Frank Sinatra, he started freelance work for Odhams Press, writing on entertainment for Illustrated, Picturegoer and John Bull.

In 1956, after seeing one of Rediffusion’s ‘This Week’ programmes, he applied for a job with the editor. During the interview he was asked if he had any ideas for ‘This Week’ and suggested the entertainment tax which he had been covering for Illustrated. He was invited to prepare a script, and was included in the following Thursday’s programme. He continued to contribute to ‘This Week’ on a freelance basis, until he was invited to join the Rediffusion staff, collaborating with Peter Morley to produce feature programmes – this took him to Israel, France and Japan. In June he became co-producer of ‘This Week’ and in 1963, as joint-producer, received the Guild of Television Producers’ and Directors’ Annual Merit Award for Factual Television. He was appointed head of features in the same year and in 1964 became executive producer in charge of features and children’s programmes.

He is married to a former photographic model, who now has a full-time job looking after their two daughters.

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From the TVTimes for week commencing 10 April 1965.

Three recent editions — dealing with different types of social deviations — were among the most stark ever seen on the British TV screen.

Yet there were only THREE complaints from viewers — and one of those was to point out that Amsterdam was not the capital of Holland as the programme had wrongly said.

But This Week has built up its reputation mainly by its skilful analysis of the news and the background to it.

I spent three days watching producer Isaacs bringing his weekly programme (Thursdays) to life. For half of the time he hardly stopped talking or moving about.

At the end of it, he was still as fresh as a spring morning. I was worn out.

The door of this dynamic man’s office is always left open so he can yell non-stop instructions to his secretary and staff as ideas cascade through his mind.

Yet this is no wild egotist getting caught up in a tangled maze of his own ideas. In conference with those who work with him, he is a great listener and most receptive to his colleagues’ ideas. He absorbs, and either accepts or discards — with rapid-fire judgment and appropriate action.

Jeremy Israel Isaacs comes from Glasgow… “and I’m as Scottish as any Glasgow Jew can be,” he said. Thirty-two years old, he lives with his South African wife Tamara and their two young children at Turnham Green, London.

How did he arrive in his present job – one of the toughest in television?

“When my National Service ended I had £100 scraped together. I’d determined, somehow. to break into either TV or journalism. But for months the only job anyone would offer me was as a soap salesman,” he said. However, I hung on and finally got a job as researcher for What the Papers Say. Later, I moved to All Our Yesterdays. I wasn’t so keen on that. I’m interested in today, not yesterday.”

Isaacs’ office is sparsely fitted, the walls are almost bare. But one of the things on the walls illustrates his feelings – or lack of them — for politicians.

It is a framed newspaper cutting, referring to This Week’s recent election coverage.

It quotes him: “If they (the politicians) want to complain, they can do it afterwards…” At the bottom, he has black pencilled, in block capitals — “THEY DID.”

Isaacs’ pet aversion is what he calls “waffle.” With his volatile make-up he is interested only in getting to the heart of a matter, cutting away all undergrowth, as ruthlessly and as rapidly as can be.

“What I won’t have in This Week,” he said, “is a room full of so-called ‘experts’ — self-styled pundits — sitting around in a semi-circle discussing the subject in hand in some vague, airy, pompous, non-committal way — i.e., waffling.

“The time is past for this form of television. The 1965 public is an enlightened public, greedy for detailed interpretations of the big news of the day. They want to see it put before them from every angle. And be left to form their own judgment.

“They don’t want to be told — they want to be shown.”

Isaacs is the first to point out that This Week is a team show. “Although I may be the man who decides what goes into the programme, I’m only one of 30 or 40 people who make it up,” he said.

At one of the most hectic-periods of the week — and believe me, it IS hectic on This Week — a young girl called to see Isaacs, by appointment. He gave her a private interview, lasting nearly half an hour.

Afterwards, he said to me, wistfully: “Such promising young people about… all mad to get into TV… there just isn’t room for all of them… I wish there was…”

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