The Rattigan The Newsletter of The Society ISSUE NO. 31 JANUARY 2020 Version Barbara bows out in style

here was an element of sadness to the AGM competition by some of the script-readers who par- this year: our Founder and Chairman ticipated. The reading was directed by Michael T Barbara had decided to stand down from Gaunt, who managed to extract all the key ele- the latter role and this also ments in a very short re- lent a certain piquancy to hearsal time, and Alison Du the proceedings, which Cane provided the neces- included Barbara’s own sary stage directions. The report to the meeting and a play was well received by tribute from her successor, the audience, which includ- Denis Moriarty, both of ed Vice-President Greta which items are reproduced Scacchi. in these pages. Our former Members had also con- Secretary, Clive Montellier, tributed towards a gift for was also conspicuous by his Barbara, to show their absence since he has moved appreciation for the tremen- on to other pastures, but his dous job she has done in role has been very ably filled steering the Society for the by Martin Amherst Lock, last eight years, so on their who conducted the business behalf Roger Mills made the of the day with great effi- presentation of some theatre ciency. tokens, a cheque to cover a Martin also featured in couple of meals out with a the play reading which Our Founder and Chairman at the AGM on companion, and some flow- followed the AGM—Wrong 30 November when she was presented with ers. Lee Penhaligan then flowers and gifts by Society members and Move by Peter Briffa, who the Terence Rattigan Charitable Trust. surprised her with a beauti- joined us for the occasion. ful engraved vase from the Wrong Move was placed third in the recent TRS Terence Rattigan Charitable Trust. play competition and proved to be a tight two- Editor’s Note: Barbara would like members to hander of a suspense drama, with Martin as a kid- know how very appreciative she is of the wonder- napped British author being held captive in a Los ful parting gift of Theatre Tokens and a cheque to Angeles basement by a half-crazed former World cover some choice restaurants either before or after Chess Champion, played by Giles Cole. It had the show. Though retiring from the chairmanship several neat twists and turns and had indeed been she will still be attending TRS events and she looks rather favoured as a potential winner of the play forward to seeing everyone on those occasions. 

 BARBARA STEPS DOWN AT THE AGM, P 1  PROFILE OF THE NEW CHAIRMAN, P 2, 8  THE CHAIRMAN’S REPORT, PP 3, 5  BOOK REVIEW:THE PLAYWRIGHT AS BATTLEFIELD, PP 4, 5

 IN SEARCH FOR THE DEFINITIVE VERSION OF TR’S PLAYS1, PP 6, 7  DATES FOR YOUR DIARY / OBITUARIES, P 8

The Terence Rattigan Society President: David Suchet CBE Founder: Barbara Longford Vice-Presidents: Michael Darlow, Lord Fellowes, Dr. Holly Hill, Greta Scacchi, Geoffrey Wansell

Chairman Denis Moriarty Membership Secretary Diana Scotney Treasurer Alison Du Cane Newsletter Editor Giles Cole Secretary Martin Amherst Lock Media Liaison/Co-Editor Roger Mills Theatre Liaison Michael Wheatley-Ward Events Liaison Susan Cooper Drama School Liaison Prof. Michael Gaunt Sir Terence Rattigan US Representative Dr. Holly Hill Charitable Trust Representative Lee Penhaligan ex officio

Email: [email protected] Editor’s note: Any views expressed in this newsletter are those of the individual author and do not necessarily represent the views of The Terence Rattigan Society or its Committee.

Re-introducing our new Chairman effortlessly - or so it seemed - to her task. This is Denis Moriarty —————————————— something I can never match. She made all this enis was first introduced in this column in possible by identifying and Issue number 18, but as he is the newly- surrounding herself with a D elected Chairman, following on from committee of All the where our wonderful Founder and Chairman Talents, to whom I shall Barbara Longford has left off, it may be forgivable look with much respect - to remind members of him—not that he will need and enthusiasm - in our much reminding for those who attended the forthcoming collaborations. Oxford Conference or either of the annual dinners We should pause, too, to remember the held at his Club, the Oxford & Cambridge. He is a contribution her much loved and late lamented regular attender of Society events with his wife Patrick brought to the many strengths she gave to Jinnie and has the full endorsement both of Barbara the Society. In our membership, also, Barbara and of the entire Committee. attracted a wide range of loyal, interested and Although he was unable to attend the AGM in interesting people from a wide range of experience, November, he sent the following tribute to Barbara and this was her reward, and is the vital backbone which was read out to the meeting: of our success. On this - and in her style - we must “My serious apologies for absence from the TRS only seek and hope to build - to do her the AGM today - the more so, as our much loved and honour she deserves- and with you all I salute all esteemed Barbara Longford has stepped down from she has done and join in the acclaim; being our Chairman - Founder Chairman indeed - congratulations, well done, heartfelt thanks and and in her place I am honoured to accept the warmest best wishes. invitation of your committee to offer myself for I will do my best to further her vision and election as her successor. For all the reasons we achievement, working with the committee she so value Barbara so highly - far more eloquently admirably convened, and to continue the advanced than ever I could, it is with a real sense of programme of excellence that she has set in train, humility - and diffidence - that her mantle falls to encouraging and expanding our loyal following, in me. Barbara is not just the hardest of acts to follow, the enjoyment, study and understanding of the she is our fount and origin, and the TRS which she talents and legacy that Terence Rattigan brought to created is emphatically hers, hers in concept and the theatre. My thanks to you all - and especially to fulfilment, and in the energies, initiatives, and the Barbara, our very own Babs.” bubbling torrent of creative ideas, and the A short précis of his career would include the knowledge and sense of theatre that she brought, following, as detailed in Issue 18: Cont. on p8…

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church, followed by a reception at the Garrick Club. In Chairman’s Report 2012, Group Captain Clive Montellier (Monty to us all) to the Eighth AGM, 30.11.19 arranged a magnificent visit to RAF High Wycombe ______where we saw the wartime office of Bomber Harris and Michael Darlow introduced a screening of one of the I’m happy to say that it’s been another successful year wartime films scripted by Rattigan for the RAF Film for the Society. Since our seventh AGM last October Production Unit. here at Doggett’s, when Michael Darlow directed a We’ve held an Annual Birthday Dinner each year on rehearsed reading of the TRS New Play Award entry – a date in June nearest to the anniversary and have The Rattigan Affair - we’ve had six Society events. managed to attract wonderful speakers, despite not being The French Fund launch took place last November able to pay them any fee. These include, Ronald Har- when The Royal Central School of Speech & Drama put wood, Julian Fellowes, Hugo Vickers, Simon Heffer, on a magnificent production of , and fortu- Professor John Bertolini and Dr Holly Hill, celebrating nately Dr. Holly Hill, our Vice President and the donor her 80th year in June. In 2013 I persuaded the staff at the of the fund, was able to travel over from the States to be V & A Museum to put on An Evening on Rattigan, as with us. Then in February the second tranche of the part of their members’ events schedule. They were fund was used to finance —another attracted to the idea largely because of Princess excellent production—at the Oxford School. The third Galitzine’s connection with the fashion world. Jean event was in Devon with a visit to see The Browning gave a memorable interview with Geoffrey Wansell, Version and this was followed within a few days with after which members performed extracts from Rattigan’s the Annual Birthday Dinner at the Garrick Club, where plays. our guest speaker was Dr. Holly Hill. The fifth event I’ve already mentioned The French Fund, named after was our visit to When the Sun Shines, at the Orange Harold & Pegs French, who helped Holly Hill with her Tree Theatre, which I was unable to attend due to research into Rattigan in the 1970s. Holly donates having had emergency surgery. And lastly there was £1,000 each year and we use it to encourage a drama the Professor Dan Rebellato event at the Rattigan school to put on a Rattigan play. This is a fairly new but Archive in the British Library. The Committee has most effective initiative. worked hard this year to ensure that we have given There were many, many more splendid occasions and members a range of interesting activities to take part in. if you would like to look at portraits and photographs of Sadly, the time has come for me to step down as these you will find them on our website in the ‘Events Chairman. As you know, I founded the Society in the Archive’ section. centenary year, 2011, and I have been planning and However, I must remind you of the two most signifi- arranging most of the events during the past eight years. cant events during my tenure. The first is the Confer- I have simply run out of steam and now that my darling ence ‘In the Footsteps of Rattigan’ at Trinity College, Patrick is no longer beside me, I have lost some of my Oxford in June 2015. We had a magnificent programme joie de vivre. I’ve also had two serious emergency oper- of lectures and activities and dined in Hall. We held the ations during that time and I feel I need to slow down. conference during term time, so that students could But I’ve had a wonderful eight years as Chairman participate. I know that the Committee is considering and I would just like to remind you of some of the high- arranging a future conference out of term time, so that lights during that time. These are in addition to the members could stay in the college. many theatre visits. First, we launched the Society in The other significant event was the introduction of September 2011 at the birthplace of Terence Rattigan, The Terence Rattigan Society Award for a new play for in Cornwall Gardens, London. Our first President, the theatre. This was the most ambitious project we Princess George Galitzine, attended, looking every inch have ever attempted and involved a Press Launch, the fashion model in an elegant fuchsia pink silk jacket. accompanying literature and publicity. We attracted This was a stylish occasion graced by music played on almost 200 entries, all of which had to be read and the grand piano, by a professional pianist society mem- processed. Many members agreed to do initial reading ber. Other parties followed, two of which were held in of the scripts. They worked tirelessly on this and I was Rattigan’s former “set” of chambers at Albany, K5, happy that Junko Tarrant (the owner of the apartment at courtesy of our late member, Antony Fletcher, whose Rattigan’s birthplace) allowed us to use her home for a home it was for 50 years. The following year, David third time, to throw a thank-you party for these mem- Suchet, then a Vice President planted a tree in memory bers. I was greatly helped with the work surrounding of Sir Terence at The Actors’ Church in Covent Garden, the award, by Clive Montellier, Roger Mills and Giles which we turned into a theatrical occasion in the Cole and I hope that some time in the Cont. on p5...

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craft, as when he Not for beginners observes that his Prof. Dan Rebellato characters ‘grip reviews TRS member Peter Wolfe’s new us hard when book: ‘Terence Rattigan: The Playwright they can’t ex- as Battlefield’. Lanham: Lexington, 2019. plain them- ______selves’ (p. 39) and that, against onestly, you wait 35 years for a book- the image of length academic study of Terence Ratti- Terry as the H gan, then two come along at once. Until a boulevard enter- few years ago, the only academic monograph of tainer, for him Rattigan’s work was Susan Rusinko’s very good ‘life is hard and study from 1983. Now we have two more; hard on sometimes un- the heels of Bertolini’s The Case for Terence Ratti- readable’ (p. 43). There’s a particularly striking gan (2016), we have Peter Wolfe’s new book. All observation on a stage direction in which Sir this activity is very welcome because for a long Robert Morton ‘turns to go’ and he captures the time, academia has seemed to turn its nose up at delicate precision of Rattigan’s writing as he notes our Terry. He’s not ‘literary’ enough for literature that ‘Turning to go differs from going’ (p. 64). and too commercial for theatre studies, which, in Wolfe is very alert to the hesitations and complex- Britain, emerged around the same time as the ities that disturb that smooth dramatic surface. Angry Young Men and has tended to concur with But a question I kept asking as I read this book the verdicts of the 1950s. This is short-sighted, of is, who is it for? It’s probably not for the contem- course, because, as Wolfe puts it rather well ‘His porary academic community, as Wolfe’s attitude polished stage technique [...] makes the plays easy to criticism – as I suspect he’d acknowledge – is a to follow but hard to fathom’ (p. 141). In other little stuck in the 1960s. It sets itself up as a bio- words, the work that goes into making them seem graphical study but the biographical knowledge is smoothly effortless in the watching hides a fero- a little thin and, in any case, if he wanted to think cious amount of effort and complexity. through how the plays articulate ‘the playwright Wolfe’s approach is to consider the plays syn- as battlefield’, why didn’t he spend some time in chronically – that is to say, all at once – as one col- the Rattigan Archive looking at the drafts and lective symptom of Rattigan’s own complex issues other correspondence, where the battle’s first with his father, his sexuality, his fame. The best shots are fired? A motif that has run through a lot chapters are 3 and 4, which deal with homes and of literary-critical thinking over the past half- homes-from-homes, the former chapter focusing century is that texts need to be understood as on and The Browning Version, texts, not as simple windows into a fictional the latter on and Separate world. Wolfe almost tends to write about the Tables. Wolfe is a literary scholar and he is characters as if they are real people with minds extremely alert to the tiniest linguistic resonances: and feelings, which, of course, they are not; even I enjoyed his illuminating observations on the as rich and complex a character as Hester Collyer phonemic connections between Hester Collyer and is ultimately a textual structure, with no mind or Hedda Gabler, between ’s Mark feelings to comment on. With Rattigan’s artful Herries and the gay novelist Hugh Walpole’s Rogue construction of character, I longed for Wolfe, in Herries. There’s a fascinating suggestion that Hes- his words, not just to follow but to fathom. ter’s act of polishing Freddie’s shoes at the end of But it’s also not really for the casual reader: he Act 2 of The Deep Blue Sea echoes Christ’s washing presumes in us a comprehensive knowledge of the of the disciple’s feet and he suggests this image plays before we start. Having worked on them for yokes together ‘sacred and profane love’ (p. 138). thirty years, I’m pretty familiar with these plays His insights are not always as minute as this: he is but I often found myself lost as the prose leapt very persuasive on Rattigan’s attitudes and stage- prodigiously from play to play, without introduc-

4 ing any of them. This is not for the Rattigan begin- ner! Indeed, the book has a curiously stream-of- Surviving in the Theatre consciousness feel to it. I frequently found myself … is the promising title of a new biography of puzzled at the connection between one sentence our Committee Member, Michael Wheatley- and the next (as, for instance, his bemusing sugges- Ward—survival in this case relating to theatre tion that four references to ‘snails’ in French With- management. It proves beyond doubt that the out Tears are ‘a reminder of Hitler’s hunger for desire to work behind the scenes and as a lebensraum’ [p. 15]). There are unsettling lurches of theatre manager and producer has just as style between fairly formal academic prose and strong a pull as the desire to act or write. slang, precision and wild generalisation, and fre- The book is a collaboration between our quent blunt sentences (‘She's aching for him to Michael, from whom we occasionally hear in stay’ (p. 92), ‘He can't escape fraud’ (p. 97) that the first person throughout the book, and Michael Flagg, a retired university lecturer and strike a jarringly hard-boiled tone, like Dashiel ‘am-dram’ enthusiast, who writes about our Hammett has branched out into theatre criticism. Michael in the third person. It is a story of guts The stream-of-consciousness feel is also reflected and determination and overcoming seemingly in a slightly careless attitude to detail that either insuperable odds, and covers his involvement suggests his priority has not been a full immersion with the Theatre Royal Margate, the Theatre in post-war British culture or some lax editorial Royal Stratford East, his first West End job on work at the publisher. He says Waiting for Godot the ill-fated Lionel Bart musical Twang!, his and The Deep Blue Sea premiered in the same year brushes with legendary figures such as Binkie (they didn’t); that the Wolfenden Report legalised Beaumont and Peter Saunders, and much else sex between men (it didn’t); that Pinter could have up to the creation of the Sarah Thorne Theatre been an influence on Variation on a Theme (it in Broadstairs, which he still runs. Bravo to couldn’t); that the presenter of BBC’s Face to Face both Michaels!  was Hugh Purcell (it wasn’t); and that the Beatles’ first LP was issued by Polyphone Records and con- tained ‘From Me To You’ and ‘She Loves You’ (it Chairman’s Report wasn’t and it didn’t). continued from p3 ______But there’s no doubting Wolfe’s appreciation of Rattigan and I wouldn’t want to neglect the numer- future the Society will repeat this. The winning play ous insights he offers into individual plays. The plus The Onion at the End received a professional produc- side of its stream-of-consciousness approach is that tion courtesy of committee member, Michael Wheatley the reader is able to immerse himself in a vivid -Ward, at his community theatre in Broadstairs. There encounter between a smart critic and these plays. were cash prizes also for the winner and runner-up, Still, I’d love to see a contemporary reading of Rat- consisting largely of a donation from a fund which wishes to remain anonymous. tigan that draws out the way he continues to speak In July 2011, I invited a group of people to come to to us now.  my home and sit around my kitchen table for an initial Dan Rebellato is meeting to chew things over. Only two of these people Professor of Contempo- are no longer committee members, Clive because he rary Theatre at Royal has moved to Tewksbury and Andrew, who is now Holloway, University of London. He has written living in Devon. We’ve welcomed new faces onto the plays for radio and committee over the years and I should like to thank stage and his books on them all for being so supportive and being lovely theatre include ‘1956 friends. and All That’ (1999). He has also written intro- I’ve had a wonderful time with the TRS and enjoyed ductions to all the Ratti- the company of so many lovely members. I am very gan plays published by happy indeed to be handing over to Denis Moriarty. Nick Hern Books and Most of you know Denis as he has hosted events for us was one of the final judges for the TRS Playwriting Competition. He is seen at the Oxford & Cambridge Club. Sadly, he is unable to here at the TRS Conference at Trinity College, Oxford, join us today but I know he will keep the TRS flame where he was one of the keynote speakers. burning. THANK YOU. 

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In search of the definitive version (of Rattigan’s plays)

by Michael Darlow

n his review of at the (A few months later Gillian Hodson and I received Orange Tree Theatre (see picture) for the July Rattigan’s blessing, and his generous assistance, to I edition of The Rattigan Version, Paddy Briggs write his biography, first published in 1979 and says that While The Sun Shines is not included in since updated in new editions as I have discovered “the definitive four volume complete plays”. Un- new information about Rattigan’s life and work). fortunately, he does not So where can one find a tell us which “definitive” ‘definitive’ edition of Rat- collection of Rattigan’s tigan’s ‘complete plays’? plays he is referring to. So far as I can discover no Could he, perhaps, be re- publisher has printed all ferring to the Methuen of Rattigan’s plays. How- edition, first published in ever, there are three 1981, which includes an editions of Rattigan’s introduction by Anthony plays which, although Curtis? I doubt it – While none of them is Photo: FT.com The Sun Shines is not the “complete”, could reason- only Rattigan play missing from it. In saying this I ably be described as “definitive”. am not criticising Anthony Curtis who played a The first, and most obvious, is the original four vital early role in rehabilitating Rattigan’s critical volume Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan pub- reputation. He wrote the ground-breaking BBC lished by Hamish Hamilton, the first two volumes Radio 3 programme Rattigan’s Theatre, first in 1953, the third in 1964 and the fourth in 1978. broadcast on 30th March 1976, which included not Not only does this collection include While The only contributions from many of the actors, pro- Sun Shines, the first three volumes have introduc- ducers, directors and other collaborators with tions written by Rattigan himself. (The fourth, whom Rattigan had worked but also part of a letter published a year after Rattigan’s death, has an from David Rudkin (whose Afore Night Come, introduction written by his friend the critic about a group of fruit-pickers who commit a vio- B.A.Young.) This edition of the Collected Plays lent, on-stage, murder, had caused an outcry when contains what could be described as the “the it was first produced by the RSC in 1962). In his authorised” versions of most of Rattigan’s plays – letter Rudkin said that he saw in Rattigan “not at that is to say that the texts of the plays included in all the commercial, middlebrow dramatist his the four volumes were personally approved by image suggests but someone peculiarly haunting Rattigan. However, there are a number of prob- and oblique who speaks to me with resonance of lems with this collection. The most obvious being existential bleakness and irresoluble carnal soli- that it does not include all of Rattigan’s plays – not tude”. Rattigan heard the broadcast and afterwards even all the plays which were produced in London told Curtis that Rudkin was right, but “I never during his lifetime. The most glaring omission is thought that my slip showed as much as that”. After The Dance which, although it opened in the Later, in a 1978 article in Plays and Players, Curtis West End in June 1939 to favourable reviews, wrote that he detected “a deeply Proustian ambiv- closed after only 60 performance owing the alence at the heart of Rattigan that needs, as they approach of the Second World War. Also missing say, to be gone into.” Shortly before Rattigan’s are the plays which he co-wrote with others. death his agent approached Curtis about writing an These absentees include First Episode, written “authorised” biography of Rattigan but, owing to with Philip Heimann, and Follow My Leader, pre-existing commitments, Curtis had to decline. written with Tony Goldschmidt. All three of these

6 plays are, I think, essential for a proper under- which appear to be missing from Samuel French’s standing and appreciation of Rattigan’s work. The list are After The Dance and Follow My Leader. main reason behind Rattigan’s decision to exclude Another problem is that the text performed in a some works from the Collected Plays was that dur- play’s original London production may have been ing the period when the first three volumes were altered during production, with the result that in a being published he was striving to convince the few places the text in a French’s Acting Edition critics that the fact that his plays were commercial- may differ from Rattigan’s original text. The most ly successful was not a sound reason for dismissing egregious example is , where Rat- him as a serious dramatist. He ruefully recalled a tigan had been so over-awed by the stars of the repertory theatre manager telling him: “What’s so original London production, Alfred Lunt and Lynn nice about doing your plays in my theatre is that Fontanne, that during rehearsals he had allowed their profits pay for the good ones”. He decided to them to make changes to the text so fundamental write introductions to each volume in the collec- that they amounted to a virtual rewrite of the en- tion in which would argue that, contrary to the tire play. Even the play’s title was changed, from popular belief that commercial success implied a the original Less Than Kind to Love In Idleness. lack of seriousness or creative ambition, the fact Happily, in 2011 Samuel French published both that his plays had been so commercially successful Rattigan’s original text and the Lunts’ altered might, in fact, imply that they possessed ‘positive version in one single volume, so readers can now virtues’. (Both and While decide which they prefer. So generally, for practi- The Sun Shines had run for over a thousand cal use, if one is rehearsing a Rattigan play for performances in the West End, a feat which at that instance, I would go for a French’s Acting Edition. time had never before been equalled by any other However, for me, the edition which comes playwright.) However, in order make this argu- closest to being ‘definitive’ is the series published ment he had to exclude any play which had not by Nick Hern Books. Each of the texts printed in been a commercial success. these volumes is the result of painstaking research To make his case, while appearing light-hearted by Professor Dan Rebellato, who has studied and and avoiding accusations of being pompous or big- analysed the original manuscripts and other papers headed, Rattigan created a comic character called held in the British Library plus a wide range of Aunt Edna – the personification of the average materials held in other archives. Each volume in playgoer down the ages who, although a ‘hopeless the series includes a useful biographical outline of low-brow’, knows what she likes and, in the end, Rattigan’s life and career, plus an explanation by unfailingly succeeds in distinguishing between the Rebellato of how the play fits into Rattigan’s dramatic wheat and the theatrical chaff. Unfortu- development as a dramatist and a scholarly analy- nately Rattigan’s argument backfired. Writing in sis of the play’s text and structure. the Daily Express John Barber told him to “Come To date the series includes First Episode, off it, Mr Rattigan”, while in The Observer the French Without Tears, After the Dance, Flare young Kenneth Tynan told him that he was wrong Path, Less Than Kind and Love In Idleness, The – plays which fail commercially do so not because Winslow Boy, The Browning Version and Harle- they are ‘not good enough for Aunt Edna’ but quinade, Who Is Sylvia? and Duologue, The Deep because they are ‘not bad enough for her’. Aunt Blue Sea, , In Praise of Edna follows, never leads, intelligent taste. Love, and Cause Célèbre. Although Nick Hern The publisher who has come closest to publish- Books say they currently have no plans to add to ing all of Rattigan’s plays is the ever-dependable the list, Rebellato has said he would particularly Samuel French Ltd, with their “Acting Editions”. like to add While The Sun Shines, Man and Boy Each play in the series is published separately and and . I hope that one day they will also add in a variety of easy to handle, practical formats. As Follow My Leader and the rest of Rattigan’s well as the texts they include character lists and produced stage plays, together with his original descriptions, set diagrams, sound and lighting cue radio and television plays and, perhaps, the most lists and props lists, all based on the play’s original significant of his film scripts and a few of his un- London production. However, among the plays performed plays. 

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Obituaries Dates for your diary David John Henry Langrish Tuesday 11 February 2020 30 July 1937—16 August 2019 One of our founder members, David Langrish, passed French Without Tears at LAMDA—This is the third th production to benefit from the French Fund set up by away on the 16 August 2019, in Norfolk, after a short Holly Hill. TRS members are invited to the 2.15pm perfor- illness. David was born, raised and lived in Feltham, mance, to be followed by Q&A, tea and cake and with the Middlesex, for most of his life. He attended local schools cast. A booking form has been issued. and was very active in the am-dram scene where he Tuesday 9 June 2020 staged, directed and appeared in many of his own revues. Annual Birthday Dinner—This year the annual dinner will take place on 9 June and will be hosted by our new He lived a double life in that he earned a living from Chairman Denis Moriarty at the Oxford & Cambridge various administration positions but spent a hundred Club, Pall Mall, where we have previously dined very percent of the rest of his time in the theatre and cinema. enjoyably. A booking form will be issued. He was an inveterate theatre-goer and one of his earliest recollections was of his father taking him to see the original production of Blithe Spirit at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1941, at the age of 4! Re-introducing Denis Moriarty David was a friend of many theatricals and two in continued from p2 particular were close to his heart. The late Kenneth ______Williams and Dame Judi Dench. It must be said that Judi After Oxford Denis went straight to the BBC at Bush assisted me and my wife with some very kind letters to House to work on the overseas services. His first help boost David’s health in his final days—one of break came when he landed a job as Assistant which letters he held until the end. Producer, Music and Arts. His youthful choral David was also a play-reader and adviser to West End experiences had led him to working with the producers Peter Bridge and Michael Codron. He also operated his own Theatre Awards list, cherished by foremost conductors of the day, his first audition those who knew him. having led to his singing on a recording of the For the last 15 years he lived in Sheringham, Norfolk Brahms Requiem, under Klemperer, with but continued to visit theatres all over the country until Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau as the soloists. 18 months ago. A funeral mass was held on 13 One of the highlights of Denis’s career at the BBC September. was his four years as director of the very popular TV Michael Wheatley-Ward programme Face the Music, with the legendary Joyce Grenfell, Joseph Cooper, Bernard Levin et al. James Cellan Jones 13 July 1931—30 August 2019 In the mid-70s, he was introduced to Alec Clifton -Taylor, who had written a book on English James Cellan Jones was one of the outstanding directors buildings. Denis describes Clifton-Taylor as ‘quirky and producers of British television drama during the and oddly posh’, and it was a very fruitful postwar era. His single plays, series and serials, from the professional partnership at the BBC, leading to two 1960s to the late 90s, included seven episodes of The series of six programmes on English towns. Denis can Forsyte Saga (1967), which achieved viewing figures of up to 18 million a week. A long line of period TV still lecture on any number of them to this day – dramas followed, including Fortunes of War (1987), along with many other subjects that have attracted making stars of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. his interest, such as poets, composers, architects and In the late 70s he was head of the BBC’s television play art movements. He also involved himself in politics, output, commissioning various notable series, including standing as a Labour candidate against the late Airey Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven, before returning Neave in Abingdon in 1974. As well as the Oxford & to the fray to direct many more TV films and series. He Cambridge he is also a member of the Garrick Club was a founder member of the TRS and was profiled in and is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of the 10th issue of this newsletter (2014). Scriveners, in which latter capacity he performed in The Guardian (extract)

The Scriveners’ Play from the York Mystery Cycle– We have also recently learned of the death of an The Incredulity of Saint Thomas—at the celebration honorary member of the TRS, Anthony Fletcher of the 400th Anniversary of the Company’s Royal (profiled in Issue No.14 in 2015). We remember and pay Charter in 2017. A man of many parts.  tribute to all three gentlemen. 

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