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Dennis Potter
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Al Bowlly
Albert Allick "Al" Bowlly (7 January 1899 – 17 April 1941) was a popular Jazz singer and crooner in the United Kingdom during the 1930s, making more than 1,000 recordings between 1927 and 1941. Bowlly showcased a diverse range of material unsurpassed by any contemporary other than perhaps Bing Crosby. He was also a truly international recording artist. He was killed by the explosion of a parachute mine outside his flat in Jermyn Street, London during the Blitz.
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Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais (; born 3 June 1922, Vannes, Morbihan) is a French film director whose early works are often grouped within the New Wave or nouvelle vague film movement. Although he has had a long and fruitful career, Resnais is best known for three early works that deal with themes of memory and trauma: Night and Fog (1955), Hiroshima mon amour (1959), and Last Year at Marienbad (1961).
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Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English playwright, screenwriter and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research medieval history at the university for several years. His collaboration as writer and performer with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame. He gave up academia, and turned to writing full time, his first stage play Forty Years On being produced in 1968.
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Albert Finney
Albert Finney (born 9 May 1936) is an English actor. He achieved prominence in films during the early 1960s, and has maintained a successful career in theatre, film and television.
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Alice Liddell
Alice Pleasance Liddell (4 May 1852 – 16 November 1934), known for most of her adult life by her married name, Alice Hargreaves, inspired the children's classic ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Her family surname Liddell'' is .
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Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell (pronounced in one syllable, as a homophone of "pole") CH, CBE (21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975.
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Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters (born Bernadette Lazzara on February 28, 1948) is an American actress, singer and children's book author from New York City. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings. She is one of the most critically-acclaimed Broadway performers, having received nominations for seven Tony Awards, winning two, and eight Drama Desk Awards, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.
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Brian Dennehy
Brian Mannion Dennehy (born July 9, 1938) is an American actor of film, stage and screen.
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Charlie Kaufman
Charles Stuart "Charlie" Kaufman (born November 19, 1958) is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. His works include Being John Malkovich; Human Nature; Adaptation.; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; and Synecdoche, New York. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Eternal Sunshine.
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Colin Blakely
Colin George Blakely (23 September 1930 – 7 May 1987) was a Northern Irish character actor. He was considered an actor of great range.
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Colin Jeavons
Colin Jeavons (born 20 October 1929 in Newport, Monmouthshire) is a Welsh character actor.
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Dale Carnegie
Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (originally Carnagey until 1922 and possibly somewhat later) (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer and lecturer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, a biography of Abraham Lincoln entitled Lincoln the Unknown, and several other books.
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Den Watts
Dennis "Den" Watts is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by actor Leslie Grantham. He became well-known for his tabloid nickname, "Dirty Den".
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Dirty Den
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Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator (17 December, 1893 in Greifenstein-Ulm – 30 March, 1966 in Starnberg) was a German theatre director and producer who, with Bertolt Brecht, was the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the sociopolitical content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal beauty.
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Ewan McGregor
Ewan Gordon McGregor (born 31 March 1971) is a Scottish actor who has had success in mainstream, indie and art house films. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Mark Renton in the 1996 film Trainspotting, the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the romantic penniless writer Christian in the 2001 film Moulin Rouge!
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night and his most famous, the celebrated classic, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.
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Frank Finlay
Francis Finlay CBE (born 6 August 1926) is an English stage, film and television actor.
http://wn.com/Frank_Finlay -
Franz Anton Mesmer
http://wn.com/Franz_Anton_Mesmer -
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was a British author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense, revolutionary opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism.
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Giacomo Casanova
Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (April 2, 1725 – June 4, 1798) was a Venetian adventurer and author. His main book Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life), part autobiography and part memoir, is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century.
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Guy Garvey
Guy Edward John Patrick Garvey (born 6 March 1974, in Bury, Greater Manchester, England), is the singer/guitarist in the band Elbow, as well as a presenter (Sunday evenings 10pm to midnight, British time) for BBC 6 Music and A&R; manager of Skinny Dog Records. He previously presented a show on Sunday evenings on XFM. His versatile vocal range characterized by a deeply accented and thick tenor has often been compared to Peter Gabriel.
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Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008), was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor, theatre director, left wing political activist and poet. He was among the most influential British playwrights of modern times. In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pinter's writing career spanned over 50 years and produced 29 original stage plays, 27 screenplays, many dramatic sketches, radio and TV plays, poetry, one novel, short fiction, essays, speeches, and letters. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Caretaker (1959), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted to film. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1970), ''The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth'' (2007). He directed almost 50 stage, television, and film productions and acted extensively in radio, stage, television, and film productions of his own and others' works.
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Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren, DBE (born 26 July 1945) is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards during her career.
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Herbert Ross
Herbert Ross (May 13, 1927 – October 9, 2001) was an American film director, producer, choreographer and actor.
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Hywel Bennett
Hywel Thomas Bennett (born 8 April 1944) is a Welsh actor.
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Janine Duvitski
Janine Duvitski (born Christine Janine Drzewicki; 1952) is an English actress, known for her roles as Jane Edwards in Waiting For God and Pippa Trench in One Foot In The Grave. She also created and played the role of Angela in Mike Leigh's play ''Abigail's Party''.
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Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth (c. 5 BC/BCE – c. 30 AD/CE),
http://wn.com/Jesus -
Joan Plowright
Dame Joan Ann Plowright, Lady Olivier, DBE (born 28 October 1929), better known as Joan Plowright, is an English actress.
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John Bird (actor)
John Bird (born 22 November 1936) is an English satirist, actor and comedian.
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John Birt
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Keir Hardie
James Keir Hardie, Sr. (15 August 185626 September 1915), best known as "Keir," was a Scottish socialist and labour leader, and was the first Independent Labour Member of Parliament elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Hardie is regarded as one of the primary founders of the Independent Labour Party as well as the Labour Party of which it later was a part.
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Kenneth Colley
Kenneth Colley (born 7 December 1937) is a British actor. A long-time character actor, he came to wider prominence through his role as Admiral Piett in ' and '.
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Kika Markham
Kika Markham (born 1942) is an English actress.
http://wn.com/Kika_Markham -
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (, ; – ), was a Russian writer whom many consider to be the world's greatest novelist. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist fiction.
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Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (, ; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll (, ), was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass'', as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.
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Louise Germaine
Louise Germaine (born Tina Reid in 1971 in Margate, Kent) is an English actress and glamour model best known for her appearance as Sylvia Berry in the 1993 Dennis Potter mini-series Lipstick on Your Collar.
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Margaret Edson
Margaret Edson (born 4 July 1961, Washington, D.C.) is an American playwright. Edson graduated with a B.A. in Renaissance History from Smith College, and received a master's in English literature from Georgetown University. Her jobs have included being a bicycle shop sales clerk and a volunteer ESL teacher.
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Mary Steenburgen
Mary Nell Steenburgen (born February 8, 1953) is an American actress. She has starred in over fifty films spanning thirty years of movie production. Steenburgen was most successful in the role of Lynda Dummar in the film Melvin and Howard, which earned her an Academy Award and Golden globe for Best Supporting Actress. Steenburgen is married to fellow Hollywood actor Ted Danson.
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Mary Whitehouse
Mary Whitehouse CBE (13 June 1910 – 23 November 2001) was a British campaigner for what she perceived to be values of morality and decency derived from her Christian beliefs.
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Matthew Graham
Matthew Graham is a British television writer, and the co-creator of the BBC/Kudos Film and Television science fiction series Life on Mars, which debuted in 2006 on BBC One and has received international critical acclaim.
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Mel Gibson
Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson, AO (born January 3, 1956) is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Peekskill, New York, Gibson moved with his parents to Sydney when he was 12 years old and later studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art.
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Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg FRSL FRTS FRS FBA born 6 October 1939, is an English author, broadcaster and media personality who, aside from his many literary endeavours, is perhaps most recognised for his work on The South Bank Show.
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Michael Elphick
Michael John Elphick (19 September 1946 – 7 September 2002) was an English actor, noted for his deep-lined, ruggedly handsome features.
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Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Jack Roeg CBE, BSC (born 15 August 1928 in London) is an English film director and cinematographer. Contributing to the visual look of Lawrence of Arabia and Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death, and co-directing Performance, he would later become the guiding force behind such landmark films as Walkabout, ''Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth''.
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Norman Rossington
Norman Rossington (24 December 1928 – 21 May 1999) was an English actor best remembered for his roles in The Army Game, the Carry On films and the Beatles film ''A Hard Day's Night''.
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Patricia Lawrence
Patricia Lawrence (19 November 1925, Andover, Hampshire, England, UK – 7 March 1993, Chelsea, London, UK) was a British actress.
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Peter Bowker
Peter Bowker (born 1958) is a British playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for the television serials Blackpool (2004), a musical drama about a shady casino owner; Occupation (2009), which follows three military servicemen adjusting to civilian life after a tour of duty in Iraq; and Desperate Romantics (2009), a biographical drama about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In 2007, he adapted Blackpool for CBS as Viva Laughlin.
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Piers Haggard
Piers Inigo Haggard (born March 18, 1939 in London, England, UK) is a British film and television director, although he has worked mostly in the latter medium. He is the great grandnephew of H. Rider Haggard, the son of the actor Stephen Haggard and father of the actress Daisy Haggard.
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Richard Loncraine
Richard Loncraine is a British film and television director.
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Robin Ellis
Robin Ellis (born 8 January 1942 in Ipswich) is an English actor best known for his role as Captain Ross Poldark in 29 episodes of the BBC classic series Poldark, adapted from a series of books by the late British author, Winston Graham. He also appeared in Fawlty Towers, Cluedo, The Good Soldier (an adaptation of the Ford Madox Ford novel), Elizabeth R (playing Essex), The Moonstone, Bel-Ami, Sense and Sensibility (which also featured Clive Francis), The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, She Loves Me (in which he sings) and Blue Remembered Hills (written by Dennis Potter). He co-starred with Lee Remick in the Merchant Ivory film, The Europeans (1979), playing the role of John Acton. He appeared in the CBS mini-series ''The Curse of King Tut's Tomb (playing Howard Carter, the Englishman who discovered the tomb of King Tut), in the British TV drama, Heartbeat and in a BBC adaptation of A Dark-Adapted Eye (1994) a psychological thriller written by Ruth Rendell. His most recent TV appearance was in the Swedish detective series, Wallander'' (2006) in the episode entitled "The Photographer".
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Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG (; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-American media magnate and the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of .
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Sarah Potter
Sarah Potter (born July 11, 1961 at Hammersmith, London) is a former cricketer who played seven Test matches and eight One-Day Internationals for the England Women's team between 1984 and 1987. She currently writes on women's cricket for The Times. She was a left-arm fast bowler and a middle order batsman. She scored 360 runs in Tests at an average of 32.72, and took 8 wickets at 48.00, She scored one Test century, an innings of 102 against India at Worcester in the Third Test in 1986.
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Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer.
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Steven Bochco
Steven Ronald Bochco (born December 16, 1943) is a US television producer and writer. He has developed a number of popular television hits including Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue, as well as some notable flops such as Cop Rock.
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Sting (musician)
Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, CBE (born 2 October 1951), better known by his professional name Sting, is an English musician, singer-songwriter, activist, actor and philanthropist. Prior to starting his solo career, he was the principal songwriter, lead singer and bassist of the rock band The Police.
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Victor Gollancz
Sir Victor Gollancz (9 April 1893 – 8 February 1967) was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.
http://wn.com/Victor_Gollancz
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Crucible Theatre
The Crucible Theatre is a theatre built in 1971 and located in the city centre of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. As well as theatrical performances, it is home to the most important event in professional snooker, the World Snooker Championship.
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Forest of Dean
The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the county of Gloucestershire, England. The forest is a roughly triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and north, the River Severn to the south, and the City of Gloucester to the east.
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Gloucestershire
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Hammersmith
Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, approximately 5 miles (8 km) west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames. One of west London's key transport hubs and commercial and employment centres, and home to several multinational company offices, it is focused on the two London Underground stations, bus station and road network node at Hammersmith Broadway. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
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Herefordshire
Herefordshire () is a historic and ceremonial county in the West Midlands region of England. It also forms a unitary district known as the County of Herefordshire. It borders the English ceremonial counties of Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh preserved counties of Gwent to the south-west and Powys to the west. Hereford is a cathedral city and is the county town; with a population of approximately 55,700 inhabitants it is also the largest settlement.
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Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been singularly important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world. The museum's collection offers an unparalleled overview in modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawings, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books and artist's books, film, and electronic media.
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Ross-on-Wye
Ross-on-Wye (Welsh: Rhosan ar Wy) is a small market town with a population of 10,089 (according to the 2001 census) in southeastern Herefordshire, England, located on the River Wye, and on the northern edge of the Forest of Dean. Although the nearest railway station is Ledbury on the Cotswold Line, Gloucester has a much better [http://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/transport/public_transport/38327.asp bus connection with Ross], and is a major interchange on the national rail network.
http://wn.com/Ross-on-Wye
- Al Bowlly
- Alain Resnais
- Alan Bates
- Alan Bennett
- Albert Finney
- Alice in Wonderland
- Alice Liddell
- Anthony Powell
- art rock
- arthritis
- auteur
- BAFTA
- BBC
- BBC Four
- BBC Two
- BBC2
- Bernadette Peters
- biographical film
- Blackeyes
- Blade on the Feather
- blasphemy
- Bob Hoskins
- breast cancer
- Brian Dennehy
- Channel 4
- Charlie Kaufman
- Christchurch
- Christian Rodska
- coal miner
- Cold Lazarus
- Colin Blakely
- Colin Jeavons
- Colin Welland
- Cop Rock
- Coral Browne
- Cream in My Coffee
- cricket
- Crucible Theatre
- Dale Carnegie
- Dalek
- Den Watts
- Denholm Elliot
- Derek Walker-Smith
- Dirty Den
- Doppelgänger
- Double Dare (play)
- Drama
- dramatist
- Dreamchild
- Dualism
- Edgar Award
- Elbow (band)
- eleven-plus
- Erwin Piscator
- Ewan McGregor
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Faber and Faber
- Fall of Man
- Forest of Dean
- Forever Delayed
- fourth wall
- Frank Finlay
- Franz Anton Mesmer
- George Orwell
- Giacomo Casanova
- Gloucestershire
- Gnosticism
- Gorky Park (film)
- Gorky Park (novel)
- Granada Television
- Guy Garvey
- Hammersmith
- Harold Pinter
- Helen Mirren
- herbarium
- Herbert Ross
- Herefordshire
- Histoire de ma vie
- Hywel Bennett
- Icon Productions
- Isis (magazine)
- ITV
- Janine Duvitski
- Jesus
- Joan Plowright
- John Bird (actor)
- John Birt
- Karaoke (play)
- Karaoke (TV series)
- Keir Hardie
- Kenneth Colley
- Kevin Carter (song)
- Kika Markham
- Labour Party (UK)
- Leo Tolstoy
- Lewis Carroll
- lip-sync
- liver
- Look Back in Anger
- Louise Germaine
- LWT
- Margaret Edson
- Martin Cruz Smith
- Mary Steenburgen
- Mary Whitehouse
- Matthew Graham
- Mel Gibson
- Melvyn Bragg
- Member of Parliament
- Mesmer (film)
- meta-fiction
- metastasis
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- Michael Checkland
- Michael Elphick
- Michael Gambon
- misogyny
- model (person)
- morphine
- Museum of Modern Art
- music video
- National Service
- New College, Oxford
- Nicolas Roeg
- Nijinsky (film)
- non-linear
- Nonlinear narrative
- Norman Rossington
- Northern Broadsides
- omniscient narrator
- Open Media
- pancreatic cancer
- Panorama (TV series)
- Patricia Lawrence
- Peter Bowker
- Piers Haggard
- Pinteresque
- Play for Today
- potboiler
- Private Eye
- Prix Italia
- Protestant
- psoriasis
- Rain on the Roof
- Richard Loncraine
- Robert Downey, Jr.
- Robin Ellis
- Ross-on-Wye
- Rupert Murdoch
- Sarah Potter
- Screenonline
- Shepperton Studios
- Son of Man (play)
- Steve Martin
- Steven Bochco
- Sting (musician)
- Tender Is the Night
- terminal illness
- The Guardian
- The Observer
- The Police (band)
- The Sun (newspaper)
- The Sunday Times
- The Wednesday Play
- The White Hotel
- Track 29
- UK Singles Chart
- V.E. Day
- V.J. Day
- Victor Gollancz
- War and Peace
- Where Adam Stood
- Wild West
- William Hazlitt
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A Parting Shot from Dennis Potter
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:52
- Published: 12 Dec 2007
- Uploaded: 10 Dec 2011
- Author: HandwrittenTheatre
When groundbreaking television writer Dennis Potter learned he was dying of cancer, he sat down with Melvyn Bragg for a final interview. The subject of media mogul Rupert Murdoch came up.
http://wn.com/A_Parting_Shot_from_Dennis_Potter
DENNIS POTTER - LAST INTERVIEW 1994 - PART 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:41
- Published: 30 Jul 2010
- Uploaded: 10 Dec 2011
- Author: herefordmsv
Dennis Potters last interview before his death in 1994. A very interesting, and at times, moving interview.
http://wn.com/DENNIS_POTTER__LAST_INTERVIEW_1994__PART_1
Dennis Potter on the experience of watching television
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:13
- Published: 09 Apr 2007
- Uploaded: 13 Dec 2011
- Author: nitrogencolonel
Taken from BBC Four's 'Arena: Potter on TV,' 2005.
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter_on_the_experience_of_watching_television
Singing Detective - Dem Bones.mp4
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:40
- Published: 11 Dec 2008
- Uploaded: 29 Nov 2011
- Author: dutchdummy
Scene from 'The Singing Detective'(1986).
http://wn.com/Singing_Detective__Dem_Bonesmp4
Dennis Potter in Edinburgh 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:59
- Published: 09 Feb 2009
- Uploaded: 09 Sep 2011
- Author: rememberedhills
"Croak voiced Daleks" is how Dennis Potter in his speech to the 1993 Edinburgh Television Festival describes John Birt and Marmaduke Hussey. In this Right to Reply Special, Potter joins other TV figures of the time to discuss the aftermath of his speech.
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter_in_Edinburgh_1
Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' - 'The Glory Of Love'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:23
- Published: 07 Sep 2010
- Uploaded: 08 Dec 2011
- Author: songanddanceman1234
'Pennies From Heaven' by Dennis Potter. Episode 6: 'Says My Heart'. Counting down the chimes of Big Ben marking the hour her love Arthur (Bob Hoskins) faced the hangman's noose, Eileen (Cheryl Campbell) says her goodbyes ready to leap off Hammersmith Bridge. But a 'surprise' ending captures the play's ambiguous love-conquers-all-spirit. Listen to your heart and you might find Pennies from Heaven.The song has ended but the melody lingers on. Potter's surprise 'happy ending' caused some consternation among some fans who found it too sweet for such a bitter tale of betrayal, though his viscous sense of humour mixing sweet and pleasant with sour and dark is a hallmark of Potter's work. Filmed on location on 16mm film around Hammersmith Bridge, an important landmark for Potter, Hoskins and Campbell lip-sync and trip the light fantastic to Lew Stone's version of the 'Billy' Hill standard, first recorded by Benny Goodman in 1936. Potter insisted a final credit and roll call of performers from the original dance bands heard throughout the series was an appropriate ending. Music: 'The Glory of Love'. Lew Stone and His Band. Dennis Potter's award-wInning 'Pennies From Heaven' (BBC 1978). Directed by Piers Haggard, produced by long-time Potter collaborator Kenith Trodd, with choreography and design by Tudor Davies and Tim Harvey, One of the finest pieces of television the BBC has ever produced.
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter's_'Pennies_From_Heaven'__'The_Glory_Of_Love'
Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' - 'Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:31
- Published: 01 Jun 2010
- Uploaded: 13 Dec 2011
- Author: songanddanceman1234
'Pennies From Heaven' by Dennis Potter. Episode 1: 'Down Sunny Side Lane'. Arthur (Bob Hoskins) is in Gloucester to sell his sheet music, pop songs and dreams - and sing them in a dance of ironic passion as he propositions the unreluctant Marjorie (Rosemary Martin) with a chorus of leering yokels, Jumbo (Robert Putt) and Will (Keith Marsh). Hoskins and the cast ham it up in a studio number which captures the dance movements of the 1930s. The whole scene, set in a traditional English pub of the period, is choreographed in the tight confines of a studio set of about eight feet square. Hoskins' cheeky takes to camera, comic actress Martin's man-eating mutton dressed as lamb and Putt and Marsh's period dance moves take on a cartoon feel as every dance cliché in the book is thrown into this tongue in cheek lip-synched rendition of Jimmie Hanley's classic number. Music: 'Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart'. Lew Stone and His Band (Vocal: Joe Crossman, Alfie Noakes, Don Barrigo, Jock Jacobsen). Recorded 1935. Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' (BBC 1978). Directed by Piers Haggard, produced by long-time Potter collaborator Kenith Trodd, with choreography and design by Tudor Davies and Tim Harvey. One of the finest pieces of television the BBC has ever produced.
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter's_'Pennies_From_Heaven'__'Zing!_Went_The_Strings_Of_My_Heart'
Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' - 'Blue Moon'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:45
- Published: 14 Jun 2010
- Uploaded: 04 Nov 2011
- Author: songanddanceman1234
'Pennies From Heaven' by Dennis Potter. Episode 1: Down Sunnyside Lane'. Left alone in semi-detached suburbia, housewife Joan (Gemma Craven) escapes by flicking through the fantasy world of society magazines and adverts for beauty products. Sad and lonely, the only way out is to find love in the new age of consumerism. Dreaming of an idealised world of the perfect suburban housewife, Joan needs a stroke of luck to lift her out of her blue melancholy. Something will comes along but only once in a blue moon. Slow dissolves, deep blue filters and everything including the kitchen sink of domesticity are used to set up a surreal scene as the milky smooth studio set is transformed for Craven to live out her dream as a perfect suburban housewife. Potter's distaste for the new consumerism of Metro-land is present from the beginning as the charming and persuasive voice of salesman (Nigel Havers) is heard and Craven performs her chores with a spangly 'Hoover' and sparkly scrubbing brush and bucket - all in a flowing white ball gown. Greta Keller's deep lieder singing voice - the model for Marlene Dietrich's style - is well suited to the romantic nature of the 1934 Rodgers and Hart ballad. Interrupted by a knock at the door, Craven's character is totally mesmerised as a victim of 1930s consumerism. Music: 'Blue Moon'. (Vocal: Greta Keller). Dennis Potter's award-winning "Pennies From Heaven" (BBC 1978). Directed by Piers Haggard, produced by long-time Potter collaborator Kenith <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter's_'Pennies_From_Heaven'__'Blue_Moon'
Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' - 'Anything Goes'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:12
- Published: 02 Jun 2010
- Uploaded: 10 Dec 2011
- Author: songanddanceman1234
'Pennies From Heaven' by Dennis Potter. Episode 5: Painting The Clouds'. Left in Sunnyside Lane, prim housewife Joan (Gemma Craven) is visited by a strange police inspector (Dave King) making more than routine inquiries into husband Arthur's disappearance and the murder of a blind girl. Neither has any real idea what has happened but there are hints. And of course once your better half cuts the tie that should bind, there's no end of imagining. Anything Goes! Cole Porter's lyrics fit perfectly as Craven lip-syncs straight to camera and her training as a dancer shows as she starts to let rip in a fabulous frock. King, a popular stand-up comedian and versatile show-business personality, puts on his best "ello,'ello, 'ello" policeman's voice before delivering his dubbed lines complete with facial grimaces and perfect comic timing. As Craven gets a tad carried away with it all, the music and dancing end abruptly, allowing her to deliver the comic but chilling payoff lines of a woman betrayed. Music: 'Anything Goes'. Lew Stone & His Band (Vocal: The Radio Three - Joy Worth, Kay Cavendish, Ann Carring). Recorded 1935. Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' (BBC 1978). Directed by Piers Haggard, produced by long-time Potter collaborator Kenith Trodd, with choreography and design by Tudor Davies and Tim Harvey. One of the finest pieces of television the BBC has ever produced.
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter's_'Pennies_From_Heaven'__'Anything_Goes'
DENNIS POTTER - LAST INTERVIEW 1994 - PART 2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:31
- Published: 30 Jul 2010
- Uploaded: 08 Nov 2011
- Author: herefordmsv
Dennis Potters last interview before his death in 1994. A very interesting, and at times, moving interview.
http://wn.com/DENNIS_POTTER__LAST_INTERVIEW_1994__PART_2
DENNIS POTTER - LAST INTERVIEW 1994 - PART 3
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:44
- Published: 30 Jul 2010
- Uploaded: 08 Nov 2011
- Author: herefordmsv
Dennis Potters last interview before his death in 1994. A very interesting, and at times, moving interview.
http://wn.com/DENNIS_POTTER__LAST_INTERVIEW_1994__PART_3
Tribute to Dennis Potter
Potter pays homage to himself by having the main character Daniel Freed (Albert Finney), sing Pennies From Heaven in the TV series Karaoke/Cold Lazarus. Another great thriller/science fiction series that should be on DVD.
http://wn.com/Tribute_to_Dennis_Potter
DENNIS POTTER - LAST INTERVIEW 1994 - PART 4
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:32
- Published: 30 Jul 2010
- Uploaded: 18 Nov 2011
- Author: herefordmsv
Dennis Potters last interview before his death in 1994. A very interesting, and at times, moving interview.
http://wn.com/DENNIS_POTTER__LAST_INTERVIEW_1994__PART_4
Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' - 'Love Is Good For Anything That Ails You'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:44
- Published: 28 May 2010
- Uploaded: 27 Nov 2011
- Author: songanddanceman1234
'Pennies From Heaven' by Dennis Potter. Episode 3: 'Easy Come, Easy Go'. Eileen (Cheryl Campbell) is pregnant and forced to leave her post as an infant teacher. Unaware of her misery, the children snigger as she tells them the story of Rapunzel. How does she come to have twins when she's not married? Instead of responding 'normally' to her scolds, the whole class turns into a toy dance-band, soothing fears, syncopating terrors. Whatever's wrong, love will cure. The children's dancing and straight to camera gestures give a perfect backdrop to Campbell's lip-synched lyrics and syncopated dance routine. The scene was shot on location in Potter's home county of the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire with the subtle texture of 16mm film. The school is the actual Forest school Potter attended and many of the local children were cast as extras. The children's toy 1930s dance-band and cheeky choreography add to the fairytale feel of this delightful musical number. Music: 'Love Is Good For Anything That Ails You'. Orlando and his Orchestra. (Vocal: credited to Phyllis Robins TV series DVD, Evelyn Dall, CD soundtrack). Recorded 1937. Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' (BBC 1978). Directed by Piers Haggard, produced by long-time Potter collaborator Kenith Trodd, with choreography and design by Tudor Davies and Tim Harvey. One of the finest pieces of television the BBC has ever produced.
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter's_'Pennies_From_Heaven'__'Love_Is_Good_For_Anything_That_Ails_You'
Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' - 'Pennies From Heaven'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:53
- Published: 05 Jun 2010
- Uploaded: 10 Dec 2011
- Author: songanddanceman1234
'Pennies From Heaven' by Dennis Potter. Episode 1: Down Sunnyside Lane'. Sheet music salesman Arthur (Bob Hoskins) has encountered a weird busker called The Accordion Man (Kenneth Colley) whose entire repertoire consists of three hymn tunes. Buying him a meal, Arthur tries to explain his feelings hopes and dreams, unaware of how his fate is to become inextricably intertwined in a strange chain of events. The mysterious Accordion Man seems interested only in the food but as Arthur's doppelgänger he can understand and express Arthur's feelings in song. The title song, written by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston, is heard several times in the show. Instead of a grand studio-style production number, here producers deliberately opt for an understated version from American vocalist Arthur Tracy with slow, staged movements well suited to the scene, so as not to detract from the lyrics. By staging the scene as a simple musical number with a slight change in lighting filters - not a dance number - the actions are more meaningful within the song. The audience is invited to accept the sincerity of the number as the words are put into the tramp's mouth. Music: 'Pennies From Heaven'. (Vocal: Arthur 'The Street Singer' Tracy). Recorded 1937. A slight crackle is heard in the recording which producers readily admit could have been avoided if they had used a new needle! Dennis Potter's award-winning 'Pennies From Heaven' (BBC 1978). Directed by Piers Haggard, produced by long-time Potter <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter's_'Pennies_From_Heaven'__'Pennies_From_Heaven'
Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' - 'Radio Times/Life Begins At Oxford Circus'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:26
- Published: 06 Jun 2010
- Uploaded: 13 Nov 2011
- Author: songanddanceman1234
'Pennies From Heaven' by Dennis Potter. Episode 3: 'Easy Come Easy Go'. Partly driven out, partly snatching at the prospect of something new, Eileen (Cheryl Campbell) has packed her bags and leaves the Forest of Dean for London - for good. In the GWR carriage she joins the other passengers (Betty Hardy, Frank Lazarus, Norman Warwick, David Rowlands) in Henry Hall's song, a chorus for modern city ways - the music, the wireless, the parties, the dancing. As the train steams in to Paddington Station, Eileen is looking forward to the glamorous promise of the West End . This is where life really begins! Colour gives way to a world through sepia filters as the confines of a railway carriage studio set is shot through the window and the cast rock to and fro to reinforce the golden age of steam. A fanfare from a change of musical number signals the start of a sequence to capture the spirit of the movie reels of the time with archive footage of the glitz and glamour of London in the 1930s. The scene dissolves to the harsh, grim reality of B&B land and the haunting spectre of the mysterious Accordion Man. Music: 'Radio Times'. The BBC Dance Orchestra directed by Henry Hall (Vocal: Dan Donovan). Recorded 1934. 'Life Begins At Oxford Circus'. Jack Hylton and His Orchestra (with vocal chorus). Recorded 1935. Dennis Potter's award-winning 'Pennies From Heaven' (BBC 1978). Directed by Piers Haggard, produced by long-time Potter collaborator Kenith Trodd, with choreography and design by <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter's_'Pennies_From_Heaven'__'Radio_Times/Life_Begins_At_Oxford_Circus'
Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' - 'Okay Toots'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:29
- Published: 27 May 2010
- Uploaded: 21 Oct 2011
- Author: songanddanceman1234
'Pennies From Heaven' by Denis Potter. Episode 4: 'Better Think Twice'. Arthur (Bob Hoskins) and Eileen (Cheryl Campbell) are ecstatically reunited through a chance meeting. Their only love nest is the record shop after hours. They decide to 'disappear' together, she on the run from the predatory Tom, he abandoning his hopeless life with Joan. '"Lulu I am and Lulu I stay," says Eileen. If it's all right with you, it's 'Okay Toots' with me. Campbell and Hoskins launch enthusiastically into a tightly choreographed number with straight to camera shots and out into the studio street with some clever camera work and strategically placed pillars to produce a few acrobatics which suits the high spirited and frantic tempo of this energetic number. Music: 'Okay Toots'. Harry Roy & His Orchestra from the Mayfair Hotel (Vocal: Harry Roy). Recorded 1935. Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' (BBC 1978). Directed by Piers Haggard, produced by long-time Potter collaborator Kenith Trodd, with choreography and design by Tudor Davies and Tim Harvey. One of the finest pieces of television the BBC has ever produced.
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter's_'Pennies_From_Heaven'__'Okay_Toots'
DENNIS POTTER - LAST INTERVIEW 1994 - PART 5
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:36
- Published: 30 Jul 2010
- Uploaded: 08 Nov 2011
- Author: herefordmsv
Dennis Potters last interview before his death in 1994. A very interesting, and at times, moving interview.
http://wn.com/DENNIS_POTTER__LAST_INTERVIEW_1994__PART_5
DENNIS POTTER - LAST INTERVIEW 1994 - PART 6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:33
- Published: 30 Jul 2010
- Uploaded: 08 Nov 2011
- Author: herefordmsv
Dennis Potters last interview before his death in 1994. A very interesting, and at times, moving interview.
http://wn.com/DENNIS_POTTER__LAST_INTERVIEW_1994__PART_6
"Dry Bones" from "The Singing Detective"
From Amazon.com: Tormented and bedridden by a debilitating disease, a mystery writer relives his detective stories through his imagination and hallucinations.
http://wn.com/Dry_Bones_from_The_Singing_Detective
Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' - 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:09
- Published: 02 Jun 2010
- Uploaded: 20 Aug 2011
- Author: songanddanceman1234
'Pennies From Heaven' by Dennis Potter. Episode 1: Down Sunnyside Lane'. Housewife Joan (Gemma Craven) is left at home in semi-detached suburbia of Sunnyside Lane, fretting about her complexion. Slick salesman Conrad Baker (Nigel Havers) introduces his beauty aid - a 'scientifically designed' suction pad - to a sceptical Joan. "I can't pull the wool over your eyes, can I?" asks the slippery salesman. And he duly does with his 'pitter patter'. Joan lets the smoke get in her eyes. The stylised sweet sugaryness of suburbia and mores of English suburban life are gloriously captured in a 'Brief Encounter' moment of impeccable manners, contrived over the top stage movements and clipped speech with this Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach show tune from 1935. Filters first take the hard edge off the videotape producing a millky smoothness. Colour filters are then brought into play with Havers lip-synching across gender lines to add to the comic touch as the smoke gets thicker, threatening to envelop the studio set. Craven and Havers deliver their out lines with impeccable precision: "How foolish ... Some people ... Quite". Music: 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' (Vocal: Phyllis Robins). Dennis Potter's award-winning 'Pennies From Heaven' (BBC 1978). Directed by Piers Haggard, produced by long-time Potter collaborator Kenith Trodd, with choreography and design by Tudor Davies and Tim Harvey. One of the finest pieces of television the BBC has ever produced.
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter's_'Pennies_From_Heaven'__'Smoke_Gets_in_Your_Eyes'
Dennis Potter in Edinburgh 2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:59
- Published: 09 Feb 2009
- Uploaded: 09 Sep 2011
- Author: rememberedhills
"Croak voiced Daleks" is how Dennis Potter in his speech to the 1993 Edinburgh Television Festival describes John Birt and Marmaduke Hussey. In this Right to Reply Special, Potter joins other TV figures of the time to discuss the aftermath of his speech.
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter_in_Edinburgh_2
Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' - 'Cheek To Cheek'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:22
- Published: 02 Jun 2010
- Uploaded: 30 Nov 2011
- Author: songanddanceman1234
'Pennies From Heaven' by Dennis Potter. Episode 1: Down Sunnyside Lane'. Commercial traveller Arthur (Bob Hoskins) has met - barely met - shy schoolteacher Eileen (Cheryl Campbell), the girl of his dreams. Driving home he imagines her dancing with him on a paradise floor and making him heavenly promises. Shot on location in the Oxfordshire countryside on 16mm film, the scene dissolves into the subtle textures of the studio set as Irving Berlin's classic number is given the 'Fred and Ginger' treatment and Hoskins and Campbell's dancing comes under the spotlight in a tribute to the silver screen. "Oh Arthur, I love you," coos Campbell. "Don't talk, don't break the spell," hams up Hoskins. Refreshing in keeping with the musical style of the series, Berlin's number is heard in an original version by a British dance band and singer of the time. Music: 'Cheek To Cheek'. Lew Stone And His Band. (Vocal: Sam Browne). Recorded 1935. Dennis Potter's award-winning 'Pennies From Heaven' (BBC 1978). Directed by Piers Haggard, produced by long-time Potter collaborator Kenith Trodd, with choreography and design by Tudor Davies and Tim Harvey. One of the finest pieces of television the BBC has ever produced.
http://wn.com/Dennis_Potter's_'Pennies_From_Heaven'__'Cheek_To_Cheek'
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The Guardian
Fee negotiations between BBC and Potter estate break down with gap between two parties at no more than £5,000 Michael Gambon in The Singing Detective, which was first shown in 1986. Photograph: BBC Photo library...
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Your next box set: The Essential Dennis Potter
05 Nov 2010
The Guardian
From early works such as Stand Up, Nigel Barton to the masterpiece The Singing Detective, the brilliant best of Dennis Potter is here Intensely moving ... Michael Gambon as Philip Marlow in The Singing Detective. Photograph: BBC Photolibrary...
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size: 2.9Kb
The Guardian
NME Dennis Hopper/Potter error As the world paid its respects to the late Dennis Hopper, an unfortunate on-screen...
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The Independent
I was fortunate enough to be invited on to Woman's Hour last week to discuss my latest novel, Geezer Girls. The fascinating thing about the response I had was how surprised many listeners were that someone from my background was in the professions and writing novels. But their surprise was no...
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NME
Slash has paid his respects to Hollywood star Dennis Hopper who died this morning (May 29) aged 74, after battling prostate cancer. The ex-Guns N' Roses guitarist paid tribute to the legendary film star,...
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Dennis Potter's brutal children
05 Jun 2008
The Guardian
In Potter's 1979 TV film Blue Remembered Hills, adults play cruel and uncomprehending children. It is still a shocking - and moving - masterpiece Representing memory ... The adults-playing-children of Blue Remembered Hills Some television drama ages badly; even the most revered classics creak a bit...
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The Essential Dennis Potter
29 Nov 2007
Sydney Morning Herald
Eight BBC TV works - plays and series - from the prolific and often inventive Dennis Potter who, in a long career, explored desire, disgust, memory, childhood, autobiography...
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'Lost' Dennis Potter drama found
13 Jan 2005
BBC News
A TV drama by playwright Dennis Potter, thought destroyed after its one and only broadcast, has been rediscovered. Shaggy Dog was transmitted in 1968 but no copy was thought to exist due to the expense of making early TV recordings. However, vintage TV enthusiast group Kaleidoscope found the...
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| name | Dennis Potter |
|---|---|
| birth date | 17 May 1935 |
| birth place | Berry Hill, Gloucestershire, England |
| death date | June 07, 1994 |
| death place | Ross-on-Wye, Hereford and Worcester, England |
| occupation | television playwright, director novelist |
| nationality | British |
| period | 1960–1994 |
| genre | Drama |
| notableworks | Pennies from Heaven (1978)Blue Remembered Hills (1979)The Singing Detective (1986) |
| influences | William Hazlitt, George Orwell, David Mercer |
| influenced | Andrew Davies, Steven Bochco, Peter Bowker |
| website | }} |
Biography
Dennis Potter was born in Berry Hill, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. His father, Walter Edward Potter (1906–1975), was a coal miner in this rural mining area between Gloucester and Wales; his mother was Margaret Constance, née Wale (b. 1910). Potter has a sister named June.Brought up a Protestant he attended the local Salem chapel, and went to Christchurch junior school where, in 1946, he passed the eleven-plus entrance examination to Bell's Grammar School at Coleford. He then went to St. Clement Danes School in London, while the family lived for a time with his maternal grandfather in Hammersmith. During this time the ten year old Potter was sexually abused by his uncle, an experience he would later allude to many times in his writing. Between 1953 and 1955, he did his National Service and learnt Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists, serving with the Intelligence Corps and subsequently at the War Office.
After national service, in 1956, he won a scholarship and went to New College, Oxford to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics, editing the student magazine Isis. He graduated in 1958, after obtaining a second-class degree. A tall, lean young man with red hair, he was described by his economics tutor as a "cross between Jimmy Porter and Keir Hardie". On 10 January 1959 he married Margaret Amy Morgan (1933–1994) at Christchurch parish church. The couple had a son, Robert and two daughters, Jane and Sarah, who was to achieve prominence in the 1980s as an international cricketer.
After Oxford, Potter joined the BBC, initially as a trainee in radio and then television journalism, during which time he worked on Panorama about the closure of coalpits in the Forest of Dean. He did not take to television journalism and left, joining the left-wing newspaper Daily Herald from August 1961 he became a television critic for that paper and for its successor, The Sun in its pre-Murdoch incarnation. However, he soon returned to television, writing sketches for That Was The Week That Was with David Nathan. He also attempted to become a Labour Member of Parliament (see below). Potter then embarked on his career as a television playwright, largely after watching the 1963 Granada version of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, based on Erwin Piscator's celebrated stage production. Potter had called it "surely the most exciting evening that TV has ever given us".
Works
Television
Potter's career as a television playwright began with The Confidence Course, an exposé of the Dale Carnegie Institute that drew threats of litigation. Although Potter effectively disowned the play, it is notable for its use of non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the fourth wall) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. Broadcast as part of the BBC's The Wednesday Play strand in 1965, The Confidence Course proved successful and Potter was invited for further contributions. His next play, Alice (1965), was a controversial drama chronicling the relationship between Lewis Carroll and his muse Alice Liddell. Potter's most celebrated works from this period are the semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton! and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton; the former the tale of a miner's son going to Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, the latter featuring the same character standing as a Labour candidate — his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience. Both plays received praise from critics' circles but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics.Potter's Son of Man (The Wednesday Play, 1969), starring the Irish actor Colin Blakely, gave an alternative view of the last days of Jesus, and led to Potter being accused of blasphemy. The same year, Potter contributed Moonlight on the Highway to ITV's Saturday Night Theatre strand. The play centred around a young man who attempts to blot out memories of the sexual abuse he suffered as child in his obsession with the music of Al Bowlly. As well as being an intensely personal play for Potter, it is notable for being his first foray in the use of popular music to heighten the dramatic tension in his work.
Casanova, Potter's first television serial, was broadcast on BBC2 in 1971. Inspired by William R. Trask's 1966 translation of Casanova's memoirs (Histoire de ma vie), Potter recast the Venetian libertine as a man haunted by his dependency on women. The serial was told using a non-linear narrative structure and, as the critic Graham Fuller noted in Potter on Potter, "as chamber-piece and identity quest, Casanova strongly anticipates [later works such as] The Singing Detective." It did, however, prove controversial for its frank depiction of nudity and was criticized for its sexual content. Controversy also dogged another play, Brimstone and Treacle (Play for Today, 1976), the original version was unscreened by the BBC for over a decade owing to the depiction of the rape of a disabled woman by a man who is implied to be the devil incarnate. It was eventually broadcast on BBC2 in 1987, although a 1982 film version had been made, with Sting in the leading role (see below) and a stage version performed in Sheffield at the Crucible Theatre.
Potter continued to make news as well as winning critical acclaim for drama serials with Pennies From Heaven (1978), which featured Bob Hoskins as a sheet music salesman and was Hoskins's first performance to receive wide attention. It demonstrated the dramatic possibilities old recordings of popular songs. Blue Remembered Hills was first shown on the BBC on 30 January 1979; it returned to the British small screen at Christmas 2004, and again in the summer of 2005, showcased as part of the winning decade (1970s) having been voted by BBC Four viewers as the golden era of British television. The adult actors playing the roles of children were Helen Mirren, Janine Duvitski, Michael Elphick, Colin Jeavons, Colin Welland, John Bird, and Robin Ellis. It was directed by Brian Gibson. The moralistic theme was "the child is father of the man". Potter had used the dramatic device of adult actors playing children before, for example in Stand Up, Nigel Barton.
A lucrative deal with LWT, and semi-independence, followed an aborted project to adapt Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time for the BBC. A series of six single plays by Potter for ITV, with a further three written by Jim Allen, was planned. Budget overspends meant only three of the Potter plays were produced: the BAFTA-winning Blade on the Feather, Rain on the Roof and Cream in My Coffee, which won Grand Prize at the Prix Italia.
He also wrote the scripts for the widely praised but seldom seen miniseries of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (1985) with Mary Steenburgen as Nicole Diver.
The Singing Detective (1986), featuring Michael Gambon, used the dramatist's own battle with the skin disease psoriasis, for him an often debilitating condition, as a means to merge the lead character's imagination with his perception of reality.
Potter's TV serial, Blackeyes (1989, also a novel- see below), a drama about a fashion model was reviewed as self-indulgent by some critics, and accused of contributing to the misogyny Potter claimed he intended to expose. The critical backlash against Potter following Blackeyes led to him being nicknamed 'Dirty Den' by the British tabloid press, after the soap opera character, and resulted in a long period of reclusion from television. In 1990 Mary Whitehouse, a long time critic of Potter, claimed on BBC Radio that Potter had been influenced by witnessing his mother engaged in adulterous sex. Potter's mother won substantial damages from the BBC and The Listener. Potter was actually an admirer of Mrs Whitehouse. The journalist Stanley Reynolds found in 1973 that he "loves the idea of Mrs Whitehouse. He sees her as standing up for all the people with ducks on their walls who have been laughed at and treated like rubbish by the sophisticated metropolitan minority."
In 1992 he directed a film, Secret Friends (from his novel, Ticket to Ride), starring Alan Bates. Secret Friends premiered in New York at the Museum of Modern Art as the gala closing of the Museum of Television & Radio’s week-long Potter retrospective. Potter proposed to write an "intermedia" stage play for Geisler-Roberdeau based on William Hazlitt’s Liber Amoris, or The New Pygmalion, but he died before it could be commenced. Potter's romantic comedy Lipstick on Your Collar (1993) was a return to more conventional themes and the familiar format of six hour-long episodes, but did not become the desired popular success, although it helped launch the career of Ewan McGregor.
Film
In 1978, Herbert Ross was shooting Nijinsky at Shepperton Studios and invited Potter to write the screenplay for his next project Unexpected Valleys. After watching Pennies from Heaven on television one evening, Ross contacted Potter about the prospect of adapting it for the cinema. The project was launched at MGM as an 'anti-musical' with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in the lead roles. According to Potter, the studio demanded continual rewrites of the script and made significant cuts to the film after initial test screenings. The film was released in 1981 to mixed critical reaction and was a box office disaster. Potter was, however, nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar that year alongside Harold Pinter for The French Lieutenant's Woman.Having already adapted Brimstone and Treacle for the stage after the television production was banned by the BBC, Potter set about writing a film version. Directed by Richard Loncraine, who also directed Potter's Blade on the Feather at LWT, the film featured a soundtrack by The Police while Sting played the role of the devil; Denholm Elliot reprised his role from the original television production playing Mr Bates while Joan Plowright took the Patricia Lawrence role as Mrs Bates. Although a British film made by Potter's own production company (Pennies Productions), the casting of Sting piqued the interest of American investors. As a result, references to Mr Bates' membership of the National Front and a scene discussing racial segregation were omitted —as were many of the non-naturalistic flourishes that dominated the television production— although, ironically, the film was much more graphic in its depiction of sexual abuse and rape. The film though was not a success at the box office, but Sting's cover of "Spread a Little Happiness" reached number sixteen in the UK Singles Chart.
Potter's screenplay for Gorky Park (1983) earned him an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, although it emerged as a shadow of Martin Cruz Smith's original novel. He also wrote the screenplay for Dreamchild (1985), a cinematic adaptation of his earlier Alice script. In her last film role, Coral Browne portrayed the elderly Alice Hargreaves who recalls in flashbacks her childhood when she was the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. In 1987, he adapted his television play Schmoedipus (1975) for the cinema. The ensuing film, Track 29, directed by Nicolas Roeg, was the last project Potter would pursue in Hollywood. However, Potter did provide uncredited script work on James and the Giant Peach (released 1995) — his chief contribution providing dialogue for the sardonic caterpillar. Potter makes a sly reference to this in Karaoke when the character Daniel Feeld (Albert Finney) is invited to provide dialogue for an "arthritic goat" in a children's film.
Potter's reputation within the American film industry following the box office disappointments of Pennies from Heaven and Gorky Park ultimately led to difficulty receiving backing for his projects. Potter is known to have written adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The White Hotel and his own 1976 television play Double Dare: all reaching the preproduction stage before work was suspended. More fortunate was Mesmer (1993), a biographical film of 19th century pseudo-scientist Franz Anton Mesmer.
The last film Potter actively worked on was Midnight Movie (1994), an adaptation of Rosalind Ashe's novel Moths. The film starred Louise Germaine and Brian Dennehy (who had appeared in Lipstick on Your Collar and Gorky Park, respectively) and was directed by Renny Rye. Unable to secure financing from the Arts Council, Potter invested half a million pounds into the production; BBC Films provided the rest of the capital. The film was not given a cinema release due to a lack of interest from distributors and remained unseen until Potter's death. It was finally broadcast on BBC2 in November 1994 as part of their "Screen Two" season alongside a remake of his 1967 play Message for Posterity.
A film version of The Singing Detective, based on Potter's own adapted screenplay, was released in 2003 by Icon Productions. Robert Downey, Jr. played the lead alongside Robin Wright Penn and Mel Gibson. Gibson also acted as producer.
Literary journalism and novels
Potter published his first non-fiction work, The Glittering Coffin, in 1960 through the Gollancz Press. The book was a rumination on the changing face of England in the prosperity following the end of the war years. It was followed in 1962 by The Changing Forest: Life in the Forest of Dean Today. Based on the "Between Two Rivers" documentary Potter had made for the BBC's Panorama strand in 1960, the book is a study of class and social mobility that demonstrates an early fascination with the effects of the mass media on British cultural life. Apart from his newspaper columns for the Daily Herald and the pre-Murdoch Sun, Potter abandoned political writing in the late 1960s in favour of pursuing fictional subjects.Hide and Seek (1973) was a meta-fictional novel exploring the relationship between reader and author and contains a central protagonist, 'Daniel Miller', who is convinced he is the plaything of an omniscient author. This concept forms the core of Potter's next two novels, and portions of Hide and Seek would reappear in several of his television plays (most notably Follow the Yellow Brick Road and The Singing Detective, respectively).
Ticket to Ride (1986) was written between drafts of The Singing Detective and concerns a herbithologist who is unable to make love to his wife unless he imagines her as a prostitute. This was followed in 1987 by Blackeyes: a study of a model whose abusive uncle, a writer, has stolen details of his niece's experiences in the glamour industry as the basis for his latest potboiler.
To tie-in with the release of the MGM production of Pennies from Heaven in 1981, Potter wrote a novelisation of the screenplay. Potter turned down the option of writing a novelisation for the film version of Brimstone and Treacle, allowing his daughter Sarah to write it instead.
Stage plays
Although Potter only produced one play exclusively for theatrical performance (Sufficient Carbohydrate, 1983 – later filmed for television as Visitors in 1987), he adapted several of his television works for the stage. Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, which featured material from its sister-play Stand Up, Nigel Barton, was premiered in 1966, while Only Make Believe, which incorporated scenes from Angels Are So Few, made the transition to the stage in 1974. Son of Man appeared in 1969 with Frank Finlay in the title role (Finlay would also play Casanova in Potter's 1971 serial) and was recently restaged by the Northern Broadsides for a major UK tour. Brimstone and Treacle was adapted for the stage in 1977 after the BBC refused to screen the original television version. The play text for Blue Remembered Hills was first published in the collection Waiting for the Boat (with Joe's Ark and Blade on the Feather) in 1984 and has since enjoyed several successful stage performances.
Final works
His final two serials were Karaoke and Cold Lazarus (two related stories, both starring Albert Finney as the same principal character, one set in the present and the other in the far future). They were aired posthumously in the United Kingdom as part of a rare collaboration between the BBC and rival Channel 4 in accordance with Potter's wishes.Both series were released on DVD release on 6 September 2010.
Style and themes
Potter's work is distinctive for its use of non-naturalistic devices. The 'lip-sync' technique he developed for his "serials with songs" (Pennies from Heaven; The Singing Detective and Lipstick on Your Collar), extensive use of flashback and nonlinear plot structure (Casanova; Late Call), direct to camera address (Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton) and works where "the child is father to the man", in which he used adult actors to play children, (Stand Up, Nigel Barton; Blue Remembered Hills) have all become Potter trademarks. They are frequently deployed in works where the line between fantasy and reality becomes blurred, often as a result of the influence of popular culture (Willie, the Wild West obsessive played by Hywel Bennett in Where the Buffalo Roam) or from a character's apparent awareness of their status as a pawn in the hands of an omniscient author (the actor Jack Black (Denholm Elliot) in Follow the Yellow Brick Road).Potter's pioneering method of using music in his work emerged when developing the ground-breaking 1978 drama Pennies from Heaven. He asked actors to mime along to period songs. "Potter tried out the concept himself by lip-syncing to old songs while looking into a mirror. Potter himself once revealed that, working on harnessing songs in his plays, he was most productive " at night, with old Al Bowlly records playing in the background." Potter had previously experimented with Bowlly's voice in Moonlight on the Highway (1969).
Following in this spirit of non-naturalism, Potter's characters are frequently "doubled up"; either by using the same actor to play two different roles (Kika Markham as the actress and escort in Double Dare; Norman Rossington as Lorenzo the gaoler and the English traveller in Casanova) or two different actors whose characters' destinies and personalities appear interlinked (Bob Hoskins and Kenneth Colley as Arthur and the accordion man in Pennies from Heaven; Rufus (Christian Rodska) and Gina the bear in A Beast With Two Backs).
One major motiff in Potter's writing is the concept of betrayal, and this takes many forms in his plays. Sometimes it is personal (Stand Up, Nigel Barton), political (Traitor; Cold Lazarus) and other times it is sexual (A Beast With Two Backs; Brimstone and Treacle). In Potter on Potter, published as part of Faber and Faber's series on auteurs, Potter told editor Graham Fuller that all forms of betrayal presented in literature are essentially religious and based on "the old, old story"; this is evoked in a number of works, from the use of popular songs in Pennies from Heaven to Potter's gnostic retelling of Jesus' final days in Son of Man.
The "Pinteresque" device of a disruptive outsider entering a claustrophobic environment is another recurring theme. In plays where this occurs, the outsider will commit some liberating act of sex (Rain on the Roof) or violence (Shaggy Dog) that gives physical expression to the unsublimated desires of the characters in that setting. While these more malevolent visitors are often supernatural beings (Angels Are So Few), intelligence agents (Blade on the Feather) or even figments of their host's imagination (Schmoedipus), there are also —rare— instances of benign visitors whose presence resolves personal conflicts rather than exploits them (Joe's Ark; Where Adam Stood).
Politics
Parliamentary aspirations
Potter stood as the Labour Party candidate for Hertfordshire East, a safe Conservative Party seat, in the 1964 general election against the incumbent Derek Walker-Smith. By the end of the campaign, he claimed that he was so disillusioned with party politics he did not even vote for himself. His candidacy was unsuccessful.
Media and Rupert Murdoch
In 1993 Potter was given a half hour in prime time by Channel 4 in their Opinions strand produced by Open Media. Broadcast just before the third episode of Lipstick on Your Collar, itself a rumination on the effects of the mass media, in this case through popular music, Potter's chosen topic was what he perceived to be a contamination of news media and its effect on declining standards in British television. Craig Brown described the programme in The Sunday Times (owned by Rupert Murdoch):::"Potter announced at the beginning: I'm going to get down there in the gutter where so many journalists crawl... what I'm about to do is to make a provenly vindictive and extremely powerful enemy... the enemy in question is that drivel-merchant, global huckster and so-to-speak media psychopath, Rupert Murdoch... Hannibal the Cannibal....
::As a performance, it had a lot going for it. I have never seen a talking head on television so immediate or so unabated in its anger. In many ways, it felt like being collared by a madman on the Tube. Filmed disturbingly close to camera, seemingly ad-libbing the entire half-hour, now mumbling, now rasping, Potter somehow managed to cut through the vacuum that on television usually separates viewer from viewee. This made the performance extraordinary."
Last interview
On 14 February 1994, Potter learned that he had terminal pancreatic cancer metastasised to his liver. It was thought that this was a side effect of the medication he was taking to control his psoriasis. With typical sardonic humour, he named his cancer "Rupert", after Rupert Murdoch, who represented so much of what he found despicable about British mass media. On 15 March 1994, three months before his death, Potter gave an interview to Channel 4 (he had broken most of his ties with the BBC as a result of his disenchantment with Directors-General Michael Checkland and especially John Birt, whom he had famously referred to as a "croak-voiced Dalek"), in which he described his work and his determination to continue writing until the end. As he sipped on a morphine cocktail, he told a visibly moved Melvyn Bragg that he had two works he intended to finish (Cold Lazarus and Karaoke) before his impending death: "My only regret is if I die four pages too soon". The interview was shown on 5 April 1994.
Personal life
Psoriatic arthropathy
In 1962 Potter began to suffer from an acute form of psoriasis known as psoriatic arthropathy, a rare hereditary condition that affected his skin and caused arthritis in his joints. For the rest of his life, Potter was frequently in hospitals, sometimes completely unable to move and in great pain. The disease eventually ruined his hands, reducing them to what he called "clubs." He could only write by strapping a pen to his hand. Potter kept working between bouts of pain, nausea, and diarrhea, clutching a pen in his clawed fist and writing in longhand. "I can't use a typewriter," he said, "because my trailing fingers would hit more than one key at once." The script of Son of Man, mostly written in hospital, was delivered with drops of blood and cortisone grease splashed upon it.
Widowerhood and death
Months before Potter was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer his wife, Margaret Morgan Potter, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Despite his own deteriorating condition and punishing work schedule, Potter continued to care for her until she died on 29 May 1994. He died nine days later, in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, England, aged 59.
Criticism
Potter was sometimes attacked by other television writers, most notably Alan Bennett and Matthew Graham, for a perceived lack of humility and self-criticism; Graham described him as having "come undone" after The Singing Detective and beginning to believe "every line that dripped from his pen was a work of genius". Bennett referred in his 1998 diaries to a television programme "that took Potter at his own self-evaluation (always high), when there was a good deal of indifferent stuff which was skated over". Private Eye once lampooned him as Dennis Plodder, due to the slow pace of some of his work, whilst also branding him as "the whingeing playwright".
Legacy
Although Potter won few awards, he is held in high regard by many within the television and film industry, and he was an influence on such creators as Steven Bochco, Alan Ball, Andrew Davies, Charlie Kaufman, Peter Bowker, Margaret Edson and Alain Resnais. His work has been the subject of many critical essays, books, websites and documentaries.BBC Four marked the tenth anniversary of Potter's death in December 2004 with a major series of documentaries about his life and work, accompanied by showings of Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, as well as several of his single plays — many of which had not been shown since their maiden broadcast. His influence has also extended into popular music: Welsh band Manic Street Preachers used quotes from Potter on the inner sleeves to their single "Kevin Carter" and greatest hits collection, while Scottish art rock band Franz Ferdinand modelled the promotional video for their song "The Dark of the Matinée" after Blue Remembered Hills and The Singing Detective. Guy Garvey, lead singer with Elbow, has said he named his band after the exchange in The Singing Detective where the central character claims that word to be the most beautiful in the English language.
Sources
;Footnotes
External links
Category:1935 births Category:1994 deaths Category:Alumni of New College, Oxford Category:Cancer deaths in England Category:Deaths from pancreatic cancer Category:Edgar Award winners Category:English dramatists and playwrights Category:English screenwriters Category:English television writers Category:People educated at St. Clement Danes School Category:People from Forest of Dean (district)
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