Discover Top Posts Tagged with #roy plomley

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Listening material:

🔭 Denys Lasdun on Desert Island Discs (December 1976)

🌌 Spotify playlist (compilation of all the songs from the episode)

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#artists on tumblr #denys lasdun #desert island discs #roy plomley #illustration #digital illustration #digital art #architecture #space #space aesthetic #night skies #cyhsal

The Man Who Walks By Night: A Dinner Date with Death (BBC, 1950)

"You can't take away a man's whole career!"

"Why not? He took away my wife."

"Ha, you never loved me."

"I don't love that picture - but the world values it, and I should hate to have it stolen."

#the man who walks by night #a dinner date with death #classic tv #tv pilot #1950 #roy plomley #eric fawcett #single play #dennis holman #sir campbell cotts #robert ayres #patricia jessel #fletcher lightfoot #james cairncross #denis cowles #alicia marlowe #a long lost marvel from the early days of brit tv‚ found and scrubbed a little by those brave people at Kaleidoscope (long may they bring #us such treats). i got their tv detectives dvd ages back (optimistically titled vol 1 tho no others have followed) but I'm only just #getting around to watching. The Man Who Walks.. was an external production made with an eye towards overseas sales as well as a BBC showing #in the event only this one play was ever made‚ as US backers pulled out; the BBC and US networks showed this pilot but billed it as a short #film‚ not made for tv. the print has sustained the expected damage that nearly 70 years of unlove will do‚ but it's perfectly watchable #actually in production terms it looks pretty good when compared to surviving contemporary bbc productions‚ perhaps a result of having been #made outside the organisation. Bob Ayres‚ by the by‚ was an American living in the UK who made tv guest appearances very regularly over the #next two decades‚ making this quite possibly the earliest ever example of the rentayank on british tv! how many greats were to follow #in your footprints‚ Bob.. the plot is old hokum but enjoyable enough. very like what the Edgar Wallace mysteries would be doing 10 years on #or a tv version of the spooky radio shows that were so very popular in the post war years (with the titular Man filling the kind of role #that had made Valentine Dyall a star). interestingly the Man Who Walks is played by Roy Plomley‚ also the producer‚ best known now as a bbc #radio mainstay who devised and would present Desert Island Discs for some 40 odd years. perhaps it was his contacts that got this play #shown on the bbc? who can say. 72 years on and with precious little information surviving we're unlikely to find out too much more

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Paul McCartney on the death of Brian Epstein and the break-up of the Beatles during an interview with Roy Plomley on the BBC radio series Desert Island Discs

ROY PLOMLEY: Now, the whole Beatle set-up was put in jeopardy when Brian Epstein killed himself; I suppose there had to be a split-up with four young musicians, all with their own ideas about how the business ought to run

McCARTNEY: Yeah, well first, I’m not really sure if Brian did kill himself, I’ve always thought that it was an accident, I don’t really think he would have meant it. I think it was just an unfortunate mix of pills and booze, I don’t think he’s the kind of fella who’d actually do it on purpose, there’s been all sorts of rumours and stuff. Personally, I don’t think that was so. So what was the second part of the question? Sorry!

PLOMLEY: The second part of the question was I suppose it was inevitable that the split had to happen?

McCARTNEY: Yeah, I think so. I think eventually, we all sort of found girls and split off, you know, obviously you could go into the reasons for years, as to exactly what caused it. I think it was things like that, you know, Brian had died, so the management thing was a bit more difficult. We were starting to find our own feet, away from the group, and becoming a little bit individual. John would do a film, Ringo would do something separate, I might do something separate. So I suppose it was just an inevitable part of growing up, really.

#Brian Epstein #Paul McCartney #Roy Plomley #Desert Island Discs #1982 #80s #audio #interview #The Beatles

BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs

Omar Sharif

Desert Island Discs

Roy Plomley's castaway is actor Omar Sharif.

Favourite track: All The Way by Frank Sinatra Book: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery Luxury: Several decks of cards

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#Omar Sharif #BBC Radio 4 #Desert Island Discs #Roy Plomley

Roy Plomley's castaway is composer Stephen Sondheim

First broadcast August 16, 1980.

#Sondheim #Desert Island Discs #Roy Plomley

I thoroughly enjoyed Gregory Peck’s Desert Island Discs. His voice is so deep and soothing, he’s open and honest and really funny. His rise to fame is very interesting and yet he seems so unaffected by it. Plus his music choice is good.

#gregory peck #desert island discs #bbc #interview #roy plomley

EXCLUSIVE: William Hartnell on Desert Island Discs - 1965 - Apparently the BBC iplayer link I posted yesterday no longer has the recovered material, pulled either because it went up too early, or because deman has broken the server. So here's a Youtube link to it.

#william hartnell #desert island discs #roy plomley #dr who #cast

#3 Sir Terence Rattigan (1974)

Compared to Imran Khan (#1) or David Bailey (#2), Sir Terence Rattigan is something of a departure for me on two fronts. First, I approach this episode of Desert Island Discs knowing little to nothing about him. Bar a vague sense that Sir Terence was something to do with the theatre, I knew nothing of him. By the end I was far better informed which is, of course, one of the many beauties of exploring the archive at random. Second, this is the first occasion on this blog where I have travelled sufficiently far back in time to be hosted by the deviser and original interviewer, Roy Plomley.

Plomley is a man of his time, indeed by the time he interviewed Rattigan in 1974 he had already been doing Desert Island Discs for 32 years, so his time is very much the 40s and 50s. Because of this he is quite different in style and tone from the interviewers that followed. He is succinct and formal, his questions are incisive but to the modern ear feel somewhat stilted. Much less conversational than you would get from Lawley, Young or even Parkinson for that matter. Those he interviews are also unlike the celebrities of today, less willing or less able to leave themselves open. These earlier episodes are also some 10 minutes shorter. There are still many poignant lessons to be learned, but one may have to dig a little more beneath the British reserve to find them.

Rattigan, I now know, was both one of the most celebrated and most popular playwrights of his generation. Here we learn that he was the first and at this time still the only playwright to have had to plays play in the London West End for more that 1,000 performances, a fact which elicits a short "well done" from Plomley before he swiftly moves on with little fuss.

Rattigan was gay, but not openly, so it is not mentioned here. According to Wikipedia, only his closest friends and family knew and whilst there are sub-textual references in some of his work, they are often overplayed. Like his contemporary Noel Coward, Rattigan was accused by critics of writing only for and about the upper-middle classes and fell out of favour with the advent of gritty, kitchen-sink drama though several of his plays have returned to the London stage in new productions in recent years. He was knighted in 1971 and died in 1977, just three years after this recording was made, aged 66. Here are the lessons from his Desert Island Discs appearance.

3.1 Do not follow your father into the diplomatic service. Rattigan's father had very definite plans on his behalf. Harrow, Oxford and then the diplomatic service in which he himself (and his father before him) worked. When Plomley probes on this Rattigan clearly states that it was his father's idea for him, but never his own. It may be trite to say one should follow one's own path, so it is not a point worth labouring, but it is certainly one of the lessons here.

3.2 The things you are most proud of may not be your biggest successes. Fresh from two of his plays running for a 1,000 performances and three of his plays running simultaneously in adjoining Shaftesbury Avenue theatres, Rattigan penned The Adventure Story a tale of Alexander the Great. In this broadcast he states that it was probably his favourite play but it was a commercial failure. For a playwright, critics and box office receipts give you a very real sense of when your judgement of your own work differs from it's real-world popularity - but there are elements of this in all walks of life. The things you are most proud of doing in work or in life, that you think represent you best, may well not be the things that resonate with others or with which they would most identify you, they certainly may not be the things that bring you the most financial reward. Of course, if you're Rattigan and you have phenomenal success elsewhere, it's easier to make peace with that, but I think it's something we should all be willing and able to accept.

3.3 Know and understand your Aunt Edna. Rattigan said he wrote for Aunt Edna. She was not, of course, one person, but many and here he describes how she changed over the ages from the hard benches of Athens to having a rollicking time in the Reformation .The critics who attacked him for writing plays irrelevant outwith upper-middle class parlours used Aunt Edna as a stick with which to beat him - but without a focus on who his audience was, who he was hoping to speak to in his work, Rattigan would likely have had less success. I think it pays to always consider your Aunt Edna. She could be within yourself, she could be a friend or lover, she could be your boss or, as for Rattigan, she could be fictitious. Whomsoever she is, you will do well to know and understand her.

Listen to Sir Terence Rattigan's Desert Island Discs and review the songs he chose here.