Biographical essay by Oliver Wake
Although rarely discussed now, Michael Barry (1910-1988) had an important role in the development of British television drama. As a producer before and immediately after the Second World War and subsequently as the BBC’s first Head of Television Drama, he helped shape the new medium in its formative years.
After spells as a student of agriculture and an actor, Barry turned to theatre production, enjoying three successful years as the Croydon Repertory Theatre’s artistic producer. He was taken on as a producer by the BBC’s television service in 1938, just its third year of regular broadcasting, and reported to the modest facilities of its Alexandra Palace studios in North London.1 As in radio, the BBC at that time did not recognise the independent role of director, so Barry’s work as producer also involved artistic aspects now more associated with directors.
In his first play, The Marvellous History of St Bernard (1938)2, Barry experimented by varying camera lenses and playing with focus as part of a career-long quest to achieve a sense of ‘vitality’ on screen, which saw him pioneer new techniques and push standards3. An early success was his ‘charming’ reduced adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (1938).4 With pre-recording technology still decades away, these productions were transmitted live, with ‘repeats’ that involved performing the piece again. The rapid production rate of early television saw Barry produce a score of plays over the next fifteen months, a hectic schedule which encouraged Barry to favour plays already familiar from his own stage productions, despite his own concerns about their suitability for television.
After war service – six years leading a company of Royal Marines whilst receiving a retainer salary from the BBC – Barry returned to Britain in 1946, as the BBC’s television service was preparing to reopen. His initial lack of enthusiasm was dispelled upon reading The Silence of the Sea, a French novel published by the underground press in 1942. After dramatising the work, ‘I never again found myself bored by the process of story-telling on television,’ he later recalled.’5 The Silence of the Sea was chosen as a practice exercise prior to television’s resumption and then as the main evening programme on the night the service reopened.6 Its sympathetic portrait of a young German soldier billeted on a resentful French family was a brave choice given that hostilities with Germany had ended barely a year earlier. Recognising the limitation imposed on the visualisation of the drama by the archaic equipment, Barry made good use of sound, with the interior monologue of Kenneth More as the German soldier and various sound effects played into the live performance.
Barry produced two more war plays in 1946, both drawn from radio scripts: They Flew Through Sand, a fast-paced action story set in North Africa, and Adventure Story, which portrayed a young couple returning from the war and struggling to adapt to the banalities of peacetime life.7 Written by Charles Terrot, with whom Barry went on to have a productive creative partnership, Adventure Story was a complex production which stretched Barry’s talents. As he had done before the war, Barry improvised the numerous settings required within the tiny studio. With the use of shadows and small items of scenery (and, in one instance, stage hands throwing water), he employed the power of suggestion to provide the numerous locations that could not have been built in the studio. Sound effects, models and back projection were used to give what Barry called ‘a depth and vitality to a tiny setting’.8 The play was a success and was reproduced several times.
Barry broke new ground with I Want to be an Actor (1946), a script by journalist and radio producer Robert Barr which became television’s first dramatised documentary.9 It inspired Barry to write his own drama documentary about the history of medical practice, I Want to be a Doctor (1947), which was well regarded at the BBC: Cecil McGivern, the newly installed Television Programme Director, recognised it as ‘a sign-post to the way ahead for scripts of its kind’.10
Barry had an unhappy experience in directing for the cinema when he was invited to Pinewood to film Stop Press Girl (1949), a light fantasy about a girl whose presence interferes with machinery. Shooting with the new ‘Independent Frame’ method, which put the onus on pre-production planning, production-line mechanisation and speed, Barry felt he had allowed the mechanised technique to stifle the comedy. The Times complained that it moved ‘in a series of uneasy fits and starts’ and Barry called it ‘one of the industry’s least distinguished works’.11
Back at the BBC, Barry found better fortune with The Passionate Pilgrim (1949), his own adaptation of Charles Terrot’s novel Miss Nightingale’s Ladies.12 A form of historical documentary based on the true story of one of Florence Nightingale’s nurses in the Crimea, the play was lauded by the Daily Telegraph as ‘A triumphant production’, and by C. A. Lejeune, as ‘beautifully acted throughout, and produced by Michael Barry with courage, tenderness and a real sense of the medium as a nascent art’.13 Barry’s restaging of the play in 1953 was broadcast two days before the Queen’s coronation, for which sales of television sets rocketed, and so was many viewers’ first experience of television drama.
Written and produced by Barry, Promise of Tomorrow (1950) was a play about a trio aspiring to succeed in the theatre world.14 Barry was allowed the rare privilege of shooting brief film sequences to insert into the otherwise live transmission, depicting his characters travelling by train and road, including sequences at night, providing ‘the sort of locations where the reality of sodden coats and rain lashed windscreens provided verisimilitude’.15 C A Lejeune summarised the mixed reaction: ‘Some people were touched and charmed by it. Others gave it up in bewilderment and exasperation. But everybody talked about it.’16 Other Barry productions from this period included Karel and Josef Capek’s The Insect Play (1950), in which human society is parodied in the world of insects.17
His ambition growing, Barry adapted and produced Terence Rattigan’s Adventure Story (1950, not to be confused with the war play of the same name discussed above), a large-scale biography of Alexander the Great.18 He was allowed a two-hour timeslot and both of Alexandra Palace’s studios to stage the epic story. He noted later that the subject was probably ‘too large and remote to be encompassed dramatically’, but ‘the fascination lay within the attempt’.19 Barry chose to highlight ‘thought and action against amorphous backgrounds… and great care was taken to make every frame as perfect a composition as possible’.20 After his popular earlier productions, Barry felt that The Insect Play and Adventure Story’s ‘visual and oral images … had gone further, in diverse ways, to stretch the illusion of space within the small screen’.21
In the summer of 1950 Barry received the offer of a job in American television with CBS, but despite the prospect of a substantially higher salary, he declined the offer, happy with the level of support and creative freedom at the BBC.22 He was excited by projects such as Shout Aloud Salvation (1951), which proved to be amongst his most successful productions.23 Adapting the manuscript of Charles Terrot’s sprawling historical novel about the early days of the Salvation Army, Barry reduced the story to focus on two young women despatched to introduce the Salvation Army into a bleak northern town. It was another large-scale production, with 50 characters, a riot staged in the studio, a real Salvation Army band and brief film sequences shot. An opening sequence used narration over a montage of background sounds and both still and moving images, indicating the magpie approach employed by Barry, as he applied whichever techniques from radio and film best established his setting with the modest resources at his disposal.
Reaction to Shout Aloud Salvation was rapturous: the Evening Standard called it the ‘Most successful of original television plays’ and the Derby Evening Times voiced a consensus that it was ‘extraordinarily moving’.24 The play’s conclusion was criticised, and Barry realised it had been over-ambitious and inadequately realised: it was amended for a new production five years later by George More O’Ferrall.
As Barry drafted Shout Aloud Salvation, the BBC advertised the new posts of Head of Documentary and Assistant Head of Drama, Television. Perhaps surprisingly, Barry applied for the former, as the latter was an unknown quantity at that time. However, he was called for an interview for the Drama post, and although Barry insisted the position was unsuitable, Director of Television George Barnes said Barry’s acceptance was important to television, and assured him that he would have a free hand, with Val Gielgud, Head of Drama over both radio and television, soon to return to his preferred province in radio. Indeed, radio and television separated in 1952 and Barry duly received the Head of Television Drama title. Talked around, Barry suggested ‘we try it for six months’.25 He was to stay ten years.
In his new role, Barry prioritised attracting new writers to television and improving productions, impulses that had driven him since his early days as a producer.26 He established the Drama Script Section, with a Script Supervisor under his direct control whose brief was to find new writing. Within a year the Script Supervisor reported ‘very encouraging’ statistics, including that 12 out of 107 dramas transmitted over the past twelve months had been new works written specially for television (against hardly any in the previous five years).27 Under Barry’s leadership, this increased to 256 new works for television in the twelve months ending March 1960.28 The post of staff writer was also created, the first filled by Nigel Kneale, whose three original Quatermass serials (1953, 1955, 1958-59) thrilled television audiences during the 1950s. Other writers included freelancer Iain MacCormick who provided a number of highly topical new plays throughout the decade. Other initiatives included the Television Writers’ Course, which had 700 applicants by February 1952, and numerous writing competitions.
Barry aimed to replace ‘dead wood’ with new producers from film and theatre.29 New talents included Rudolph Cartier and Don Taylor, who went on to produce the type of vital work that Barry wanted to see. Cartier did much to expand television’s scope, with large-scale stories, but was only able to do so with the staunch support of Barry, who shared and encouraged his aims. Innovative producers, rapidly advancing technology and increased resources greatly improved production standards over Barry’s decade in charge.
Pushing his department’s technical progression, Barry was instrumental in establishing BBC television’s Experimental Group in 1956, the aim of which was to devise new means of televising conventional subjects. This led to the creation of the more specialised Langham Group in 1959, which pioneered experimental drama techniques. Prior to the Langham Group’s creation, Barry co-produced the experimental play The Sleeping Clergyman (1959) with one of the group’s founding members.30 Although some suggested the Langham Group’s legacy was minimal, Barry felt quite the reverse, seeing it in 1961 as ‘a sort of underground movement, that’s affected just about every department of drama, in some way or another’. For Barry, ‘even those people who were most vociferous in their denials of its use, have now consciously or unconsciously been influenced by the Langham.’31 Barry remained a staunch supporter of experimentation in television, and thought that the BBC should lead it.32
Barry was also a supporter of strong and provocative work, such as Nigel Kneale and Rudolph Cartier’s adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954). When the national outcry against it became clear, Barry defended it in a Panorama debate and refused to cancel the scheduled repeat performance. He also introduced the repeat performance, encouraging viewers to exercise their own judgement in choosing whether to watch.33
Being head of department did not prevent Barry – who later said he ‘hated desk work’34 – from maintaining an active presence in the studio. He produced occasional plays, such as The Man with a Load of Mischief, which he was pleased to produce for a second time in 1952, taking advantage of the greater resources of the BBC’s new Lime Grove studios, and the first ever production of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House in 1958.35 The same year he commissioned and produced the new play Till Time Shall End to mark the 400th anniversary of the accession of Elizabeth I.36 His production of Robert Ardrey’s documentary play The Shadow of Heroes (1959), about 1956’s Hungarian revolution, was particularly successful, with Barry praised for ‘his use of cameras, his presentation and the use he made of the crowd scenes’, which made for a ‘moving historical document’.37
Plays were the primary form of drama for Barry, although he presided over the introduction of numerous popular series and serials (such as Dixon of Dock Green (1955-76), The Grove Family (1954-57) and Quatermass). As Don Taylor recalled, ‘under Michael Barry, the emphasis had been very clearly upon the production of television plays. The rest was a sideline, popular audience stuff, but not what the department was for. Michael Barry was a man of the theatre, and his values were the values of that milieu and that age’.38 His drama policy was occasionally criticised, as The Stage and Television Today reported, as ‘living in the theatrical past’, as ‘being out of touch with the present-day idiom of TV thought’ and as ‘presenting plays with no appeal to modern minds’.39 The criticism reflected his perceived lack of a popular touch and, despite his championing of new television writing, his department’s continued scheduling of theatrical or classically ‘worthy’ play series such as the unpopular Television World Theatre. The arrival of ITV in 1955, with its more populist programming, highlighted the gulf between BBC programming and the public’s taste, and the Corporation was slow to respond to its success.
Matters came to a head in September 1961, when Barry suddenly resigned his post. He maintained a gentlemanly discretion over his reasons, but according to Don Taylor:
Rumour and bar conversation had it that Michael had resigned – it had been a real resignation, not a polite sacking – because the sixth floor, the programme controllers and directors, had demanded of him a change of policy with regard to BBC Drama output that he could not accept. More series and serials were required, and Michael, who regarded himself as a plays man, was not prepared to preside over such a change.40
Just two months later the Guild of Television Producers and Directors (the forerunner of BAFTA) recognised Barry’s achievements, giving him the Desmond David Award for services to television.41 Under Barry’s leadership, the Television Drama Department had expanded to the point that it produced over 220 hours of drama in 1961.42 As the Times argued, it was a period of ‘drive, organization and artistic skill’.43 Innovative drama programming such as the play ‘cycles’ of Iain MacCormick, the serialisation of Shakespeare’s history plays as An Age of Kings (1960)44, and the immensely popular detective series Maigret (1960-63) all originated under Barry.
Barry was admired both professionally and personally: Don Taylor thought he represented the ‘liberal humanist attitude to the production of drama’45, and another producer, Peter Cotes, described him as ‘warm, generous and self-effacing’.46 While department head, he was recognised in the industry press as ‘a highly sensitive and intelligent man with a strong sense of dedication, whose liberal-minded handling of his department is, among other things, an object-lesson in human relationships.’47
After a year seconded as programme controller to the new Irish Television (Telefis Eireann) network – leaving earlier than the planned three years reportedly after ‘policy disagreements’48- there was speculation that he would return to the BBC in London where a special appointment could be created for him. However, this proved unfounded and Barry left the staff of the Corporation.49 He did however return to the BBC on a freelance basis, producing and directing a handful of dramas in the mid-1960s. He also wrote, for example dramatising Clemence Dane’s Broome Stages (1966), which he also produced and directed.50
He also produced the epic The Wars of the Roses (1965), a trilogy of plays derived from Shakespeare’s histories which were performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.51 With directors from the RSC and BBC, plays were recorded on the specially adapted stage of Stratford-upon-Avon’s Shakespeare Theatre using the BBC’s Outside Broadcast units. With eight cameras in use and a control gallery installed in the theatre’s circle bar for the five-week recording, the project was technically demanding. The BBC described it as the ‘biggest technical operation ever carried out by the BBC in the field of drama’.52 The production illustrates both Barry’s level of technical accomplishment and his continuing affinity with subjects drawn from the theatre. For Barry, ‘the real interest lies in the way television and a theatre enterprise of the first order have worked together to produce a television recording of what has taken place on the Strafford stage … to make it available to all the hundreds of thousands of people in this country and abroad who could not see it.’53 The Stage and Television Today called it ‘a triumph of co-operation between television and the theatre’, arguing that:
the full potential of a television version was realised and everything of the stage version was preserved without distortion. The plays are not merely stage productions photographed but television productions in their own right. Television has made it possible to expand on the original production where the material was improved by it – the crowd and battle scenes, for example, could encompass more on television.54
Away from television, in 1965 Barry was appointed literary adviser to provincial theatres by the Arts Council, of whose drama panel he had been a member, to promote new and neglected plays. In 1967 he briefly returned to theatre directing. He later became Professor of Drama for California’s Stanford University, before returning to Britain in 1972 to become the Principle of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He finally retired in 1978. He completed a memoir of his time as a television producer, entitled From the Palace to the Grove, which was published posthumously in 1992. Michael Barry died in 1988 at the age of 78.
In the time since he left his Head of Drama post it has become common for lazy critics to dismiss the BBC’s drama output under Barry as staid and stage-bound, particularly in comparison to the more populist fare of his self-aggrandising successor, Sydney Newman. Whilst Barry’s theatrical background was certainly reflected in his drama policy, this is an unfair simplification. Barry did much to encourage new television writing, to support ambitious producers in telling bold stories, and to improve the technical quality of the department’s output. In doing this Barry provided the firm foundations upon which Newman and his successors were able to build and further expand the scope and popularity of the medium. It is therefore a mistake to downplay Barry’s successes and ignore his contribution to the development of television drama, without which it would have remained in the nursery for much longer.
This is an expanded and revised version of an article originally published in This Way Up issue 22 in 2009.
