Dennis Potter
Dennis Potter | |
---|---|
Born | Dennis Christopher George Potter 17 May 1935 Berry Hill, Gloucestershire, England |
Died | 7 June 1994 Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, England | (aged 59)
Occupation | Television playwright, screenwriter, journalist, author, novelist, director |
Alma mater | New College, Oxford |
Period | 1960–1994 |
Genre | Drama |
Notable works | Pennies from Heaven (1978) Blue Remembered Hills (1979) The Singing Detective (1986) Lipstick on Your Collar (1993) |
Spouse |
Margaret Morgan
(m. 1959; died 1994) |
Children | 3, including Sarah |
Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English television
Born in
Early life
Dennis Potter was born in
In 1946, Potter passed the
Between 1953 and 1955, his national service was in the Intelligence Corps of the British Army[4] and he learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists.[5] Having won a State Scholarship to New College, Oxford,[6][7] he studied philosophy, politics and economics.[8]
Early career
Potter's first non-fiction work, The Glittering Coffin, was published by the Gollancz Press in 1960. The book was a rumination on the changing face of England in the prosperity following the end of the war years. It was followed by The Changing Forest: Life in the Forest of Dean Today (1962), which was based on the "Between Two Rivers" documentary. This 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.
He soon returned to television.
Potter stood as the
Writing and public career
The Wednesday Play
Potter's career as a television playwright began with The Confidence Course (The Wednesday Play, 1965) which Potter had begun as a novel.[10] An exposé of the Dale Carnegie Institute, it drew threats of litigation from that organisation.[11][12] Although Potter effectively disowned the play, excluding it from his Who's Who entry,[13] it used non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the fourth wall) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. The Confidence Course script was liked by Wednesday Play script editor Roger Smith who then commissioned Potter to write what became the second Nigel Barton play for the new anthology series.[14] Alice (also 1965), his next transmitted play, chronicled the relationship between Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his nom de plume, Lewis Carroll, and his muse Alice Liddell. The play drew complaints from the descendants of Dodgson, and of Macmillan, the publisher, who objected to the way the relationship was depicted.[15] George Baker played Dodgson.
Potter's most highly regarded works from this period were the semi-autobiographical plays
First film screenplays
In 1978, Herbert Ross was shooting Nijinsky at Shepperton Studios and invited Potter to write the screenplay for his next project Unexpected Valleys. But after watching Pennies from Heaven on television one evening, Ross contacted Potter about the prospect of adapting that series for the cinema.[19] The film version of Pennies from Heaven 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 failure. Potter, however, was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar that year.
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. It was directed by
Potter's screenplay for
Works for the BBC in the 1980s
Potter's career in the early 1980s was spent as a screenwriter for the cinema. He returned to the BBC for a co-production with
The Singing Detective (1986), featuring Michael Gambon, used the dramatist's own problems with the skin disease psoriasis, for Potter an often debilitating condition leading to hospital admission, as a means to merge the lead character's imagination with his perception of reality.
Following
In 1990, referring to a scene in The Singing Detective, Mary Whitehouse claimed on BBC Radio that Potter had been influenced by witnessing his mother engaging in adulterous sex. Potter's mother won substantial damages from the BBC[22] and The Listener.[23] Potter had at least at times actually been 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".[24] In 1979 in an interview for The South Bank Show, he rejected "the chorus of abuse" suffered by Whitehouse because she accepted the "central moral importance of – to use the grandest word – art".[25]
Later film work
Potter wrote the screenplay for
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 last film Potter actively worked on was Midnight Movie (1994), an adaptation of Rosalind Ashe's novel Moths. The film starred
A film version of
The media and Rupert Murdoch
In 1993, Potter was given a half-hour slot in prime time by Channel 4 in their Opinions strand produced by Open Media. Potter's chosen topic was what he perceived to be a contamination of news media and its effect on declining standards in British television "particularly journalists who criticised his Channel 4 series Lipstick on Your Collar", Kelvin MacKenzie "the sharp little oaf who edits the Sun" and Garry Bushell "that sub-literate homophobic, sniggering rictus of a lout".[28] His talk was published in The Guardian in abbreviated form as "Murdoch's Desolate View of Human Life"[29] Craig Brown described the programme in the (Rupert Murdoch owned) Sunday Times:
- "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."[30]
Final works
The last serial broadcast during Potter's lifetime was the romantic comedy Lipstick on Your Collar (1993). Set during the Suez Crisis of 1956 like the much earlier Lay Down Your Arms (1970), elements of which it recycled, this six-parter did not become a popular success and in it Potter returned to use of lip-synched musical numbers in the manner of Pennies from Heaven. It helped to launch the career of actor Ewan McGregor.[20]
On 15 March 1994, three months before his death while his health was deteriorating, Potter gave an interview to
The Bragg TV interview had revealed the “real” Dennis Potter as gentle and thoughtful and the immediate response was intense. The Guardian printed a full transcript the next day while Bragg reported: “Thousands of people reacted with phone calls and letters.” Michael Grade, Channel 4’s chief executive said: “I’ve never known a reaction to a programme like that, achieving such intimacy with an audience. Nothing stacks up against it in terms of impact.”[33]
Potter’s final commission came from The Daily Telegraph Arts & Books section, prompted by the TV interview in March, to which he replied on 16 May, after honouring his television commitments: “I am pleased to tell you that I have completed Karaoke and Cold Lazarus – which I regard as essentially one eight-part piece. Now all that effort is of course evaporating into an overwhelming sense of loss, I itch to scribble something.”[34] Immediately he was prompted to consider "the prospect of confronting imminent death" and on 25 May he submitted “my first and last short story” titled "Last Pearls",[35] which was published on 4 June, days before he died.
The two related stories, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus, were eventually broadcast in 1996, one set in the present and the other in the far future, both feature Albert Finney as the same principal character. Both series were released on DVD on 6 September 2010.[36]
Other works
Novels
Hide and Seek (1973) was a
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 scripts 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 (1973), which incorporated scenes from Angels Are So Few (1970), 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 restaged by Northern Stage in 2006.[37] 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. Potter proposed to write an "intermedia" stage play for producers Geisler-Roberdeau based on William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris, or The New Pygmalion, but he died before it could be commenced.
Style and themes
Potter's work is known for its use of non-naturalistic devices. These include the extensive use of
Potter's pioneering method of using music in his work emerged when developing Pennies from Heaven (1978), one of his biggest successes. 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'".[38] Potter had previously experimented with Bowlly's voice in Moonlight on the Highway (1969).
Potter's characters are frequently "doubled up"; either by
A motif 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; ' final days in Son of Man.
The device of a disruptive outsider entering a claustrophobic environment is another theme. In plays where this occurs, the outsider will commit some apparently liberating act of evil (rape in Brimstone and Treacle) or violence (murder in
Legacy
Although Potter won few awards, he was and remains held in high regard by many within the television and film industry and was an influence on such creators as Mark Frost, Steven Bochco, Andrew Davies, Alain Resnais and Peter Bowker.[40][41][42][43][44] Alan Bennett was critical, referring 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", and believed that Potter's health was a factor in his fame, saying "he visibly conformed to what the public thinks artists ought to be—poor or promiscuous, suffering or starved".[45][46] BBC Four marked the tenth anniversary of Potter's death in December 2004 with 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 initial broadcast.[47] Potter's papers, including unproduced plays and unpublished fiction, are being catalogued and preserved at the Dean Heritage Centre in Gloucestershire.[48]
Personal life
Potter married Margaret Amy Morgan (14 August 1933 – 29 May 1994) on 10 January 1959, at the Christ Church parish church in Berry Hill. They lived at Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, and had three children, Robert, Jane, and Sarah.[5]
Illness and death
In 1961, while covering a meeting of the Young Conservatives, Potter was suddenly unable to rise from the press table and his knee felt hot. He was taken to a hospital, where his other major joints became inflamed and swollen, also, and his skin scalded off his body overnight. Potter was diagnosed with
On 14 February 1994, Potter experienced more than his usual daily pain. He was told he was suffering from incurable pancreas and liver cancer.[49]
Months before Potter was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, his wife, Margaret, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Despite his own deteriorating condition and punishing work schedule, Potter continued to care for his wife until she died on 29 May 1994.[50]
Nine days later, on 7 June 1994, Potter died of pancreatic cancer in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, England, at age 59.[21]
See also
References
- ^ Graham Fuller "The Singing Detective: 25 Years On"", Sight and Sound, November 2011 (Updated 6 March 2014)
- Arenainterview, 1987
- ^ "Arena: Painting the Clouds: A Portrait of Dennis Potter (2003)". The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film & Television. Archived from the original on 6 April 2012. Retrieved 28 August 2019.
- ^ "Dennis Potter: An Unconventional Dramatist" (PDF). New College, Oxford. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
- ^ a b "Dennis Potter obituary", The Daily Telegraph, 8 June 1994
- ^ "A brief biography of Dennis Potter". Intranet.yorksj.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 15 January 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
- ^ BBCTV Arena, Dennis Potter
- ^ Mark Lawson (18 September 2011). "Obituary: Dennis Potter". The Independent. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
- ^ Humphrey Carpenter That Was Satire That Was: The Satire Boom in the 1960s, London, 2000, p. 232
- ^ John R. Cook Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998, p.24
- ^ Carpenter, p. 143
- ^ Gilbert (1998), p. 108, 112
- ^ W. Stephen Gilbert, The Life and Work of Dennis Potter, p.107n
- ^ Carpenter, p.147
- ^ Gilbert (1998), p. 24
- ^ Sergio Angelini "Stand Up, Nigel Barton (1965)", BFI screenonline
- ^ a b Sergio Angelini "Vote, Vote, Vote, for Nigel Barton (1965)", BFI xcreenonline
- ^ Dennis Potter Occupying Powers, 1993 [page needed]
- ^ On the DVD commentary for the original television serial, director Piers Haggard claims he approached Potter during filming of the series with the suggestion of producing a cinematic version starring the original cast. Potter allegedly responded by telling Haggard "there's no point – we've already done it now!".
- ^ a b c Cook, John. "Potter, Dennis (1935–1994)". BFI Screenonline.
- ^ a b Lawson, Mark (8 June 1994). "Obituary: Dennis Potter". The Independent.
- ^ Lawson, Mark (31 October 2003). "Watching the detective". The Guardian.
- ^ John R. Cook Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen, Manchester University Press, 1998, p.350, n.82
- ^ The Guardian, 16 February 1973, quoted in W. Stephen Gilbert The Life and Work of Dennis Potter, Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1998, p.145 (originally published as Fight and Kick and Bite: Life and Work of Dennis Potter, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995)
- ^ Ben Thompson (ed) Ban This Filth!: Letters From the Mary Whitehouse Archive, London: Faber, 2012, p.85. Melvyn Bragg's interview with Potter, along with an earlier South Bank Show item about a 1978 theatre production of (the then banned TV play) Brimstone and Treacle, is included in the DVD set of the dramatist's work for London Weekend Television.
- ^ Cook Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen, p. 368
- ^ Brown, Mark (3 August 2018). "Dennis Potter's adaptation of The White Hotel to premiere on Radio 4". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
- ^ Diary, The Independent, 23 March 1993
- ^ Dennis Potter, "Murdoch's Desolate View of Human Life", The Guardian, 22 March 1993
- ^ Craig Brown "Abuse of Privilege", The Sunday Times, 28 March 1993
- ^ "Occupying Powers" (PDF). MacTaggart Lecture, Edinburgh International Television Festival. 28 August 1993. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
- ^ BFI. "Interview with Dennis Potter, An (1994) Synopsis".
- ^ Carpenter, p. 563
- ^ Carpenter, p. 574
- ISBN 0-571-17436-1.
- ISBN 978-1-78319-203-8.
- ^ Mark Fisher "Son of Man", Variety, 24 September 2006
- ^ The Independent, 7 January 2005, previewing Arena – Dennis Potter:It's in the Songs! It's in the Songs! BBC Four
- ^ Michael Billington and Dennis Potter "Dennis Potter: there is a nostalgic, right wing impulse in England", The Guardian, 2015 (reprint of 1979 radio interview)
- ^ "Mark Frost Interview ‹ Little White Lies – Independent Film Magazine". 30 April 2010. Archived from the original on 30 April 2010. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ Bochco's musical drama Cop Rock (1990) was inspired by The Singing Detective.
- ^ In 1990, The Observer newspaper asked several British television screenwriters to nominate the most influential person in the field. Potter was voted the most influential. Davies, who chose Potter, stated that "there can be no writer working in television today, or in any medium, who can claim even half the influence of Dennis Potter."
- ^ Same Old Song (1997) was dedicated to the memory of Dennis Potter and was in the style of Potter's "lip-sync musicals" Pennies from Heaven, The Singing Detective and Lipstick on Your Collar
- Blackpool(2004) was an attempt to revive British musical drama in the shadow of Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective.
- ^ Bennett, Alan (21 January 1999). "What I did in 1998". London Review of Books. 21 (2). Retrieved 10 October 2020.
- ^ Burrell, Ian (24 February 1997). "That nice Alan Bennett takes the gloves off for Tory politicians, the Queen Mother - and Dennis Potter". The Independent. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
- ^ These included the Nigel Barton plays, A Beast with Two Backs, Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Son of Man, Double Dare, Where Adam Stood, Joe's Ark, Brimstone and Treacle and Blue Remembered Hills.
- ^ Morris, Stephen (27 June 2013). "Dennis Potter archive offers glimpse into mind of celebrated writer". The Guardian.
- ^ a b Lawson, Mark (7 June 1994). "Obituary: Dennis Potter". The Independent. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
- ^ "Dennis Potter obituary", The Daily Telegraph, 8 June 1994
Further reading
- "A bibliography of works related to Dennis Potter". York St John University. Archived from the original on 13 June 2007.
- W. Stephen Gilbert Fight & kick & bite: the life and work of Dennis Potter, 1996, a.k.a. The Life and Work of Dennis Potter, Woodstock & New York: Overlook Press, 1998
- Dennis Potter Seeing the blossom, 1994
- Humphrey Carpenter Dennis Potter, 1998
- John R. Cook Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen, 1998
- Eckart Voigts-Virchow Männerphantasien. Introspektion und gebrochene Wirklichkeitsillusion im Drama von Dennis Potter (in German) 1995
External links
- Dennis Potter official site Archived 7 December 2009 at the Wayback Machine
- The Singing Detective – Exploring Dennis Potter's Thematic Preoccupations Archived 4 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine British Film Resource
- 1986 and 1991 interviews with Dennis Potter BBC4 (Audio)
- Dennis Potter biography and credits at the BFI's Screenonline
- An Interview with Dennis Potter at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
- Dennis Potter at IMDb