Hugh Greene
Sir Hugh Greene OBE | |
---|---|
7th Director-General of the BBC | |
In office 1 January 1960 – March 1969 | |
Preceded by | Sir Ian Jacob |
Succeeded by | Charles Curran |
Personal details | |
Born | Berkhamsted, England | 15 November 1910
Died | 19 February 1987 London, England | (aged 76)
Spouses | Helga Mary Guinness
(m. 1934; div. 1948)Elaine Shaplen
(m. 1951; div. 1969)Sarah Mary Manning Grahame
(m. 1984) |
Children | 4 |
Relatives | Raymond Greene (brother) Graham Greene (brother) |
Education | Berkhamsted School |
Alma mater | Merton College, Oxford |
Occupation | Television executive, journalist |
Sir Hugh Carleton Greene
After working for newspapers in the 1930s, Greene spent most of his later career with the BBC, rising through the managerial ranks of overseas broadcasting and then news for the main domestic channels. He encountered opposition from some politicians and activists opposed to his modernising agenda, but under his leadership the BBC was recognised to be outperforming its commercial rival,
After retiring from the BBC, Greene published several books, including a collaboration with his brother, the novelist Graham Greene, and made television programmes both for the BBC and ITV.
Background
Greene was born on 15 November 1910 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the youngest of four sons and the fifth of the six children of Charles Henry Greene, headmaster of Berkhamsted School, and his wife (and cousin), Marion Raymond, the daughter of the Rev Carleton Greene, vicar of Great Barford,[1] with his mother being a cousin of the Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson.[2] Among the couple's other children were Graham Greene, the novelist, and Raymond Greene, a Doctor of Medicine and a mountaineer. Greene was educated at Berkhamsted School and at Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained a second class in classical moderations (1931) and English (1933).[1][3][4]
Before his undergraduate years at Merton, Greene had spent some time in Germany and, after graduating, he returned there, beginning his career as a journalist. He worked in Munich for two British publications, the
The Daily Telegraph sent Greene to Warsaw but his time there was brief. In September 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and he was forced to leave. As the war spread in Europe he reported from Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium and finally France, returning to Britain in June 1940, narrowly escaping the German army's arrival in Paris.
Early broadcasting career
At the end of the war the British government asked Greene to return to Germany as controller of broadcasting in the
On his return to London, Greene resumed his work at the BBC. First, in 1952, as assistant controller of overseas services,[1] and then, in 1955, as controller.[9] In 1956, Sir Norman Bottomley, director of administration and deputy to the director-general, Sir Ian Jacob, retired.[10][11] Greene was appointed to succeed him; Shaw comments that this temporarily distanced him from any direct involvement with programmes, but clearly identified him as the potential successor to Jacob, who was due to retire in 1959.[1]
After two years Greene was appointed to a newly-created post – director of news and current affairs. It was established in the wake of television's rise to overtake radio as the dominant broadcasting medium, and Greene's brief was "to secure overall co-ordination and editorial direction of topical output in both radio and television". In this role Greene encountered resistance to modernisation by key figures in the BBC news division, headed by Tahu Hole. The commercial Independent Television News (ITN), launched in 1955 was strongly outperforming the BBC in innovation, flair and audience numbers.[1] Jacob backed Greene's modernising approach, and moved Hole to be director of administration.[1] Among the reforms introduced by Greene was the abandonment of a restrictive and bureaucratic system for covering party politics. Before the 1959 general election he announced, "We are going to cover the election, nationally and locally, like any other news story – on the basis of news value", putting the BBC on a similar basis to ITN and the press.[12]
BBC director-general
Greene's appointment to succeed Jacob was announced in 1959. It was received with widespread approval by BBC staff, partly because Greene was the first director-general to have risen through the ranks of BBC management, and partly because his transformation of news and current affairs coverage had impressed the programme makers and made them feel valued as they had not felt previously.[1] He assumed the post on 1 January 1960.[13] Early on, Greene abolished the position of director of news and current affairs, and appointed himself editor-in-chief. In that capacity, Shaw writes, he remained "a working journalist capable, when the need arose, of dealing expeditiously with those editorial issues that were referred to him".[1] As director-general he led a modernisation of the BBC, increasing its audience after the creation of a rival commercial ITV television network (the first contractors were on air from September 1955) which had become much more popular than the BBC.[13]
Soon after Greene's appointment, the government set up a committee of inquiry into broadcasting, chaired by the industrialist Sir Harry Pilkington. Greene pressed the BBC's case, arguing that the interests outside television of the commercial franchise holders constituted a conflict of loyalties with their public service obligations, and that the quality of programmes from commercial television was greatly inferior to that of the BBC's.[1] The committee's report was highly favourable to Greene and the BBC, and despite pressure from the commercial television lobby, the government awarded the BBC the proposed third channel and introduction of colour television.[7]
In a short history of the corporation, the BBC says of Greene's tenure, "he encouraged programme-makers to reflect the social changes and attitudes of the Sixties":
After the arrival of
Greene was more frank in private:
We are going to use this organisation to change the way the rest of the country thinks. We want them to see stuff they don’t like. We don’t really care if they complain.
Although under Greene's leadership the BBC caught up with and overtook commercial television in popularity among the British public as a whole,[1] there were dissenting voices. Harold Wilson, who became prime minister in 1964, was less tolerant than his predecessors of the BBC's satire and lack of deference,[16] and Mary Whitehouse, a campaigner who described herself as "an evangelical Christian and moral crusader", accused Greene of being "the devil incarnate" for allowing the broadcast of dramas with sexual content or bad language.[17][n 2]
Greene ignored Mary Whitehouse, but he was vulnerable to Wilson's hostility. When the chairman of the BBC, Lord Normanbrook, died in 1967, his successor Lord Hill (hitherto chairman of the BBC's rival, the Independent Television Authority) was appointed reportedly at Wilson's request.[13] Greene at that time held Hill in contempt.[19] If, as was suspected at the time, Wilson's motive was to provoke Greene into resigning, the ploy almost succeeded, but Greene's advisers convinced him that if he resigned the whole board of management of the BBC would resign with him, leaving the corporation "at the mercy of its new master" as one colleague put it.[19]
Greene and Hill established a working relationship that was uneasy but viable. Nonetheless, after a year Greene began to look forward to retirement. After more than eight years in post, he left in March 1969. To make it clear that the decision was his, rather than Hill's, the latter proposed that Greene should become a member of the BBC's board of governors. He did so, and served for two years before resigning, feeling that his presence was inhibiting his successor.[1]
Later years
After he left the post of director general, Greene made some programmes for the BBC and also – causing some disapproval at the BBC – for ITV. He edited several collections of stories about the rivals of
Personal life
Greene was married four times. In October 1934, he married Helga Mary (b. 1916), the daughter of Samuel Guinness, a banker, of London. They had two sons; the couple divorced in 1948. In September 1951, he married Elaine Shaplen (b. 1920), the daughter of Louis Gilbert, an accountant, of New York. They had two sons, and divorced in 1969. In May 1970, Greene married the German actress Tatjana Sais (1910–1981); they had lived together in the late 1940s. She died in 1981, and in December 1984, he married Sarah Mary Manning Grahame (b. 1941), a script supervisor from Australia. There were no children of the third and fourth marriages.[1]
Greene died from cancer in King Edward VII's Hospital, London, on 19 February 1987.[1]
Honours
Greene was appointed
Publications
- The Spy's Bedside Book (ed., with Graham Greene, 1957)
- The Third Floor Front: A View of Broadcasting in the Sixties (1969)
- The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Early Detective Stories (ed., 1970)
- Cosmopolitan Crimes: More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes; US edition Foreign Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (ed., 1971)
- The Crooked Counties: Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (ed., 1973)
- The American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1976)
- The Pirate of the Round Pond and Other Strange Adventure Stories (ed., 1977)
- Victorian Villainies (ed., with Graham Greene, 1984)
- Source: Who's Who.[5]
Notes
- ^ Greene is thought to have directly suggested only two programmes, the American courtroom drama series Perry Mason and the Sunday evening religious feature Songs of Praise.[15]
- ^ Greene was deeply suspicious of anybody insisting on "family values" as Whitehouse did; it reminded him of Nazi Germany, and he refused to have anything to do with Whitehouse, although his successors were less firm.[18]
References
- ^ required.)
- ISBN 9781408829028.
- ^ Fowler, Glenn (21 February 1987). "Sir Hugh Greene, 76, Dies in London". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
- ^ Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900–1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 207.
- ^ a b c d e f "Greene, Sir Hugh (Carleton), (1910–19 Feb. 1987)", Who's Who & Who Was Who, Oxford University Press. Retrieved 22 March 2019 (subscription required)
- ^ "More Expulsions By Nazis", The Times, 4 May 1939, p. 16
- ^ a b c d e f "Sir Hugh Greene", The Times, 21 February 1987, p. 14
- ISBN 978-0-7012-0811-0. Relevant excerpt available on Hollingsworth's official website here.
- ^ "News in Brief", The Times, 3 December 1954, p. 5
- ^ "B.B.C. Appointments"[permanent dead link], The Times, 27 June 1956, p. 6
- ^ Briggs, p. 115
- ^ "New B.B.C. Freedom In Election News"[permanent dead link], The Times, 18 September 1959, p. 14
- ^ a b c Vahimagi, Tise (2003–2014). "Greene, Sir Hugh (1910–1987)". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
- ^ "From Cathy Come Home to Doctor Who" Archived 17 April 2018 at the Wayback Machine, BBC. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
- ^ Briggs, p. 334
- ^ Briggs, p. 548
- ^ "Mary Whitehouse" Archived 21 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine, The Daily Telegraph, 24 November 2001; and Anthony, Andrew. "Ban this Filth" Archived 21 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine, The Observer, 11 November 2012
- ^ Fletcher, Martin. "Ban this Filth" Archived 21 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 10 November 2012
- ^ a b Tracey, Michael. "Greene, Mrs Whitehouse and the BBC", The Observer, 14 August 1983, pp. 21–22 (subscription required)
- ^ "The Eduard Rhein Ring of Honor Recipients". Eduard Rhein Foundation. Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 5 February 2011.
Further reading
- Briggs, Asa (1995). The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume 5. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-215964-9.
- Briggs, Asa (1979). Governing the BBC. London: British Broadcasting Corporation. ISBN 978-0-563-17774-6.