Programmes

The Book Man

The first British TV programme to be devoted solely to books, authors and publishers has brought many famous names to ABC since it started three years ago.

Among them was Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, seen right with the programmes’s former director, Guy Verney.

One of the popular features of the programme is The Book Man Choice of the Month, made when the picture below was taken by G.B. Stern, L.P. Hartley, Christine Brooke-Rose and Alan Pryce-Jones.

In the foreground the former Book Man, J.W. Lambert of The Sunday Times, interviews two guests

James Archer
Mark Gerson

Men of politics

Lord Morrison of Lambeth discusses his autobiography the day before publication, and Mr Emmanuel Shinwell discussed Lord Morrison’s remarks about Labour leaders

▼ The new Book Man panel choosing the Book of the Month is left to right John Betjeman, John Braine, Elizabeth Jane Howard, David Daiches and programme editor Kenneth Young.

The programme’s director is now Brian Robins

Glamorous blonde

Ronald Cohen

Diana Dors has shown herself to be a talented dramatic actress in a number of films, but except for one production eight years ago she had never appeared in a TV play until she starred for Armchair Theatre in The Innocent, a murder mystery by Bob Kesten.

A visitor to the set was Miss Dors’ husband, Dickie Dawson. With them standing, right is director Charles Jarrott.

Kynaston Reeves is the legal gentleman caught during rehearsal in an attitude no one is ever likely to see a real-life judge adopting

Glamorous brunette

John Timbers

In Roman Gesture, a romantic drama by Ira Avery, Charles Jarrott again showed his gift for investing a TV play with the gloss and glamour of a good Hollywood film.

With his wife Katharine Blake in the lead, Jarrott and designer George Haslam presented Armchair Theatre audiences with the story of a famous star returning home to Italy to make a film with the director who discovered her.

Miss Blake, an English actress who was three times awarded the Canadian TV ‘Oscar’, was acclaimed for her performance as Carla Mellini, and Arthur Hill flew from New York to play the American publicity man who falls in love with her

 

 

Clifford Evans also made a memorable impression in Roman Gesture as the Italian director who discovered, loved and lost Mellini, and now must reassert his authority over her before they can get down to work on their new film.

Here he rejects her rendering of a scene, shows her how he wants it done, and gets a fiery reaction from his star

Music, maestro, please!

For those who like their music sweet rather than beat, ABC presented two big orchestras supported by a host of stars in glossy, Hollywood-style productions.

First of these was maestro Mantovani and his internationally famous ‘singing strings,’ who were filmed at Elstree in thirty-nine half-hour shows under the title Mantovani

A date with Maxin

Leslie Davis

Another sweet-music man was Ernest Maxin, who introduced his Orchestra in Make a Date, a series of live studio programmes in which he performed the dual role of producer and star.

Bob Fuest designed the sets.

While producer Maxin bottom scratches his head, host Maxin left dances with Petula Clark and joins Dave King in a song and dance routine

Stanley Allen

From music to mirth

Ernest Maxin proved his versatility as a producer by following Make a Date with Our House, a series of thirteen hour-long comedy plays by top screenwriter Norman Hudis, with an all-star cast headed by Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey and Joan Sims.

Our House recorded the adventures of an oddly assorted group of people who agreed to solve their accommodation problems by sharing a house.

Paul Bernard designed the ‘mansion’ in question

Stanley Allen
from TRANSDIFFUSION
1960 // THIS IS TRANSDIFFUSION