Candid comedian

Bob Monkhouse, one of the few British entertainers who is a top line comedian and comedy writer as well as a star compère, has become a resident host of ABC Light Entertainment shows.

From the long-running For Love or Money he went on to present the public to the public in Candid Camera, which spotlights in a good-natured way the generosity and sense of humour for which our island race is famous.

Ronnie Taylor directs the programme

Candid Camera’s backroom boys push jokester-in-chief Jonathan Routh towards a filling station in a car without an engine

Having coasted in to a stop, Routh asks the attendant to find out why the car refuses to start again

‘You’ve got no engine!’ says the attendant, but Routh is not satisfied

‘Something queer here’ mutters the attendant, and has a look round the back

‘This bloke’s a nut case’ says the attendant to the colleague he has called to investigate the mystery

Face in Focus

Stanley Allen

Eleven showbusiness celebrities faced ABC cameras in Face in Focus, a series designed to bring out the personality behind the public image.

Frankie Vaughan talked about the Middle Eastern problem to host David Mahlowe, who is seen below with director Marjory Ruse and another guest, Spike Milligan.

Liberace bottom discussed the life he leads away from the sequins and the candelabra

Bedford Studios

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

Baldpates and blondes

The television camera is no respecter of persons.

Whether you are a leading churchman, a distinguished man of letters or a blonde bombshell of the movies, the make-up girl will still have to take the shine off that Yul Brynner head and advise little grains of powder, little dabs of paint for the pretty face

Left, above the Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney gets a make-up lesson on ABC’s Religious Training Course;
below Sir Charles Snow is made up for The Book Man;
lower Jayne Mansfield prepares for her guest spot in After Hours;
bottom Diana Dors shows how it’s done to Deborah Buchan, granddaughter of the famous novelist, who made her TV debut with Miss Dors in Armchair Theatre

 

Stanley Allen

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

from TRANSDIFFUSION
1960 // THIS IS TRANSDIFFUSION