Prolific playwright and the hidden hand behind a string of classic TV series
Jeremy Paul, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 71, was a prominent and industrious television writer associated with many of the leading series of the past 40 years, from Upstairs, Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street in the 1970s, to Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected in the 80s and Lovejoy in the 90s. Relatively unknown writers such as Paul ? who also wrote three BBC Plays for Today, including The Flipside of Dominick Hide (1980), starring Peter Firth as a time-traveller, and many of Granada Television's Sherlock Holmes series, starring Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke ? are the unsung heroes in the sustained supply of wit, literacy and humanity in our popular culture.
A 1988 West End stage spinoff of the Granada series, The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, was revived last year at the Duchess theatre, starring Peter Egan as Holmes and Robert Daws as Watson. The production proved Paul's ingenuity and craftsmanship, as well as revealing a psychological penetration and poignancy in the relationship between the two men. Another of Paul's ingenious two-handers, The Watchers ? a role-reversal thriller bristling with sharp dialogue and sexual tension which premiered at the Orange Tree theatre in Richmond as Can You Help? (1986) ? also stood up well in a recent fringe revival at the Waterloo East theatre.
Born in Bexhill, East Sussex, Paul had a theatrical background. He was the only child of the producer and impresario Dominic Roche and the West End actor Joan Haythorne. The couple were not married, and Jeremy never knew his father. He assumed, until he reached adulthood, that his father had died in the second world war. When he discovered the truth, he dropped his surname, replacing it with his middle name, Paul. During the war, he was evacuated to Wolverhampton, where he developed a lifelong passion for Stoke City football club.
A beneficent aunt sponsored his progress through the King's school, Canterbury, where he excelled at cricket and drama, playing Othello at the age of 18. He then worked as an assistant stage manager before taking up a place at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, to read English. He sold his first television play while still a student and left Oxford after one year, having been offered a three-year contract, to write three plays a year, with Lew Grade's ATV.
He met his wife, the actor Patricia Garwood, in a bar after a performance of Peter Pan at the Scala theatre in the West End. She was playing Wendy and was 18. He was two years older and smitten, and stayed that way for more than 50 years.
His television work in the 1960s included adaptations of novels such as Paul Scott's The Bender, Arnold Bennett's Lord Raingo (starring Kenneth More) and Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess. He also wrote the original plays Consequences, directed by Alan Gibson, and Love Doesn't Grow On Trees, starring Michael Bryant and Ian Hendry.
Having settled in Richmond, Surrey, Paul reignited his Oxford friendship with the director Sam Walters and his actor wife Auriol Smith. Both men were starting young families, both were full of plans. The Orange Tree theatre opened, under Walters's artistic directorship, above a pub opposite Richmond station in 1971. Paul provided two of the Orange Tree's biggest hits, writing the libretto (and some lyrics) for the charming small-scale musicals The Lady or the Tiger (1975) and Scraps (1977).
The former, based on a story by Frank Stockton, with music by Nola York and lyrics by Michael Richmond, was an adult fairytale featuring a demented king, a sexually withdrawn princess, a lugubrious factotum and a moody, wandering John Travolta lookalike. The show transferred to the Fortune theatre in the West End and was followed, in 1977, by Scraps, based on the Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Match Girl, with music by Keith Strachan and additional lyrics by Leslie Stewart. One of the songs, Mistletoe and Wine, sung in a later television adaptation by Twiggy, was a Christmas No 1 for Cliff Richard in 1988. The show, retitled The Little Match Girl, has been revived many times around the country.
During this period, Paul developed a writing partnership with Carey Harrison, the son of Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer, and they exchanged ideas and first drafts for more than 30 years. Their co-written farce, Manoeuvres, was presented at the Belgrade theatre, Coventry, in 1974. Paul's achievements in film were more limited, although he wrote the screenplay for Countess Dracula (1971), a piece of colourful hokum in which Ingrid Pitt bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth.
Paul, who was tall, red-haired and aquiline-featured, played for a peripatetic cricket team, the Invalids, and recently became their president. His finest hour came in a show-business charity match, when he partnered the batsman Viv Richards in a century stand at Lord's. Unfortunately, the public address announcer got his cast list muddled and, each time Paul matched Richards with another fine stroke through the covers, the shot was credited through the tannoy to Dennis Waterman, who was sitting with his feet up in the pavilion.
Paul wrote with a quotation of JM Barrie above his desk: "Fame is rot; daughters are the thing." A devoted family man, he is survived by Patricia and their daughters, Amanda, Tara and Sasha, who are all actors, and Sophie, a television director; and 10 grandchildren.
? Jeremy Paul (Jeremy Roche), playwright and screenwriter, born 29 July 1939; died 3 May 2011
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/may/25/jeremy-paul-obituary
Cultural trips England cricket team Top 10s Student politics Mergers and acquisitions La Liga
No comments:
Post a Comment