12 May 2013
Posted in TV

An obituary by Nick Yapp

The actress and writer Anne Valery, who has recently died, was a long-time member of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and a key player in the Guild’s unending fight to protect writers from censorship in all its forms.

Her acting career began in 1949 with modest parts in several British films, including that of Clothilde (the girl in the punt) in the Ealing Comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. Over the next ten years she appeared in nine films and two BBC TV Series (BBC’s Sunday-Night Theatre and The Vise). As a writer, her credits included Emmerdale, Crossroads, Angels, Crown Court and, most significantly, Tenko, for which she and fellow Guild member Jill Hyem wrote the bulk of the 30 episodes.

Every decade involves the Guild in at least one battle against censorship, and a Censorship Appeals Committee became part of the Guild’s armoury from its inception in 1962. There were regular protestations from both the BBC and ITA that they were not in favour of censorship. ‘In the normal sense of the word,’ wrote Huw Wheldon (Controller, Programmes, BBC Television in the late 1960s), ‘there is no censorship in BBC Television.’ But Mary Whitehouse had her followers and her friends within the industry, and an attitude of ‘we know best’ was adopted by many producers and commissioning editors. The Guild Censorship Committee was kept busy.

Valery was Chair of the Guild Censorship Committee in the 1990s, at a time when battle was joined on the issue of quotas in the film and television industries. In an article for Writers’ Newsletter, then the Guild’s journal, Valery argued that contemporary writers for British films and television were facing a threat similar to that created by the Cinematograph Films Bill in 1937 – the Bill that led to the creation of the Screen Writers’ Association, the direct ancestor of the Guild. Failure of the British government to withstand US pressure after WW2 had resulted in an almost complete annihilation of the British film industry. Valery believed the threat had returned, some 50 years later. ‘Already,’ she wrote, ‘the US has swamped our television drama slots with programmes undercutting all others. They dominate satellite television; control BskyB and five national newspapers, provide over 90% of videos; and are taking over our publishing houses… Even radio is not immune…’ In Valery’s opinion, the only way to counter this threat was to follow the European example – the EU had recently directed member states to ensure that at least 51% of programmes transmitted by their television stations was of European origin.

Thatcher did not accept Valery’s view, and that particular battle was lost. But all of us, as members of the Guild today, are grateful to Valery for the role that she played and the work she did on the Guild’s behalf in that particular battle and on a day-by-day basis. There is no Guild Censorship Committee at the moment. It lapses from time to time, but is regularly reformed as and when it is needed. The fight goes on.

Nick Yapp is the author of the Writers' Guild official history, The Write Stuff

09 May 2013
Posted in Film

By Nick Yapp

Bryan Forbes, who died on 8th May at the age of 86, was a key figure in the history of cinema for more than 30 years. With John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Kenneth More, he was one of the band of actors who refought much of WW2 on the back-lots of British film studios. He was a master of most cinematic trades – a screenwriter, director, producer and key executive, becoming Managing Director of Associated British Productions in 1969.

But he was also one of the group of screenwriters who met at 7 Harley Street in London on 13th May 1959 to create the Television and Screenwriters Guild (TSG), a forerunner of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. With Ted Willis as Chair and Forbes as Honorary Treasurer, the Guild embarked on an ambitious programme of events to recruit members, among them a series of lectures on writing for the cinema. The lectures were held at the National Film Theatre (2 guineas/£2.10 to attend the whole series, 5 shillings/25p for each individual lecture). Forbes was in illustrious company – other lecturers in the series included the film critic Dilys Powell, the director Karel Reisz, and John Trevelyan, then Secretary of the British Board of Film Censors.

The TSG became the Screenwriters Guild in 1961, with Forbes continuing as Treasurer. The early Sixties were dubbed the years of 'Fun and Aggro' by members of the Guild, but times were financially hard. Forbes was a man of vision with high hopes for the Guild’s future. 'We should aim for a staff of at least ten,' Forbes told Guild members, 'so that you can have the sort of service you expect.; That dream has yet to come true, but Forbes worked tirelessly to strengthen the Guild’s financial position, repeating over and over again his mantra: 'We must find more money from somewhere.'

His most ambitious plan, and one that still sets the adrenalin going at the thought of ‘what if it had come true’, was presented to the Guild in 1969. EMI had just bought Associated British from Warner Brothers and had put Forbes in charge. He took his work seriously and was incredibly conscientious about scripts submitted to him, reading up to ten scripts a day even though he found on average that 80% of them were unusable.

To quote from The Write Stuff (the history of the Writers' Guild):

'What Forbes wanted were ideas for low budget, original, comedy films which didn’t fall into the "dreaded mid-Atlantic category". He welcomed unsolicited material, and asked "everybody to believe that every single submission" would be considered. Those writers who showed promise he directed to the Guild, and his great ambition was to make Elstree a Guild studio.'

With Carl Foreman, who had succeeded Willis as President of the Guild, what Forbes hoped to achieve was a Guild shop within the entire British Film Industry, along the lines of what the WGA had set up in the United States. It never happened – well, it hasn’t happened yet – but the 1960s were in many ways a Golden Age for the Guild. The prestigious series of Annual Awards Dinners held at the Dorchester Hotel from 1961 to 1970 helped raise the profile of the Guild to an enormous extent. And it was fitting that in 1962 the first ever Best British Comedy Screenplay Award went to Forbes for Only Two Can Play – a screenplay that was also nominated for a BAFTA that year. From 1971, when he resigned from Associated British, Forbes divided his time between the UK and the USA. The Guild lived on, in no small part thanks to the pioneering work that Bryan Forbes had put in from its earliest days.

If such titles existed as ‘Hero of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’, that awarded to Forbes would have been First Class.

Nick Yapp is author of The Write Stuff, the history of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain