After gaining a scholarship he was educated at Chiswick Grammar School and then undertook a degree in English Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford from 1955. Whilst at Oxford he became an active member of the Experimental Theatre Club[1] and in 1957 he directed the world premiere of the play Epitaph for George Dillon by the notable playwright John Osborne. The production gained positive reviews including the trade paper The Stage which notted “Don Taylor’s perceptive direction is fully alive to the impelling qualities of the play, the climaxes being notably well-handled.[2]” He graduated in 1958 and joined the Oxford Playhouse as the theatre director’s assistant but was dismissed after six months. He took on work as a supply teacher to make ends meet.
In 1960, at the age of 23, he joined the BBC as a trainee on a six month contract and undertook the corporation’s director’s training course. This culminated in Taylor directing a twenty minute studio production after just eight weeks tuition. Taylor chose to adapt a Tennessee Williams short play, The Last of My Solid Gold Watches, which was seen by the then head of the BBC drama department, Michael Barry, who praised the production. Barry offered Taylor a contract as a director in the drama department, where he would specialise in directing single plays. Taylor, from strong socialist stock (his father was a trade unionist), felt himself slightly out of step with the established hierarchy within the BBC, though he found a kindred spirit when he began a long association with the writer David Mercer in 1961. Both held strong socialist beliefs and had concerns for how socialism was progressing. Taylor directed three plays by Mercer between 1961 and 1963 – Where the Difference Begins, A Climate of Fear and Birth of a Private Man – that formed a trilogy that overall explored the failure of socialism.
More single dramas for the BBC followed with The Dark Man (8th December
1960) starring Robert Shaw. Written by N J Crisp the play was one of the first
dramas on British TV to tackle the subject of racism. Shaw would also star in
Taylor’s next credited production, The
Train Set (5th January 1961), written by Midlands born writer
David Turner. The play was set in a Birmingham factory where a worker wants to
buy his son a model railway for his birthday, but cannot afford it. Written and
performed in the area’s dialect the play attracted approval from both critics
and the BBC. Further single plays followed including Cheerio Lou (13th March 1961) and On The Boundary (29th June 1961), his second
collaboration with David Turner, which was centred on the lives of people
living on the border between slums and the modern building schemes in the city
of Birmingham.
During September 1961 Michael Barry resigned as head
of drama. This would eventually have an impact on Taylor’s career and future
with the BBC, but for now a caretaking head was appointed the form of former
assistant head of department Norman Rutherford. Elwyn Jones stepped into the
role of assistant head, and as such became Taylor’s immediate boss as he
oversaw the daily work of the drama department.
Further single play credits during this period of change included Summer Autumn Winter Spring (11th September 1961) and Where the Difference Begins (15th December 1961), his first collaboration with David Mercer. This play was centred on the political differences between a father and his two sons. Barry Foster appeared as one of the sons with Leslie Sands as the patriarch of a divided family. Comedienne Hylda Baker made her television drama debut in the play following her role in the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Again the play was positively received with both Foster and Sands being singled out for their portrayals. Taylor’s final play produced during 1961 was Choirboys Unite! (21st December 1961) which featured Manning Wilson in the cast, who Taylor would use as a voice over artist in the Beasts episode ‘During Barty’s Party’. This was another play written by David Turner and was a lighter in tone work about a Birmingham choir going on strike.
‘The Alderman’ (28th January 1962), about a retiring Labour town
councillor, was Taylor’s first contribution to the BBC Sunday Night Play strand. The live production very nearly
became a disaster when, shortly before the performance went on air, a camera
mounting planned to be used for high shots looking down on the action
irreparably broke. With no time to acquire a replacement mounting Taylor
instead used the tallest cameraman in his team using a standard mounting to
achieve the shots.
A
Suitable Case For Treatment (21st October 1962),
another script by Mercer, was a study of the angry young socialist Morgan Delt
and his descent into madness after his wife leaves him. The script was funny
and original and Taylor was immediately fired up with enthusiasm for the play.
However, when he attempted to get it green lit for production Elwyn Jones was
not convinced the play would work. This led to heated debates and disputes over
several days before Jones relented, but not before threatening that if the play
failed then Taylor would forfeit his job at the BBC. The play was found to
overrun the sixty minute allocated slot so Taylor, having won Jones round,
compromised and cut the length down by ten minutes. Instead of a live
transmission the play was pre-recorded to video tape and this allowed Taylor to
be extremely inventive with the use of film, visual jokes and dream sequences.
The boundaries for the use of sound where also pushed with the use of music
acting as a commentary on the play’s events. This was something new and
exciting and the critics reacted by praising the production to the hilt whilst Mercer
was awarded the Screenwriter’s Guild for best play of the year. Sadly there is
no recording of the original play in the BBC archives so Ian Hendry’s
interpretation of the role of Morgan is lost forever. However we can still see the
successful cinema adaptation from 1966 under the title of Morgan A Suitable Case for Treatment starring David Warner and
directed by Karel Reisz.
‘Libel on a Liar’ (25th November 1962) was Taylor’s next
contribution to the BBC Sunday Night Play
series. The story centred on a teacher, Stephen Moriarty, who writes a novel
about a school where he used to work. Members of staff at the school read the
book and identify themselves as inspiration for some of the story’s characters and
contemplate a libel action. The
Birth of A Private Man (8th March 1963) saw
Taylor produce and direct another script by David Mercer and was the final part
in the loose trilogy the duo had begun with Where
the Difference Begins. The play, set in Eastern Europe, was a critique of
socialism within these countries and Taylor approached Elwyn Jones with the
suggestion that he and Mercer visit some of the locations in the script to
enable research. Rather surprisingly he agreed. To arrange visas for the visit
the pair were interviewed at the Polish Embassy about their political
viewpoints for several hours. With the visas granted Taylor and Mercer visited
Warsaw, Poland and East Berlin viewing the Berlin Wall which would figure in
the conclusion of the play. Plans were drawn up for location shooting in Poland
and cast and production crew prepared for the shoot. However, shortly before
they were due to depart visas were suddenly withdrawn without any explanation. Mercer
quickly rewrote the Polish location sequences setting them on a train carriage
(filmed at Ealing Studios) and locations were located within the UK including a
cemetery in Wakefield, Yorkshire and a brewery in Watford which doubled for the
Berlin Wall.
Taylor did not agree with the appointment of Sydney
Newman as the head of BBC drama or of the changes that Newman made on his
arrival. These included splitting the drama department into two areas – plays
and serial – with the emphasis on increasing the output of serials and steering
the tone of plays to become less elitist in order to appeal to a wider audience.
Newman also implemented a producer system which assigned directors to scripts,
as opposed to the old system where directors could work with the scripts of
their choosing. Finally Newman split the roles of producer and director into
two individual jobs, something which under the old system had been combined
into one. This would leave Taylor with just the role of director on his future
projects. Taylor also began to feel his choice of plays were not favoured by
Newman and this led to friction between the two.
Taylor’s next BBC
Sunday Night Play episode, the
first to be made under the new departmental conditions, was another script from
David Mercer. ‘For Tea on a Sunday’ (17th March 1963) was an
allegory criticising the tensions boiling beneath the surface of 1960s British
society which concluded with the character Nicholas destroying his flat with an
axe. To capture this climax Taylor had three identical sets constructed – one
for rehearsal and two for possible takes – though he filmed all three acts of
destruction as a precaution which paid dividends when he used shots from the
rehearsal in his final edit of the sequence. This segment proved to be
particularly controversial with a reported 134 calls of complaint about the
violence and intensity of the scene made to the BBC[3]
Taylor’s next BBC
Sunday Night Play fell foul to direct interference by Sydney Newman.
Written by George Target and originally titled ‘Workshop Limits’, the play was
about an industrial dispute in a factory. Newman objected to the title and
preferred to call it ‘You Can’t Throw Your Mates’ (7th July 1963)
which Taylor refused to do. Newman issued a direct order which saw the name
change go ahead despite Taylor’s objections. It was a minor issue but it was
the turning point for Taylor as he felt that the new regime did not welcome
him.
His final episode of the BBC Sunday Night Theatre was ‘The Full Chatter’ (16th June 1963) from a script by Hugh Whitemore. This was a comedic story about Frederic Instance, a teacher who hates television, but longs to be a writer. The play utilised the techniques which Taylor had pioneered in A Suitable Case for Treatment with surrealism, dream sequences, mock adverts and voice over and was another big hit with audiences and critics. After this Taylor found he had no further projects assigned to him despite having a contract for another year. Newman then moved him from the plays department to the series department much to the horror of Taylor who had shunned work in series to pursue his beloved area of single plays. Newman then offered Taylor the chance to produce a new series he was setting up for a family slot on a Saturday teatime, something he was calling Doctor Who. Taylor declined.
Frustrated with the lack of projects Taylor looked towards theatre and during
November 1964 he directed the stage play Maxibules
at the Royal Theatre in Brighton. Back at the BBC after trying, but
ultimately failing, to develop his own drama anthology series based around a
University Taylor’s final work as a BBC staff director was The Wednesday Play instalment ‘Dan, Dan, The Charity Man’ (3rd
February 1965). Written by Hugh Whitemore and starring Barry Foster as Dan
Sankey who is a national celebrity due to his charity work, but what lies
beneath the façade? Again Taylor employed unusual techniques to further the
narrative and push the medium including silent movie style captions, sped up
film and characters who pause the action to address the audience directly.
TO BE CONTINUED...
[1] The Experimental Theatre Club
(ETC) was founded in 1936 as an amateur dramatics society and an alternative to
the Oxford University Dramatic Society. Notable previous members of ETC include
Rowan Atkinson, Alan Bennett, Lindsay Anderson, Ken Loach and Dudley Moore