主播大秀

As 主播大秀 History launches an archive to mark 80 years of Television, Dr Kate Murphy blogs about the 主播大秀's first female producer, Mary Adams.

I don’t know whether you have seen the television screen or whether its problems interest you,  but I should very much like you to come up to Alexandra Palace and discuss with us the possibilities of this new medium”, so wrote Mary Adams to John Betjamen in May 1937.  The 主播大秀 television service was then six months old, and Adams had been a television producer since January that year. In every way this was unprecedented. Not only was she a woman, but she was nearing 40 and married with a young baby. She also earned far more than most of the thrusting young male producers she worked alongside.  So how had this unlikely situation arisen?

Mary Adams had first come to the attention of the 主播大秀 10 years earlier, in 1927, when she gave a radio talk on ‘Heredity’.  The fledgling 主播大秀 was always on the lookout for potential speakers for its Talks programmes and Adams’ expertise and experience suggested she would be a good choice.  She was a biologist by training who, after four years of post-graduate research at Cambridge, had become an adult education tutor. Her broadcast was deemed such a success that she was invited back to the 主播大秀 the following year; her six-part series ‘The Problems of Heredity’ provoking much correspondence and debate. Two years later, in 1930, the now 32-year-old Adams applied for a full-time post with the 主播大秀 as an Adult Education Officer for the 主播大秀 Counties. 

Her appointment reflected the modernity of the Corporation. Not only was it unusual to recruit older women, 30 was then considered middle-aged, but she was married; her husband of five years was the maverick Conservative MP Vyvyan Adams.  At a time when many professions, such as teaching, banking and the Civil Service, enforced marriage bars, the 主播大秀 openly employed married women. In fact, one of its most senior women, Mary Somerville, who headed the School Broadcasting department was not only married but, in 1930, had a year-old son. The 主播大秀 also ostensibly offered equal pay and Adams negotiated a generous salary. The usual starting pay for salaried staff at the 主播大秀 was £260 a year, accepted as the basic rate for a middle-class lifestyle.  Adams agreed £650 (she had asked for £800), reflecting both her status and her verve.  By 1939, she would earn £900 a year.

Back in 1930, it had quickly become apparent that Adams was not cut out to be an Adult Education Officer. The job was heavily dependent on organisational skills whereas Mary Adams’ strength was her creativity.  She was an ideas person, with an impressive contacts book, so was far better suited to a production role.  Her manager, Charles Siepmann, was quick to realise this, and Adams was soon making programmes, mostly science programmes, in the form of talks.  This was in the days before recording, when all spoken-word output on the 主播大秀 was live talks, a format championed and perfected by the brilliant Hilda Matheson, the 主播大秀’s first Talks Director from January 1927 until early 1932.  Much of Matheson’s success lay in her ability to entice the great and the good to broadcast.  Adams was similarly adept, drawing on her a wide network of friends and acquaintances, from Beatrice Webb and John Hilton to Norman Angell and Margery Fry.

From the start Mary Adams had made the 主播大秀 jittery. Her husband might be a Tory MP, but she was very left wing in her views. Her annual reports hint that she was also impulsive and difficult to control, with a tendency to act without reference to her seniors. As Siepmann noted in 1932, “her enthusiasm is apt to outrun her discretion”.  At a time when the Corporation was coming under increasing scrutiny for being ‘Red’, this was not a good combination.  Indeed, in March 1934 she took much of the blame for the notorious ‘Ferrie Incident’ when William Ferrie, a representative of the National Union of Vehicle Builders, claimed live on air that his script for the series ‘The National Character’ had been censored and abruptly walked out of the studio, to leave silence.  It may be no coincidence that at this point in her 主播大秀 career Adams, who had produced the talk, agreed to a part-time post although it is also certain that her health was poor, she was due for an operation and was undoubtedly over-worked.  But after almost two years of working virtually full-time for half-time pay, she became convinced that her continuing part-time status was because she was held to be “a wild, unruly, Bolshevik sort of person”.  In April 1936, having finally persuaded her 主播大秀 bosses otherwise, and just at the point that it was agreed she could return full-time, there was another twist; she announced that she was pregnant.

There is a remarkable letter amongst Mary Adams’ papers, written to Sir John Reith, the Director General of the 主播大秀, on 28 September 1936. Thanking him for the flowers and lovely welcome they gave to her daughter Sally (born four weeks earlier), she enthused about motherhood and the new sense of ardour and responsibility it had given her. It was for this reason, she informed him, that she wished to apply for the position of Director of Talks that has just been advertised. Although, in his response, Reith raised the question about whether Adam’s was “wise or right” in her wish to lead the “double life”, he agreed to her application going forward.  There was never any likelihood of Adams getting such a lofty promotion, her gender, the fact of her young child and her political views would have militated against her.  But the appointment of the right-wing Sir Richard Maconachie was possibly the reason why, in January 1937, Mary Adams returned to work not in the Talks Department for Radio, but to a new position, overseeing Talks for Television.

On 2 November 1936, when the 主播大秀 began transmitting its television service from Alexandra Palace in North London, staff numbers would have been around 100, about half of whom were women. Most were employed in low-paid secretarial and clerical positions, but that didn’t necessarily mean that their work wasn’t highly calibre. Joan Gilbert, for instance, a clerk who worked on ‘Picture Page’, included amongst her duties researching guests, writing scripts, sub-editing, and working as a talent scout for the programme.  The Television Make-up and Wardrobe team was headed by Mary Allan, one of whose key roles was to ensure that Jasmine Bligh and Elizabeth Cowell, the two female announcers, always looked their best under the harsh studio conditions. It’s not clear how often Mary Adams appeared on camera. Although Radio Times lists her as responsible for the ‘presentation’ of more than 50 programmes in the years before television closed down in September 1939 for the duration of the Second World War, it is likely that it was her voice, rather than her face, that introduced her various contributors.

The range of Mary Adams output is astonishing.  As a producer of radio talks, Adams’ focus had predominantly been social affairs or science. In television, she learnt quickly that television talks worked best with a visual element.  Her first programmes differed little from her radio work: the intellectual giant Professor Walter Gropius in discussion with Maxwell Fry about ‘Architecture Today’ or the MP Robert Hudson, from the Ministry of Health, in conversation with John Hilton about ‘Food and Health’.  But soon fresh ideas were apparent. A talk on ‘Heraldry of Yesterday and Today’ included demonstrations. 

‘London Galleries: Young Artists and their Work’ saw John Piper in the studio with young art students, showing their work. ‘The World of Women: Illustrating Verse’ paired the spoken-out-loud writings of Olga Katzin with the illustrations of the artist Pearl Binder.  Adams also acquired some TV regulars producing, for instance,  the zoologist David Seth-Smith’s ‘Friends from the Zoo’; the gardening expert CH Middleton’s ‘In Your Garden’ and the chef Marcel Boulestin’s ‘Cook’s Night Out’.

Her approach to John Betjeman in May 1937 is typical of her dynamism. Betjeman was becoming well-known as the creator of the Shell Guides to Britain. Once his interest in appearing on television was substantiated she suggested a talk that included maps and photographs as well as objects - physical props that would bring the programme to life. When ‘How to Write a Guide Book’, was transmitted ‘live’ on 21 September 1937,  Betjeman arrived at the studio with a hotchpotch of items including a milking stool, a weathercock, wild flowers and a piece of Cotswold stone. The portrait painter Edward Halliday was similarly impressed by Adam’s production values.  They worked together on the short series ‘Masterpieces on your Walls’, broadcast in September 1938. This was about the easy availability of good quality reproductions for the home and provided an excuse to interject popular works of art by the likes of Paul Nash, Laura Knight and Eric Ravilious as well as Picasso, Van Gogh and Cezanne, into Halliday’s lively commentary.

Pearl Binder would become an Adams regular. Following her appearance on ‘The World of Women’, the two friends worked together on a number of programmes, with Binder contributing the ‘live’ illustrations. The six-part series’ Clothes-Line’, broadcast from October 1937, as well as using Binder’s drawings, utilised the versed commentary of James Laver of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the historic costume collection of Cecil Willett Cunnington and live mannequins to tell the story of fashion through the ages. Binder was heavily pregnant during the series, her daughter Josephine born within weeks of the final show. ‘Looking for a House’, in May 1939, was Binder’s illustrated take on the trials and tribulations of house-hunting while ‘Rough Island Stories’ broadcast from June 1939, was a history of the British Isles told through maps, pictures (provided by Binder) and film, presented by Harold Nicolson and James Horrabin. Adams developed a raft of other extravaganzas including ‘Guest Night’, which brought together an array of well-known contributors for topical chat; ‘Columnists and their Victims’  a sort of news quiz and ‘Salute to America’, which profiled the contemporary US scene in speech and images. 

These programmes would be Adams’ final pre-Second World War offerings. With television suspended for the duration of hostilities she was transferred, in December 1939, to the Ministry of Information as Director of 主播大秀 Intelligence, a post she would hold for two years. Returning to the 主播大秀 in 1941, she worked for the North American service, producing programmes such as ‘Answering You’ and ‘Transatlantic Quiz’. When the television service reopened in 1946, Adams returned in a Senior Producer role.  One of the areas she pioneered was programming for children. In 1937, she had developed ‘For the Children’, the first such show.  In 1946, it was reintroduced, this time fronted by Annette Wells with her accomplice, Muffin the Mule. Adams was also intrinsic to the development of television programmes for women.  Following the success of Woman’s Hour, introduced onto the Light Service in October 1946, it was seen as judicious to do the same for the small screen.  ‘Designed for Women’, first broadcast in October 1947, was intended to be a “magazine programme of special interest to women”.  It would lead to a dedicated strand of women’s programming that endured until 1964.

Mary Adams versatility and creativity is evident in the vast array of output she continued to oversee. In 1952 she spotted the potential of a young David Attenborough and ‘Zoo Quest’; she introduced the science quiz ‘Animal Vegetable Mineral?’ and initiated the first highly controversial medical series ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ and ‘Your Life in their Hands’. She also nurtured the talents of another soon-to-be doyenne of television, Grace Wyndham Goldie. Mary Adams’ abilities did not go unrewarded. In 1948 she had been promoted to Head of Television Talks, and in 1952, gained autonomy from Mary Somerville, then Talks Controller, whose empire had encompassed both radio and TV. The following year, Adams was again promoted, this time to be Assistant to the Controller of TV, working to Cecil McGivern.  On her retirement in 1958, the now 60-year-old Mary Adams was feted by McGivern, his valediction, published in the staff journal Ariel, neatly summarising her achievements.

Mary Adams, one of its pioneers, is very jealous of the reputation of the 主播大秀 Television Service and her standards are extraordinarily high.  She flayed lapses of taste, refused to allow television to become simply escapist, and her ideas were vivid, bold and far-sighted.  And while Mrs Adams could be brilliant she was at the same time completely determined to achieve her purpose. She has frequently left technical staff and programme staff exhausted, exasperated, but after the event, admiring.  I regard Mrs Adams as one of the few real architects of the television service and it owes a great deal to her… Her breadth of mind, her vision, her ideas have been a constant education.  Her range of friends, acquaintances and contacts in the intelligent world is also extraordinarily large and is itself a tribute to her great ability”.  

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