Showing posts with label Anne W Gibbons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anne W Gibbons. Show all posts

Saturday 5 May 2012

The Truth About Walter...

Early 1980: Geoffrey Hooper's Walter chats to Amos Brearly (Ronald Magill).

Late 1980: Al Dixon's Walter says nowt.

This blog has some amazing fans! No sooner had I posted the previous article on the three Walters (one and the same character?) than I got this e-mail from Sheila:

I well remember Geoffrey Hooper as Walter and liked him a great deal. When Al Dixon became the new Walter in the early '80s, I couldn't accept him as the same character because he was so silent and odd. He was nothing like the previous version. Around 1981, when it became obvious that Al Dixon's version was not going to speak, I wrote to the production team asking if the two Walters were meant to be the same character, because they seemed so different. Clive Hornby and Jean Rogers had been cast as Jack Sugden and Dolly Skilbeck in 1980, but they resembled the previous actors and the characters were the same. The reply stated that the production team, headed by Anne W Gibbons, the producer, liked the tradition of a Walter at the Woolpack, but in casting Al Dixon, they had no intention of adhering to the character of the previous Walter. They wanted to create something fresh and original and so the idea came about that he would be silent.

The letter said that viewers could use their imaginations as to whether he was the same person as the previous Walter or not, so I decided that Amos, depressed by the death of his old regular Walter, had been happy when a new Walter turned up in Beckindale (Walter was a common name amongst aged men in those days) and had taken him under his wing, not at first realising how odd he was.

I wrote to the cast and production team several times in those days and have some lovely souvenirs. I'd be happy to scan some for you. I really enjoy reading your site and am always on the lookout for updates, which are all too rare!

Thanks for that, Sheila! It's amazing!  Thanks for your compliments, too. I'm a great fan of Al Dixon's highly distinctive Walter - he was the only SILENT Walter - and I'd love to see your souvenirs! I'll be in touch.

Tuesday 16 June 2009

The 1980s: What The Emmerdale Farm Producers Did - Part 1...

Producer Anne W Gibbons with Arthur Pentelow (Henry Wilks) and Ronald Magill (Amos Brearly) in 1980.

This is Part 1 of a brief look at the changing face of Beckindale in the 1980s - how the various producers of the show guided and moulded Emmerdale Farm/Emmerdale through a decade of tremendous change...

Maurice (Edward Dentith) and Judy Westrop (Jane Cussons) left the show in 1980 - and the workforce at NY Estates was featured as Joe Sugden (Frazer Hines) went to work there as farm manager.

Anne W Gibbons took the chair as Emmerdale Farm's producer in June 1979 and departed in 1983. Ms Gibbons began stamping her mark on the show in 1980, recasting the characters of Jack Sugden and Dolly Skilbeck - Clive Hornby and Jean Rogers debuted in the roles in February and April 1980.

1980 - new Jack, new Dolly.

In the summer of 1980, Ms Gibbons oversaw the completion of the transition of Seth Armstrong from peripheral to central character as he became a regular at The Woolpack. She also oversaw the recasting and rewriting of the Merrick family. Out went Ruth Merrick, mother of three, to be replaced by Pat Merrick (Helen Weir), mother of two - Jackie (Ian Sharrock) and Sandie (Jane Hutcheson). Edward Peel made a fiercesome Tom Merrick.

In September 1980, Ms Gibbons' reign saw the arrival of Al Dixon as Walter of The Woolpack.

Say nowt - the fabulous Walter, played by Al Dixon, from 1980-1985.

Other notable characters introduced by Ms Gibbons included Police Sergeant Ian MacArthur (Martin Dale) in 1980 and Alan Turner (Richard Thorp) in 1982.

1980 was the year that Woolpack premier Amos Brearly (Ronald Magill) gained an allotment and became rather more animated and odd-ball in character!

The Amos '80s were a memorable era - in 1980 he gained an allotment and Seth Armstrong as a Woolpack regular. By 1981, he was gloriously mad.

Alan Turner was originally simply a bit of a slippery customer, selfish and lazy. But in early 1983, the character became rather more unpleasant. The days of the comic partnership between Alan and Seth, and Alan as a character we could at times sympathise with, were yet to come.

Don't trust him, Joe! New Beckindale NY boss Alan Turner arrived at Home Farm in 1982.

The Anne W Gibbons era confronted problems with the architecture of Lindley Farm, in use as Emmerdale Farm house since the show began. The real-life exterior did not match the fictional Emmerdale Farm interior. The Sugdens were often seen to be pushed for space, and yet Lindley Farm house appeared to be very spacious indeed - with what appeared to be good-sized rooms on either side of the front door, and a side door with bedroom windows above.

In 1982, the Emmerdale Farm production team disguised the Lindley Farm side door and windows as a barn and initiated a story-line in which Jack Sugden and Pat Merrick decided to turn the barn into an extension cottage for when they married. Of course, Matt and Dolly Skilbeck finally moved into the extension cottage when it was completed, and the exterior of Lindley Farm house then corresponded far better to the fictional interior layout of Emmerdale Farm - the only remaining mystery being the window to the left of the front door. The window to the right was supposedly the parlour. But no other room was ever mentioned in the story-line as far as I'm aware.

Perhaps the most controversial story-line of the Anne W Gibbons era was the teenage pregnancy of Sandie Merrick in 1983. The whole Merrick storyline was actually quite daring back in those days - with Tom and Pat splitting up (Pat endured a beating from Tom in 1981) and Jackie torching the caravan the family had lived in before Pat's marriage to Jack in 1982.

Tempestuous Beckindale teens of the 1980s - Jackie burns the caravan and Sandie confides in Annie Sugden about her pregnancy.

By the end of the Anne W Gibbons era in 1983, Emmerdale Farm had undergone many changes. With the highly subversive and influential Brookside serial underway on Channel 4 from November 1982, and with the opening years of the 1980s being a time of turbulence and great change (as indeed was the rest of the decade), many more changes would be seen in Beckindale as Richard Handford took the producer's chair from 1983-1986.

Anne W Gibbons went on to produce the Beiderbecke Affair.

Friday 8 May 2009

Anne W Gibbons - Taking Emmerdale Farm In To The '80s...

This photograph was captioned: Producer Anne Gibbons discusses a point in the script with Henry and Amos. "Henry and Amos" were, of course, in reality, Arthur Pentelow and Ronald Magill.

From The Hotten Courier, YTV Emmerdale Farm promotional material, September, 1980:

PROGRAMME PRODUCER LOOKS FORWARD TO A PRODUCTIVE NEW SEASON

By Our Television Correspondent

On completion of her first full year as Producer of 'Emmerdale Farm', Anne Gibbons looks forward to her second with a great deal of enthusiasm and excitement. As she told me...

"Considerable work and effort goes into a twice weekly series like 'Emmerdale Farm'. It's worth pointing out that that for this new season, which begins transmission in September, production started in June, and pre-production work began as far as back as last December. When a draft of the proposed shape of the new series was drawn up, I had meetings with the creator Kevin Laffan, Executive Producer Michael Glynn, Script Editor Michael Russell and the scriptwriters who are to be involved in writing the 44 episodes.

In March, the first writer submitted his proposed storyline for the first six episodes, and the new season was underway and had automatically slipped into gear.

The first production team joined at the beginning of June, as the first six scripts were finalised and broken down into shooting order. Locations were found, sets built, props bought and hired, costumes purchased, and graphics ordered. Schedules, call sheets, camera scripts and detailed instructions poured from the 'Emmerdale' office.

We held casting sessions in both Leeds and London to find the right guest artists to be contracted for new roles.

Suddenly, we were moving faster down the production highway.

Production team number one went 'on the road' in June - just as the second team moved in to prepare for the next six episodes.

We were gathering speed and the revs were up.

The third production team is now underway; and with three teams at various stages of production with a total of 18 episodes, and a further 18 scripts discussed, commissioned and in the pipe-line, we are cruising along in top gear.

An extension to the hours in a day, or even days in the week would be very welcome - overdrive perhaps!"

Bugle Note:

Anne W Gibbons produced Emmerdale Farm from 1979 to 1983, spanning the show's tenth anniversary in October 1982. It was Ms Gibbons' task to take Emmerdale Farm well and truly into the 1980s - and all of us here at The Bugle think she did a grand job!