BLACKMAILING MASTERPIECE THEATRE ... AND WHO THE HELL IS FRANK GILLARD???

　
　
          Masterpiece Theatre had its 40^th birthday in January and almost nobody noticed. But I got nostalgic about it. So just for fun, I went to Wikipedia and was told that the original idea for Masterpiece Theatre -- now the longest running drama series in TV history -- came from a man named Frank Gillard. Then I went to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) website and learned that Christopher Sarson was ‘the founder’ of the series.(Note the singular)

         Well, I said to myself, I’ll be goddamned!! Or maybe I’ll just be gob smacked!!
         Success, as everyone knows, has many parents; failure none. And I understand there are often different truths within the framework of success. In fact, I’ve always been willing to make allowances for exaggeration, shading, semi-truth and charitable interpretation. But I’m not willing to warp the truth beyond recognition.
         So it’s time to set the record straight and to unbend a few historical abuses.
         Christopher Sarson was not ‘the founder’ of Masterpiece Theatre. Not even close. But he did contribute a great deal to its start-up and to its early success. More of that later.And who the hell is Frank Gillard?
         I never heard of him and I was there. In fact, I named Masterpiece Theatre and was one of its three principal founders. (Please note the plural.) The other two were Stan Calderwood, then a senior executive at station WGBH in Boston; and Herb Schmertz, the newly-appointed Vice President of Public Affairs for Mobil Corporation.

       And here’s my true version of how Masterpiece Theatre was born …. and nearly died in its adolescence when the forces of public broadcasting adamantly and dogmatically rejected a series Mobil (meaning Schmertz and I) had found and wanted to broadcast. In the end, and after a long and bitter battle, I virtually ‘blackmailed” the series onto the air, It was called ’Upstairs Downstairs’.
        But more of that later too.
        It all began in early 1970 when Stan Calderwood, in a meeting arranged by Mobil‘s ad agency, asked Herb Schmertz whether Mobil would be interested in underwriting a 13-part BBC adaptation of Henry James’ ‘Portrait of a Lady’ starring Richard Chamberlain. Chsmberlain, before moving to England, had been wildly popular in America as the star of the ‘Dr. Kildare’ series on NBC. Calderwood believed that the James adaptation, combined with Chamberlain’s marquis value, might be celebrated as enthusiastically as the ‘Forsyte Saga’ which was shown on various educational TV stations (principally in New York and Boston) a few years before.
        I was a consultant to Mobil at the time and, as it happens, was looking for an opportunity for the company to gain a presence on public television’s first national network, PBS, which was to be created in October of that same year. But I doubted this was the opportunity.
        For one thing, despite all the hoopla, far more people talked about ‘The Forsyte Saga’ than ever watched it: and for another, almost nobody watched Kenneth Clark’s famed ‘Civilization’ series despite its splendid reviews and intellectual cachet. And both came from the BBC.
        Still, Schmertz and I agreed that we should at least look at ’Portrait of a Lady’. Which we did along with Calderwood and Peter Roebeck, the Beeb’s distributor in the United States.
        We were shocked. The show was worse than bad. It was terrible.
        Yet during four or five hours of (painful) screening, it came to light that a number of other ‘serial dramas’, as they were then called, were already in the BBC’s vaults. Maybe, just maybe, we thought, there might be more here than meets the eye (excuse the pun).
        So off we flew -- under Roebeck’s wary eye -- to London where lo and behold … we found the mother lode: wonderful BBC television adaptations of novels by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Thackeray, Balzac, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Hughes, two more by Henry James and more.
        What to do with it all was obvious and almost spontaneous. Instead of Calderwood’s modest proposal, we said, let’s create something entirely new: a full season of dramatized novels by great writers!! In truth, the idea just seemed to emerge by itself. It came from each of us and from none of us.
         Within weeks, we’d closed the deal between Mobil and WGBH which, in turn, closed the deal with Roebeck. We’d already agreed that we needed to package the programs in a unique way and would also need to produce ’wrap arounds’ to introduce and conclude each program. I suggested ’Masterpiece Theatre’ as a working title until someone could think of something better. No-one did; so to my surprise, the title stuck.
        It was then that WGBH assigned a member of its staff, Christopher Sarson, to be line producer on the project. Chris, a likeable and very affable Englishman, was responsible for designing the final package, picking the theme music, the set, etc. In fact, it was probably Chris who suggested employing Alastair Cooke as host, although I can’t remember exactly. I do recall Mobil asking my opinion and my being enthusiastic about the possibility because I’d seen Cooke many times on ‘Omnibus’, a CBS Sunday afternoon program on the humanities. He struck me as perfect: urbane, sophisticated and articulate.

        Thus on January 10, 1971, Masterpiece Theatre was born -- almost at the same time as PBS -- as a collaborative effort of Mobil and of WGBH. None of us had even a hint that it would become an iconic institution. But it certainly did .. and the people who made it happen -- and who brought ‘mini-series’ into the American vocabulary -- have never received due credit.

        So thank you, Stan Calderwood, although I doubt you‘re still with us; and thank you, Herb Schmertz, who’s retired and living in the New York area. You created Masterpiece Theatre .. not Chris Sarson who contributed a great deal at the beginning and not Frank Gillard who -- although once a senior radio executive at the BBC -- nobody (and I mean NOBODY) connected to the project ever heard of.
        And what I want to know is … how can I ever trust Wikipedia again? And how can you?
        I guess the old axiom is true: ‘Don’t believe everything you read.’ Especially on the internet.


 

         Okay, I’ve run out of steam. So in my next blog, I’ll describe the war over ‘Upstairs Downstairs’, and public television’s deep-seated and self-destructive distrust of the corporate world. At the time, I should have sensed it coming.
          Finally, the winner of ‘The Tackiest Street In America’ contest wasn’t even a street. It was a question.
           A friend from upstate New York wrote:
                                 “Does an aisle in Walmart count?”            She will receive the full sized statue of Andrew Dice Clay dressed as a Degas ballerina as soon as I receive her money order for shipping and for transportation and hotel costs for the dresser.
           Until next time. Spread this blog around to friends.. Or enemies. The link is

　
　

http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/