John F Kennedy Archives - Richard Dimbleby: Broadcaster

Monday Nights at Lime Grove

Through the eight years I was in charge of current affairs and talks programmes on BBC Television I spent most Monday evenings at Lime Grove. That reconstructed old film studio seemed to acquire a special air of magical excitement on Panorama nights. There was always a knot of schoolboys with autograph books in the darkness outside the main door on the look-out for visitors whose names were in that day’s headlines, or would be in the morrow’s. Sometimes a senior Minister, sometimes an anonymous group would come – for instance, women who were seen knitting throughout one Panorama and then questioned on how much of the programme content they had absorbed. One day in came a box filled with ice, into which a man was locked, and he freed himself during transmission. Mrs Barbara Woodhouse offered to give away to a good home a calf named Conquest, which we watched snuggling down in a pen in the studio with her enormous and beautifully trained Great Dane Juno. The Watford telephone exchange was swamped with eager calls at the rate of 6,000 an hour.

You never knew what to expect. One day it was a French girl of nine who was set the task of writing a poem on London at the beginning of the programme. She was seen writing hard for a while, got up and bounced a ball once or twice, went on writing, and Dimbleby finally put his excellent French to use by translating the charming verse Minou Drouet had composed. Another day there was a full-grown elephant in the fourth-floor studio, carrying a man gently across the floor with its trunk.

Dimbleby talks to a girl who is holding a toy giraffe — With Minou Drouet

When we decided to make Panorama a weekly programme in 1955 I asked my deputy, Grace Wyndham Goldie, to supervise its new look. She immediately set on it that stamp of quality which marked all her television enterprises. It was she who first demanded that Richard Dimbleby should be the new anchorman, and before soon moving off to energise in turn the start of Tonight and then of Monitor she had firmly settled the guiding lines for Panorama: integrity in its coverage of current affairs, showmanship in its intelligent exploitation of the television medium.

The changing team of Panorama reporters have contributed a wide selection of talents. Most have had to be ready (as Dimbleby forecast even during the war for his two roving European reporters) to fly off at a moment’s notice to where news was about to break. All have been interested in politics, some with one foot in it. Some left Panorama for the House of Commons, like Christopher Chataway and Woodrow Wyatt. Some came to Panorama after failing to be elected, like Robin Day and Ludovic Kennedy. Some combined journalism with a political past, like John Freeman and Angus Maude. There were ex-editors from Fleet Street, Malcolm Muggeridge and Francis Williams, and others whose background was essentially in broadcast journalism, Max Robertson, James Mossman, Michael Charlton, John Morgan, Michael Barratt, Ian Trethowan and Leonard Parkin. Others came and went. They were a talented and restless group, with a tendency to wish to leave after a few years, perhaps later to return again. Panorama reporters were welcomed by such world figures as President Kennedy, Pandit Nehru and the Shah of Persia. They were frequently involved themselves in controversy, for Panorama had to be involved in controversy, and they had to prise out cats which various vested interests preferred to keep in the bag.

A production team meeting around a table — Panorama: clockwise, Rex Moorfoot (Editor), Dimbleby, Christopher Chataway, John Freeman, David Wheeler (Assistant Editor), Woodrow Wyatt, Christopher Burstall (Production Assistant), Margaret Douglas (Production Secretary)

In Panorama’s whirlpool, as Grace Wyndham Goldie has pointed out, Richard Dimbleby himself always managed to remain at the serene centre, not at the tumultuous edge. He did not want the reputation of a Robin Day or a Malcolm Muggeridge, and so, as she put it, he became on television a kind of living embodiment of stability, a reassuring symbol that somewhere at the heart of disturbance lies a basic kindliness and an enduring common sense’.

The production teams were constantly turning over, as inventive production assistants and producers, trained in the hard school of Panorama, went off to produce new programmes of their own.

Michael Peacock was the first of several editors, each of whom brought some special attribute to Panorama: Rex Moorfoot, Michael Peacock again, after a spell with Outside Broadcasts, Paul Fox, David Wheeler and now Jeremy Isaacs.

Richard Dimbleby remained the one constant factor. He would arrive on Monday mornings and go very carefully through the elaborate studio moves, which were never the same from one programme to the next. A length of film needs to run for eight seconds on a television projector (telecine) before it reaches full speed. An anchorman has to be able to cue the start of the telecine machine and then speak for exactly eight seconds. Dimbleby was impeccable. He would finger his spectacles, indicating the start of the eight seconds, and finish his sentence invariably just as the first frame came up – or if it was late in coming he would spin out his words until out of the corner of his eye he saw the picture arrive on his monitor. He enjoyed demonstrating maps and summarising complicated situations. ‘Let me see if I can simplify it’ he would say, and one felt he was a teacher manqué as well as a surgeon manqué.

His long apprenticeship in radio had made him a master at reading a prepared commentary to a film sequence, and he could get through a last-minute session in the Lime Grove dubbing theatre much faster than most, for his readings were always right first time.

Dimbleby towers over the King of Jordan — With King Hussein of Jordan

After a day of very careful preparation he changed his clothes and ate a light supper. He would then greet, and set at ease, the important, and the unimportant, and the often temperamental protagonists we had invited to the studio. Dimbleby was invariably an excellent host, and Panorama’s guests were always anxious to meet him. So too were many distinguished visitors to London such as King Hussein of Jordan, who dined with us one night because he wished to see television in action. We took him on a tour of the studios, and finally ended up in Panorama, where a memorable interview took place with the King and Dimbleby, like Johnson and Boswell, each calling the other ‘Sir’ in every sentence.

H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh had introduced the International Geophysical Year on television, and reported on his travels in a children’s programme. The first time that he, or any other of the Queen’s immediate family, decided to allow himself to be questioned on a regular current affairs programme was at the hands of Richard Dimbleby.

There were occasions when Dimbleby almost acted as a national Ombudsman, or a restorer of national confidence. When the world was on the brink of nuclear war over Cuba, and Panorama was mounting a special programme, a woman telephoned to say she would send her children to school only if Richard Dimbleby said it was safe. He made a point of saying to an authority in the studio, ‘I am aware that a great many people today are extremely worried and frightened by what has happened, and have some awful feeling that something dreadful may happen quite quickly, suddenly. Do you think there is reason at all for short-term immediate nerves on this?’

There were several occasions when he was game to subject himself to any kind of treatment in the studio, be it an ice-cream tasting contest with Francis Williams to guess which was made with real cream, or being flung around the studio in an aircraft seat on wheels to test the shock of sudden braking, or swallowing a tiny transmitter and picking up the signals from inside his massive frame, or being spun round in a space simulator at the RAF Medical Centre. For the last programme before Panorama’s much needed annual summer break in 1959, he demonstrated the new American craze for balloon jumping from an airfield at Weston-on-the-Green. It was fascinating to watch his considerable mass reduced to nothing as his weight was counterbalanced by a balloon on his shoulders, and Dimbleby leapt ten to fifteen feet in the air and covered the same distance between strides along the ground.

He had his little vanities. One was getting the make-up assistant to black the balding patch on the back of his head, until it could no longer be disguised. In the studio there was always fun with the technical crew. During a programme which demonstrated the gimmicks of the 1964 American Election campaign, Dimbleby opened a bottle of Barry Goldwater Cologne for Men. An electrician chargehand next to him commented on the pungent aroma, and asked if it was coming from him. Dimbleby put the neck of the bottle against the chargehand’s arm meaning to ‘spot’ him, but accidentally poured a large quantity on to him. The electrician washed it off but the smell remained strong. After the programme he declared that when he got home his wife would ask searching questions as to the origin of the perfume. Dimbleby immediately wrote a note on a page of his script:

‘Dear Jackie,

This is to certify that I, Richard Dimbleby, have soaked your husband in Barry Goldwater Cologne. He is concerned in case you suspect him of wrong doings.

Personally I think it improves the brute.

Regards,

RICHARD.’

Dimbleby used to keep the studio crews in fits of laughter with earthy stories, mostly unprintable. There was wonderful teamwork, and constant banter, between him and Joan Marsden, Panorama’s regular floor manager. The floor manager wears a receiver on the belt with headphones to pick up the director’s instructions and pass them on to the studio performers. During an edition of Panorama from Sotheby’s sale room which was beamed to America by Early Bird, Joan raised her finger to give Richard the customary ‘one minute’ cue. As soon as he had finished that particular link and a piece of film was running he beckoned her over and said, ‘For Heaven’s sake don’t do that or you will find yourself having bought a picture for £10,000 – “Sold to the lady with the double deaf aid!”.’

She is one of many people for whom Monday nights at Lime Grove have lost something of their magic.

A camera points at Dimbleby and Marsden. Behind them are a row of television monitors and a row of clocks showing times in Pacific, Mountain, Central, and Eastern daylight savings time, BST and Central European time (the same times) — Inaugural programme, Early Bird, with Joan Marsden

The State Opening of Parliament

When Richard died, I had worked with him for over six years as a Panorama colleague, and had got to know him very well through innumerable Monday conversations enlivened by his earthy humour, his caustic comments on Panorama items he disliked, and his endearing love of uninhibited gossip. But I first met Richard not as a colleague but as a rival – this was in 1958 – when I was working for ITV. This gave me my first inside knowledge of his professional skill and his friendly courtesy.

The occasion was a historic one for both television and Parliament. The State Opening of Parliament by Her Majesty the Queen, a ceremony second only in splendour and solemnity to the Coronation, was to be televised for the first time. At half-past nine in the morning I climbed up through a trap-door into a wooden cubicle smaller than a telephone kiosk. It had been installed high up between the Victorian Gothic arches of the House of Lords chamber. The small glass window looked across the golden Throne at the other end. A few feet away from me, in a companion cubicle, Richard Dimbleby had squeezed into his position. He was to provide the commentary for BBC viewers; I was the ITV commentator. ‘Dimbleby v. Day’ was the theme of Press comments, or, as the Daily Express put it, ‘The Gentleman versus the Chap’.

This was an assignment in which practically everything was against me. I was a novice competing with the master craftsman, a man who knew from countless royal occasions every jewel in the Imperial Crown and every stitch on a herald’s tabard. The TV pictures were being provided by the BBC and ‘fed’ to ITV. This put me in the awkward position of having to comment on a sequence of pictures selected by a producer who was following Richard’s words. Supposing, for instance, that Peter Dimmock, the BBC producer, had shown a shot of King George V’s statue and was about to go to a shot of the Victoria Tower. Richard would be saying ‘and there is the memorial to the Queen’s grandfather, the beloved Sailor King’. Dimmock, whose camera instructions were heard on headphones by Richard and myself, would shout ‘coming to Victoria Tower’. At this, Richard would skilfully wind up his remarks about King George V and lead into a shot of the Victoria Power, like this: ‘the beloved Sailor King, George V, whose statue stands across the road opposite the great Victoria Tower’. Meanwhile I would be trying to do the same thing. The difficulty was that though Richard Dimbleby was, like myself, following Peter Dimmock’s cues, the exact moment at which Dimmock put a given picture on the screen would be timed to fit Richard’s words. As soon as Richard got to the word ‘Victoria’, up would come the tower on the screen. The BBC provided me with details of the order and timing of the shots to be taken by their cameras. Even so, it was pure luck whether my words fitted the pictures as closely as Richard’s. It was an exceedingly tricky business to form appropriate phrases with the roar of the crowds and bands in one ear, and Dimmock shouting his control-room instructions in the other: ‘Coming to Horse Guards Arch – where are you, Camera Seven? … Coming to Horse Guards Arch now … Hurry up, Richard …’ with Richard’s commentary somewhere in the background.

Another problem facing me was that of style. Only the BBC had been allowed to install cameras, but the ITV network had been given the right to have their own commentator. It was made clear to me that something different from the Dimbleby style was required. It was not made clear how this difference was to be achieved. How could one be very different in tone from Richard when describing a solemn royal occasion? Yet any attempt to imitate or outdo the master with majestic, flowing descriptions was doomed to failure.

During the preparations and rehearsals I met him several times, and if he regarded me as a somewhat brash and bumptious rival, he did not show it. He could not have been more helpful to me, though the occasion was one of the first big state occasions in which ITV had shared and Richard was naturally determined that the BBC would score a triumph. He never failed to pass on to me any point I would need to know. During my researches I was trying to locate an expert description of the elaborately ornamented throne – on which the camera was to dwell frequently. Eventually it appeared that the most authoritative and detailed description was in Richard’s hands. He readily sent me a copy, with his good wishes.

One tiny incident demonstrated to me his professional skill and experience. It had been arranged during rehearsals that at a certain point in the ceremony the cameras would dwell for a few moments on the pictures along one wall of the Royal Gallery, and I had duly memorised all necessary details of the monarchs or consorts whose portraits might be seen. Alas, when the time came the cameras had, for some unexpected reason, to focus on a completely different set of pictures hanging on the opposite wall. This did not throw Richard in the slightest. Though he did not go into names or details, his commentary flowed calmly on with appropriate references of a general kind. But I was so irritated at the unexpected change of plan that instead of continuing as best I could, I banged down the commentator’s ‘cut-off’ switch and cursed. My ‘covering’ reference came to mind too late and I regret to say that for several silent and embarrassing seconds a portrait of one of Her Majesty’s ancestors, whom I did not recognise, filled the screen undescribed and unidentified. A trivial incident – and one which few people noticed – but it made me very angry with myself at the time, and humbly envious of the veteran’s skill.

Some years later I happened to be doing the BBC commentary on President Kennedy’s inauguration. This was a ceremony which Richard would normally have covered, but for some accidental reason which I cannot recall, the assignment fell to me. He watched the broadcast with a keen professional eye, and the following Monday we discussed it in detail. From the TV commentator’s standpoint the Inaugural had been a chaotic business and my commentary must have revealed this. Richard, however, was full of a fellow professional’s understanding: ‘I could see what your problem was at that point’ or ‘I know exactly what you were up against when so-and-so happened’. And his verdict was very generous, which was typical.

In October 1959 the Dimblebys went to Buckingham Palace for Richard to receive from the hands of the Duke of Edinburgh the OBE which he had been awarded in the Birthday Honours List. He had already been the winner of many national radio and television awards.

Not everyone took to Dimbleby’s prose style, which John Crosby, the London-based columnist of the ‘New York Herald Tribune’, once attempted to convey to his American readers thus:

And now, as the leaves are turning to gold and the glittering draughts of campaign oratory turn sere and yellow in the newspaper files, let us turn our attention to the majestic cadences of Richard Dimbleby’s prose, which may have permanently affected my own and gives even this opening sentence, if I make so bold, a resplendent thunder, a faint but distant echo of Mr Dimbleby’s own glorious, and if I may, and on the whole I don’t know why I shouldn’t say, gleaming utterances. But, my God, Dimbleby, how in hell do you ever get the damned sentences to stop once you get them rolling along like this?

President Kennedy’s Funeral

One of the most tragically sudden outside broadcasts for which Richard had the minimum time to prepare was the state funeral of President Kennedy on 25 November 1963. That night he introduced Panorama via Telstar from Washington with simple and moving words as he described the sorrowing scenes:

The two children join their mother, little Caroline and little John, such poignant figures. And everybody about them in black, and they in their best coats of another colour….

President Lyndon Johnson has just arrived there. On his right-hand side is the Head of the American Secret Service, and above them the tall and splendid figure, in his robes and his mitre, of Cardinal Cushing. With him, Archbishop O’Boyle, and other members of the Roman Catholic Church here, to receive, with an arm about her shoulders, Mrs Kennedy, and give his hand to the two little children….

All the time Mrs Kennedy preserves this quiet silent dignity. Many people ask how much longer she can continue. And the family follow behind. The President, his face lined with sorrow and indeed with strain which he has shown in the three days since he took office, follows slowly behind into his place….

Those invited to attend the Mass are waiting in this, like all the Roman Catholic churches, highly decorated in a multitude of marbles and colours. President de Gaulle follows up the steep steps, Queen Frederika, King Baudouin, the Chancellor of Austria, the President and the Chancellor of West Germany – two by two – they enter from the brilliant sunshine, through the West door of the Cathedral, and inside to where the Low Pontifical Requiem begins, the choir chanting as they come in….

And thus, here in the United States, the official events of a sad and bitter day have come to an end. They leave behind, burning like the eternal flame that lit his graveside an hour ago, a thousand memories of the man lost to this nation and to the world….

If there is one thing of which every American citizen is quite certain, it is that he will never forget this day.