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Reviewed by:
  • Bernard Shaw and the BBC
  • David Hendy
L.W. Conolly . Bernard Shaw and the BBC. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Pp. 292, illustrated. $45.00 (Hb).

During a broadcast in 1932, Shaw told his listeners he had been asked "to say some nice things to you." "But," he added, "saying nice things is not my business" (qtd. in 69). This was putting it mildly. Almost nothing in Shaw's dealings with radio or television – and particularly in those dealings with his most consistent patron, the British Broadcasting Corporation – was straightforward.

We might have expected an altogether smoother relationship to have bloomed. Broadcasting's formative years coincided neatly with Shaw's period as an international superstar. Here was an accomplished playwright, critic, social campaigner, controversialist, Nobel Laureate, Oscar winner. [End Page 119] He had plenty to say and, being possessed of a fine Dublin lilt and an engaging manner before a microphone, could say it well. Though he never wrote "radio drama" as such, his stage plays – "strongly characterized dialogue uncomplicated by trivial action" (74–75) – appeared especially well suited to the new, "blind" medium. The BBC, desperate to establish broadcasting as a creative force (and equally keen to establish itself as the natural guardian of this process), wanted as much Shaw as possible. With an eye to critical opinion, it calculated that his every appearance would further its own standing. Unsurprisingly, then, the corporation's director-general and founding spirit, Sir John Reith, though hardly in political sympathy with Shaw, was invariably solicitous. Shaw, however, never made matters easy. Indeed, whatever his obvious qualities as a broadcaster, he was clearly every producer's worst nightmare. He excoriated one and all for their inadequacies and idiocies, real or imagined. "They really are a pack of duffers," he once complained (157). The BBC faced a man seemingly obsessed with fees, unpredictable in response to program suggestions, unwilling to cut his material, and unflinchingly sneering about the corporation's production efforts. Here was the infamous "Shaw problem."

The story of this creative but fractious relationship is traced in exhilarating detail in L.W. Conolly's well-researched and elegantly written book. He takes us from the first tentative negotiations for getting Shaw on air in the mid-1920s (when the author was at pains to secure a principle of payment and the BBC constrained by heavy-handed restrictions on the broadcasting of "controversial" matters) through to Shaw's first exposure on television in 1937, and finally, right up to the tortuous, behind-the-scenes preparations for his death in 1950. Snippets from Man and Superman appeared on the BBC as early as 1923. Over the next three decades, more than twenty of Shaw's plays were produced in full, and countless other extracts were broadcast on either television or radio. Shaw was also frequently invited (though he less frequently agreed) to offer provocative talks, with such grand titles as "What is Coming?" (1925), "Whither Britain?" (1934), and "Freedom" (1935). For the BBC, these were important events, invariably given top billing. Not that Shaw thought they truly did him justice: his protean shifts from splenetic fury to relative cordiality were a wonder to behold. The man – wise and infuriatingly self-righteous in equal measure – comes through in shining clarity in these pages. A wonderful set of appendices also provides a definitive listing of Shaw's contributions and the full texts of various talks and obituaries, some published for the first time. Researchers should salivate at a treasure-trove of fresh information.

If I have a doubt, it is over whether Conolly does justice to the BBC's role in the relationship. It too often comes across as rather monolithic and cackhanded. In the sections covering 1946 to 1950, for example, different parts [End Page 120] of the corporation's machinery are shown dealing in very different ways with the issue of how to prepare Shaw's obituaries. It is accused of being "shambolic," indecisive. Undoubtedly, this wasn't the BBC's finest hour. One factor may have been the influence of the Home Service's deeply conservative controller, Lindsay Wellington, a man who "walked" rather than ran his channel. But there...

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