Director on the first night of RTÉ, CHRISTOPHER FITZ-SIMONrecalls the cast of people put together and how Gate actor Charles Mitchel stole the show

AT THE age of 25 I was home for Christmas from Canada, whence I had emigrated after receiving my Trinity degree. There was an inconspicuous paragraph in The Irish Timesstating that the Radio Éireann Authority, chaired by the distinguished BBC compere Eamonn Andrews, had appointed the 39-year-old Ed J Roth as director general of radio and of the proposed television service. I wrote a line to Mr Roth.

I was surprised by the promptness of the reply inviting me to meet the director general on December 26th. An elderly janitor admitted me to the radio headquarters on the top floor of the GPO. Mr Roth, a tall pale gentleman with a Boston accent, was looking somewhat becalmed at his desk in the spacious attic, unattended by administrative staff. He requested tea. The janitor’s body language demonstrated his desire to be elsewhere on St Stephen’s Day.

I gabbled my prepared monologue, the DG regarding me with what I felt was an uncomprehending eye. I said I had been chair of the Dublin University Players and an assistant stage-manager playing supporting roles in all the Dublin theatres except the Abbey. I had then found regular employment in Toronto with CBC which was producing three television dramas a week – so I was highly conversant with studio procedures. It was – naturally – my greatest desire to become involved in the setting up of the television service in my own country.

“Do you speak Irish?” the DG enquired. I admitted to a fairish Leaving Certificate, hastening to mention that my great great great grand-aunt Eibhlín Ní Chonaill had written the greatest – well, yes – elegiac poem in the Irish language. Tea appeared, the milk contained in a cup without a handle. The DG asked if I would care to write him a memo suggesting how a drama department should be organised.

“Naming names?”

“Sure thing.”

He then enquired what I felt was wrong with Radio Éireann.

“First of all, I wouldn’t serve tea to the director general in broken crockery.”

“It is 95 per cent sure you’ll get a job in this station,” declared Mr Roth.

The following summer I was summoned to a training course in premises rented from the Marian College in Ballsbridge while Ronnie Tallon’s elegant Miesian Television Centre was slowly rising out of the mud surrounding Montrose House in Donnybrook.

I was intrigued to find that a number of those whom I’d named to the DG had already been appointed – among them Hilton Edwards, co-founder of the Gate Theatre, as head of drama and Alpho O’Reilly, a Gate designer now creating sets for several popular Granada TV series, as head of design. Joan O’Rourke, also from the Gate, was installed as wardrobe mistress. Edwards announced that he planned to produce three plays a week.

As the months rapidly passed and it became clear that far greater resources of personnel would be needed, two executives went in search of experienced technicians in Britain and the United States. These Irish emissaries were clearly not speaking to one another, for two heads of cameras and two of lighting were appointed, one from either jurisdiction, and a second head of design, Bill McCrow, joined Alpho O’Reilly – a certain and persistent recipe for pique.

Then Michael Barry, the BBC’s suave head of drama, arrived as controller of programmes. He immediately appointed five experienced programme directors from his native patch and pounced upon the impracticalities of current organisation and budgeting. Edwards’s extravagant plans were swept aside, but not before he had purchased scripts from several colleagues, among them Orson Welles, Micheál MacLiammóir and Maura Laverty.

Most of this was uisce fé thalamh to us trainees as we strove to master our assignments. I, who had never entered a newsroom, was posted as director of news broadcasts. Fortunately there was a very able head of news in the breezy Desmond Greally from ITN.

I spent a week at ITN distinguishing the news-gathering characteristics of com.opt, sep.mag, com.mag and mute film, and the potentialities of the latest recording phenomenon, videotape. We engaged Charles Mitchel, a stylish Gate actor, as newsreader.

At Montrose there were dry runs of bulletins in the tiny Studio 3 (Studios 1 and 2 would not be ready for the opening, so larger scale programmes were recorded in the Bourke Strand Electric studios in the city centre (Mr Andrews was a member of the enterprising Bourke clan).

A nervous excitement fizzed in the starry opening night air, yet the prevailing emotion was one of brash confidence. We hung around waiting for the availability of Studio 3 while the chairman, director general and controller of programmes escorted the Archbishop of Dublin, the Very Rev. John Charles McQuaid, to impart Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, live at 7.08pm. Production of Benediction was assigned to a BBC director, Ms Chloe Gibson, on account of her experience and the fact that she was a Roman Catholic. Studio operatives knelt to kiss the Archbishop’s ring. The space was so confined that an taoiseach and Mrs Lemass could only be seen by viewers on the edge of screen, immobile on kneelers, like donors in a Renaissance painting.

When the archepiscopal entourage had retired we rushed into the studio, fanning aside the incense with our scripts. The lead news story showed that snow was general over Ireland. Certainly our pictures looked lovely. Clips from the opening speeches by the president and the minister for post and telegraphs were replayed. There were messages from Pope John XXXIII, Bing Crosby and King Hussein of Jordan. Next morning we awoke to read of our success. The hero of the moment was Mitchel, described by the critic Gabriel Fallon as “reading the news with dignity and ease”.

I remained with news for three months, taking on the Benediction portfolio because I was in the building for the Sunday bulletin. I then migrated to my chosen field of drama, the controller having solicited suggestions for a domestic serial. Only I responded, proposing a development of Mrs Laverty's play Tolka Rowwith its ready-made family unit. It became an instantaneous hit with a very capable Dublin cast. I was despised by my intellectual friends for my descent to the rabblement.