Charles OrrCharles Orr, who has died aged 97, was a talented journalist who worked for several print media in England and Ireland, including The Irish Times under the editorship of R.M. "Bertie" Smyllie.
Former colleagues, friends and family speak of a quiet-spoken, very private professional who had excellent judgment and a marvellous sense of humour. He had a taste and talent for both tabloid and broadsheet journalism.
In a career including the former Northern Whig, the Press Association, Reuters, Hulton's international picture agency, the Daily Mail, Sunday Dispatch, News of the World, the former Dublin Evening Mail, and Sunday Review, he sub-edited, reported and wrote features. He also held several senior positions.
A former junior colleague at the Sunday Review, recalls "a thorough gentleman" who never raised his voice and whose correction of others' mistakes was gentle and understated. This was in stark contrast to the tone of many editors in more chaotic days.
Among those Orr interviewed were Charlie Chaplin, Sean Bourke, accomplice of the spy George Blake, the Lennons - John, Cynthia and Yoko Ono - Sir Compton Mackenzie, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. In the early 1970s he interviewed Martin McGuinness of the IRA and claimed to be the first newspaperman to enter "no go" Londonderry, as he called it.
Born in 1907 in Donaghadee, Co Down, Orr graduated in commerce from Queen's University Belfast. His Church of Ireland father Joseph, an RIC sergeant, was involved in trying to prevent Ulster Volunteer gun-running at the small port. His mother Margaret (née Beattie) attributed his early death while Charles was a child to the strain of this activity, which included being taken captive. After his death his mother opened a boarding house, and the death of Orr's younger sister, Ethel, was another "bitter blow" to her, he wrote later.
Orr got a job on the Northern Whig, where he was a reporter and sub-editor. He also acted as stringer for the Daily Mail to boost his meagre salary. But his wedding in 1940 to Dorothy Withers, daughter of a senior Irish Times journalist, coincided with a new job in the Press Association's London headquarters.
Wartime bombing forced a family move from London to a farm in Speen, Buckinghamshire. In his early years Orr moved constantly back and forth between England and Ireland.
During the war he was offered a job by Smyllie, who explained that The Irish Times was "under scrutiny because of its old-fashioned appearance". He wanted Orr to make it more attractive without alienating more conservative readers. Orr was appointed deputy chief sub-editor. It was not until 1941, when Germany invaded Russia, that the paper started regularly putting news on the front page.
Smyllie hadn't the foggiest about production, but when Orr left he was accorded a "knockdown" by printers, a rare honour for a journalist.
When the Sunday Dispatch closed he was northern news editor, based in Manchester. He returned to Ireland as assistant editor of the Evening Mail. Later he was assistant editor of the Sunday Review until this Irish Times project failed in the mid-1960s.
There followed a 19-year career with the News of the World. He was its first staff man in Ireland and negotiated an Irish edition to overcome church objections to its appearance here. He was the author of the paper's popular Charles Grattan page.
In his 1989 autobiography, Splash! Drama And Comedy In A Newspaperman's Career, Orr wrote of the pro-British Smyllie's arduous and painful position during the "Emergency" years of censorship; of an often hilarious newspaper pub culture peopled by Myles na gCopaleen, Paddy Campbell, Patrick Kavanagh (whom Smyllie avoided when he could), and other characters in their prime; and of the encroachment of "bloody grocers" as shareholders. The book was launched by the late former editor, Douglas Gageby, who wrote in a foreword that Orr was a "splendid storyteller".
In it Orr wrote of chasing Charlie Chaplin on a Waterville lake to get an interview. He succeeded when Chaplin and family took pity on him as they watched Orr being berated by a ghillie and fisherman. The determined reporter and his photographer had "borrowed" their rowing boat for the chase.
Although work was his hobby, Orr was a keen chess player and gardener. He had lived in Greystones since 1962. Suffering in recent years from failing eyesight, he spent several months in St Columcille's Hospital, Loughlinstown, before his death. He is survived by daughters Carol and Trilby, sons Charles and Patrick and six grandchildren. He was predeceased by his wife Dorothy seven years ago.
Charles Stanley Orr: born October 24th, 1907; died July 13th, 2004