IBA YEARBOOK 1976 p107
Edwin Clayhanger (Peter McEnery) in his study lessons as Mr Talbot (George Waring) tries to persuade him to join the Council.
Continuing the theme of adapting the classics for television, DOUGLAS LIVINGSTONE describes how the Arnold Bennett novels became twenty-six episodes on the television screen:
There is a sense in which dramatising something as long as Clayhanger is like doing national service - you can't believe that you'll ever get through it. Episode two, three, four ... fourteen, fifteen ... is it possible to get to twenty-six? Then suddenly you're at episode twenty-five and it's discharge day next and one half of you accelerates like mad and the other half says 'slow down, slow down . . . when you've finished it's over!' And it is. And there's an incredible sense of loss. Of course now the true realisation begins . . . a new excitement begins ... the actors take over, the characters come to life. This is what one has been working towards. But for over a year Clayhanger had been mine and only mine and there is a particular thrill about that.
I first read Clayhanger on holiday about eight years ago. I can't remember having read anything before that made such an immediate 'visual' impact. I don't just mean Bennett's marvellous evocation of the industrial landscape of the 'Five Towns'. I mean the way in which his people become flesh and blood, and the situations they play out are not only 'real' but they have the compulsion of the very best form of drama. Long before I'd finished Clayhanger I knew how much I'd love to get it onto the television screen; and when I read the other two books the ambition became an obsession for me. Well, even obsessions cool off - and after five years of trying I'd almost given up hope. Then one day I got a call from Stella Richman, who had started her own production company, asking me if I had anything I wanted to do. Six months later I got the go-ahead. Stella would make Clayhanger for ATV. Five and-a-half years' talk was a reality. And the first thing I felt was rather ill. Could it be done at all ... or had I been talking out the back of my hat?
David Reid, Stella’s colleague, decided to produce it himself. From the beginning we worked very closely together and his advice and friendship were invaluable. The first problems we tackled, before the project was even taken to ATV, were how long should the serial be and how many writers should be involved? Fortunately the length was decided for us . . . the television year is divided into slots of thirteen weeks ... thirteen was obviously too short ... how about 26? I did a breakdown of the story and somehow it seemed to come out right. So 26 it was to be (although during those fourteen months of writing, and in spite of careful preparations, one of my recurring nightmares was that it would turn out to last only 24½ or even stretch to 28).
Janet Suzman, who plays Hilda Lessways, with Peter McEnery as Edwin Clayhanger, on location at Woburn Woods in Buckinghamshire.
It was now April 1973 and the first rehearsals were fixed for April 1974. We must have at least 23 or 24 completed scripts before then because no leading actor or actress would commit themselves for fifteen months' work (which was the time it was going to take to produce the whole serial) without being able to read and approve most of those scripts first. Would it be easier to bring in a second writer? I was dead against this for the possibly selfish reason that I wanted the serial to be mine -but there were also practical arguments against a second writer. Continuity would be a very difficult job -and we could end up spending as much time liaising about who-does-what-where-and-says-what-to-whom as we spent doing the actual writing itself. It meant I must, on average, complete an episode every two weeks; and, in fact, once the deadline was there the time factor never became a problem. I just had to let Clayhanger take over my life and accept the fact that I would know far more about what was going on in the Victorian Five Towns than I would about the seventies in the part of London where I live.
The first thing I did was to go to Stoke. Bennett's 'Five Towns' are now corporately known as 'Stoke', although the original towns (in fact there are six) still have their own very definite identity. I'd never been to Stoke before, which for a Bennett fan was seriously negligent. Of course I'd seen hundreds of old photographs. I stepped out of the train expecting to see the 'bottle' kilns of the potteries (so-called because of their bottle-like shape) belching black smoke over grimy Victorian streets. I'd forgotten the Clean Air Act. I doubt if there are more than a dozen bottle kilns left in the potteries, and none of these dozen are allowed to belch smoke. The most distinctive skyline in England had gone. Oh yes, much of Stoke is still as Bennett described it: 'higgledy-piggledy', 'make-shift', and certainly there is a lot of Victorian building left. But, in addition to these, it is now 'higgledy-piggledy' with modern stores demolition sites and Indian restaurants. And of course potteries with electrically fired kilns. And why, should they have done anything else but change when the experience of the poverty an disease it brought are still only one generation away!
Right for them, but not so right for us; I returned to London with the news that there was no way we could shoot very much on location in the Potteries as they are today. Some canals, some chapels, some industrial countryside, the Gladstone Pottery Museum which has been meticulously re-created as an example of how crockery used to be made, but very little else had the necessary period authenticity. It was David Reid's idea to build Stoke as it was, or at any rate some of it. To build a couple of streets and a few bottle kilns and a market and the Clayhanger's printing works on the piece of waste ground behind ATV’s Elstree Studios. I didn't know if it was possible, but Michael Bailey, the designer, and his team did such a convincing job that visitors from the Potteries who've seen over it have been known to become damp-eyed with nostalgia. As soon as this decision to 'build Stoke' was made it naturally influenced the writing. I knew our 'Five Towns' and I wrote for them.
There were certain particular problems presented by the structure of the novels. The first and greatest of them was the fact that two of the books, 'Clayhanger' and 'Hilda Lessways', cover more or less the same time span. 'Clayhanger' tells the story of Edwin Clayhanger, of his relationship with his father and of his meeting with Hilda. For the most part it is seen from his point of view. 'Hilda Lessways’ tells the story of Hilda's early life and we see her relationship with Edwin through her eyes. We also of course learn much more about her as a person in 'Hilda Lessways'. In 'Clayhanger’ she is a weird romantic figure (at times, indeed, insufferably so) but this very strangeness fascinates Edwin. In 'Hilda Lessways' she is a completely understandable human being, and her determination to escape from the choking provincial claustrophobia in which she has been brought up, together with her feelings of guilt about her conduct towards her mother, give a new drive and reason to everything she does. I felt I had to put these books together.
In adapting Arnold Bennett‘s three novels for the television screen the dramatist is faced with the problem of how best to present the past life of Darius Clayhanger (Harry Andrews).
Although it works well in two successive novels to retrace the same story, my feeling was that in a dramatisation the two books should be combined so that the story progresses over a single time-span.
This meant, of course, that for some of the time I had to follow two separate stories, the story of Edwin and the story of Hilda, weave them together whenever Edwin and Hilda met and try to combine Edwin's attitude to Hilda; (shown in 'Clayhanger') with Hilda's attitude to Edwin (shown in 'Hilda Lessways'). But then, in many ways, the trilogy of novels make up one long love story. Everything that happens to Edwin when he is not with Hilda and everything that happens to Hilda when she is not with him is essential to the success or failure of their relationships - of which the third novel, 'These Twain', is the culmination. Of course there are things I regret losing by combining the first two books - occasional surprises of plot in 'Clayhanger' which will not come as surprises to the audiences because they have also been watching the story of 'Hilda Lessways' - but I believe that there are many compensations, not least the dramatic irony of knowing what one character thinks the other is doing or feeling while at the same time knowing what that other character really does and feels.
From the dramatist's point of view the other major problem of plot to be faced was the story of Darius Clayhanger's (Edwin's father) past life. This occurs within the opening chapters of the first book and whereas it serves its purpose beautifully in the novel, David Reid and I decided that it would stop the forward thrust of the story to have a twenty minute or so 'flashback' in the first episode of the television version. I felt we could achieve a more satisfactory progression by giving the audience hints about Darius' past in the opening episode and saving the incredibly dramatic story of his childhood until that past catches up with him in Episode 12. I hope very much that those who know the books well and who might be tempted to complain at what could seem, in Episode 1, to be an omission, will wait for Episode 12 before they pass judgement; and that they will then agree with me that, in television terms, I was right. For the rest I have kept very closely to the books. There seemed no point in wantonly changing a story that works so very well as it is. In fact most of my work is trying not to reveal that I have put in any work at all.
The Clayhanger printing works were part of the authentic exterior set built on the land behind the Elstree studios.
Of course additions have to be made. Scenes which Bennett briefly mentions as having taken place have to be created, 'bridges' have to be built to replace narrative, characters he only mentions have to be given flesh and blood (characters such as the awful Mr Boutwood, who is essential to the plot but who never actually appears in a scene in the novels). In Clayhanger, as in any other dramatisation of a book which one believes to be near-perfect, the constant objective is to recreate in dramatic form exactly what the author has created in prose. It's an impossible objective. Some people might say 'so why bother to try?' Well, for one reason I believe that Arnold Bennett would have loved to write for television, and if he'd been around he'd have dramatised it himself. I suppose the only other reason for trying is that I wanted to. And it's allowed me to see the creation of some wonderful performances and to work with an enormous production team, from the studio heads through all the technical departments (and not forgetting the waitresses in ATV's Elstree canteen) who have not only given their all to something which was once only an obsession in my head, but made life such a pleasure while doing so. For their sake I hope you enjoy watching it ... and, if he's in touch, I hope Arnold Bennett does!