Grabbing 'em by the balls
- Publication: Sunday Independent
- Date: 1997-11-09
- Author: Hugh Leonard
- Page: 18
- Language: English
Sydney Newman, who created Dr Who and The Avengers, died recently aged 80. Hugh Leonard pays tribute to a man many regard as the father of modem TV drama
NEWS comes that Sydney Newman is dead. He was small, fierce, often funny Canadian who sported a bandit moustache. While working in New York, he saw Marty, Twelve Angry Men and Visit to a Small Planet and came to believe what Britain was yet to learn: that the television play was a separate and distinctive art form.
Affectionately known as El Syd, he invented Armchair Theatre and all but discovered Alun Owen, Clive Exton and, as television playwrights, Harold Pinter and myself. No one ever libelled him as an intellectual. He had only one theory about the theory of drama, and it was "You gotta get 'em by the balls in the first two minutes.
His judgements were not always flawless. My initial sighting of him was when he tottered out of a viewing-room at Teddington Lock, having sat through the pilot of a brand-new drama series. I had come to visit Guy Verney, who was to direct my first television play, and suddenly I was confronted by this already legendary figure. El Syd lurched up to me, a passing stranger, grabbed my lapels, glared at me with eyes that had looked upon horrors and said: "The Avengers ... what a fucking dog!"
In spite of his salty language, he had a puritanical streak. In that first play of mine, The Irish: Boys, there was a moment of skylarking between Normans Rodway, Patrick Bedford and two girls in the mattress factory where all four of them, worked. In the tussle, one of the girls offered a glimpse of stocking tops and white flesh above, and an outraged Sydney insisted that, an entire third of the script be reshot, this time with the girl wearing tights.
When Syd moved to the BBC, Cathy Come Home. Up the Junction and Dr Who were just three of his achievements. He hated Irish plays, not for, racist reasons, but because, in those, days, they were unpopular with viewers. Also, among, his many: granite-hard delusions was the fantasy that Irish actors were. perpetually as soused as herrings.
Sydney, they're sober," I told him. They're faking it, he replied. Then he gave me as searching look and said: "I'll bet you're crocked, too...
In spite of misgivings, he fell in with my idea that I should write two 30-minute plays, to be shown in tandem. These were an original, The Retreat, and an adaptation of Frank O'Connor's
Song Without Words. For the most part, both plays were written without dialogue, but miming took up more, screen time, than I had anticipated, and El Syd all but tore his hair out on learning" learn that instead of an hour.
Irish drama, he had two hours.
My version of the O'Connor. story, now called Silent Song reaped many golden opinions and was in due course entered for as Prix Italia. Sydney, believing that it might be looked down upon because it was a mere adaptation, ordered that the credit should read "By Frank O'Connor and Hugh Leonard". O'Connor foamed at the mouth at having his name coupled with mine, but it won the BBC their first Prix Italia for drama. I was duly given a framed certificate. Whatever the trophy itself. looked like, El-Syd grabbed it.
A few years later, he moved into feature films at Borehamwood, but succeeded in making nary a one. It was perhaps just: as well in my case, for he wanted to achieve a movie version of Silent Song starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. ("Do you think The Road to Calvary would be a bit sick?" he asked me, not quite. wholly in jest.)
I last saw him eight or nine years ago when he turned up to a Dramatists' Club dinner at the Garrick as Alun Owen's guest. Alun was very drunk and sad and seemed to have a mouth full of broken, teeth. Grievances came from him in a flood. He was, loud and bitter, and El Syd was mortified and signalled to me to assist his escape. We shared a taxi and he told me about his wife Betty, who was our friend and had died from a bone-softening disease.
helped Betty to die," Syd told me, and I don't care who knows it." I had flown over, for the dinner in hopes of a rip-roaring night out. Instead, I went back, to my hotel profoundly depressed and used the bedroom. stationery to write out my resig nation from the Dramatists' Club. Maybe writers choose their. lonely calling because they simply aren't fit for civilised company.
Now that he has gone, aged 80, I prefer to think of El Syd as he was in his prime, causing ructions at the fashionable Coq d'Or restaurant until he was provided with a bottle of HP Sauce. Or, most vividly, I remember him at the ABC studios at Teddington Lock.
One summer's day, after read-through of my play Great." Big Blonde, we brought our lunches from the pub next, door, to where tables had been set up on the lawn by the Thames. It was idyllic. The sun was shining; there was a rainbow in the spray over the lock, and we ate our cold cuts and sipped our beer. El Syd was in the middle of an anecdote when a lone, fat bumble-bee alighted on the edge of a plate
At once, Sydney leaped to his feet, whirling around, arms threshing. Over went the table, plates, beer, all. "It's these fucking wasps," El Syd screamed. "They're ruining my life!"
Caption: BASIC INSTINCTS: The late, great Sydney Newman
Disclaimer: These citations are created on-the-fly using primitive parsing techniques. You should double-check all citations. Send feedback to whovian@cuttingsarchive.org
- APA 6th ed.: Leonard, Hugh (1997-11-09). Grabbing 'em by the balls. Sunday Independent p. 18.
- MLA 7th ed.: Leonard, Hugh. "Grabbing 'em by the balls." Sunday Independent [add city] 1997-11-09, 18. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Leonard, Hugh. "Grabbing 'em by the balls." Sunday Independent, edition, sec., 1997-11-09
- Turabian: Leonard, Hugh. "Grabbing 'em by the balls." Sunday Independent, 1997-11-09, section, 18 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Grabbing 'em by the balls | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Grabbing_%27em_by_the_balls | work=Sunday Independent | pages=18 | date=1997-11-09 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=5 December 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Grabbing 'em by the balls | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Grabbing_%27em_by_the_balls | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=5 December 2025}}</ref>
