Stanley Dorfman
Background
From Lynn MCCulloch – Facebook
I don’t know how many people know or remember Stanley Dorfman from the early days of “Top Of The Pops”. Stanley was the original Co-Producer and Director of TOTP and he also created and directed the “In Concert” series for the BBC. He is now living in the States.
Geoff Fletcher
A good bloke was Mr Dorfmann, and well liked by the TOTP crews.
From my 1967 diary:-
| Thursday 16th February 1967 | Notes |
| Jim’s booze up as he is leaving the crew. Also Stan’s as he is leaving Top of the Pops. … | G: Top of the Pops Crew 11 – Johnny Lintern Heron Tracking Camera 1 – Johnny Lintern Stan Dorfmann – Director |
Pat Heigham
I remember Stanley Dorfman as the designer on “The Black and White Minstrel Show”,
around 1962-64 ish.
I think I have a shot of him on my unofficial 8mm Colour cine fim.
Bernie Newnham
On Crew 7 we did lots of Stan Dorfman shows, including the now famous Lulu/Henrix piece. When you went back to the gallery afterwards there was always a strong herbal smell about the place. A Dorfman quote: “Don’t show me that Ron, we had that on rehearsal”. Always lots of fun.
Graeme Wall
Stan was off TOTP when I joined, replaced by Johnnie Stewart with his infamous “man on a stool” credit caption.
I did some of the “In Concert”s at TVT on the inlay desk. As the show was ad-libbed and the closing roller went through my desk, I had to mimic the vision mixer, Rick Gardner, for the last few minutes and actually cut the show “live” while the roller was going through. Something Rick didn’t like at all.
Geoff Fletcher
What happened to Rick – did he become a Director?
Graeme Wall
Rick became a director, if I recall correctly first at LWT, then came with Alan Boyd and Gill Stribling-Wright to TVS, working at Maidstone. He then went on to work with Meridian.
Del Martin
I think Rick Gardner was directing for Ents & Events at the Beeb in mid-eighties. I remember him doing the Everly Brothers reunion concert at the Albert Hall – produced by Alan Yentob, I believe.
Steve Jellyman
Rock’s name was ‘Jack’ in my day!
He was No 4 Cameraman on Reg Poulter’s Crew 4 in about 1966!
Geoff Fletcher
Yes he was, and he is mentioned many times in my diary. I have this mental image of him – pink open neck shirt with medallion around his neck and overly tight white or cream trousers. He introduced himself to with the words “Hi – I’m Jack Gardner – call me Rick!” He was a source of great amusement to good old Pete Ware who ragged Rick unmercifully – all of which Rick took with good grace and humour. He was much enamoured of Suzie in Make-Up and she had him around her little finger and we fellow crew members followed the ups and downs of their relationship with some amusement.
Loads of jolly stories in my diary as I say, but maybe better left there!
Peter Fox
Rock Gardner! If he only he had thought of that 30 years ago! Maybe not.
John Vincent
Who was the OB engineer who, when Rick asked what was wrong with his credit, said: “They forgot to put the P in front of it”.
Tony Crake
It sounds like Frank Davidson… the ‘one eyed’ vision supervisor… ! Well, he always wore a black eye patch. He was known for his “acidic turn of phrase”.
Peter Cook
At Evesham it was Jack Gardener. Rick emerged, I think, when he became a VM. Later on he directed amongst other things a series called “Disco”, a pop quiz compered by the great Terry Wogan. Even Tel could not elevate this programme to survivable status. At the end of one programme Rick was shouting that there was something wrong with his credit caption. Frank, the vision supervisor, replied on talkback: “Yes they have left the P off it”. From then on Mr. Gardener was known affectionately as: – “P-Rick”.
Stan Dorfman did a series of Jazz programmes (including a Buddy Rich gig) “Jazz at the Dorchester”. One of the stalwarts on LO6, a steady competent chap, came in for a lot of stick on talkback. When challenged later, he simply replied “I was doing what I was directed to do.” It was of course not quick enough for Stan’s quicksilver changes of mind. And I doubt we had noise cancelling cans! Suggestions of a crew change for the next show fell on deaf ears, just recrewed our star player on to the WA. We never had such problems with Terry Henebury or Colin Charman.
Nick Ware
Rex Palmer and I paid Rick’s mortgage in a house-share in Hanwell for several years. It was ‘interesting’, to say the least. And bear in mind, this was at the time the Harry Goodwin thing was going on behind a fish and chip shop in Chiswick High Road!
Years later, I used to bump into Alan Boyd at LWT quite often, but I don’t think I ever saw Rick there.
During the time I was “attached” to Len Shorey, he used to refer to Stanley Dorfman as “Mr. Vagueness”. I pointed out that SD’s vagueness was a clear sign of his (not misplaced) complete confidence in Len. I’m not sure if he was convinced. Probably not.
Ah, Len, how I missed that man when I left.
Mike Giles
I dubbed a series of “Country and Western” shows in Sypher 1, recorded at Wembley, with Rick Gardener. On about the second dub he offered me a couple of tickets for the next show, which I couldn’t use, so I gave them to my parents who would probably have been in their seventies at the time. Almost front row seats, as I recall when I caught sight of them on the recording ~ at least they were there during the first half, but beat a hasty retreat at the interval because they couldn’t take the sound level!
Rick never commented and I think the stage manager made sure their seats were taken by others. I remember being given a small, embroidered rose by one of the C & W promoters, but somebody told me afterwards to look after it, because they were like hen’s teeth, so we stuck it on a picture hanging on the dining room wall, but just like teeth, it fell out when we moved house.
Andrew Gosling
Roger Bunce
For those who remember Andrew Gosling, Director of many whacky, off-the-wall BBC programmes, gentleman hippy and all round nice guy, here is a copy of his obituary – written by his long-term collaborator Ian Keill.
It was written for “Prospero”, but they insisted on cutting it down from 1,500 words to just 350! For us professionals, this is the full version:
Click on Download PDF to see the PDF in an alternative viewer: this allows you to print or save the complete PDF document, and often makes the document easier to read.
To return to this page, use your browser’s Go Back One Page button.
Dave Mundy
Well worth the extra words! It could be, IS, the story of our great and much lamented organisation about how it gave free rein to individuals with crazy ideas which made memorable TV, what a sad loss for the licence payers when you consider the dross that the ‘suits’ think is good TV nowadays.
Roger Bunce
How wonderful it was when talented people (however eccentric) could more-or-less make the programmes they wanted to make (however experimental), without having to ‘pitch’ the idea to some 12-year-old Commissioning Editor, with no understanding of Television, creativity, or anything much else – And without going before a panel of Accountants, who only wanted to cut production budgets to make more money for Accountants. Budgets were much smaller then, of course, but they went much further, because they didn’t have to pay for all the extra bureaucracy or all those fictitious ‘overheads’. If we’ve got a free studio, you can use it. If we’ve got a free crew you can have them – and they’ll be sufficiently skilled and experienced to insure that your idea (however bonkers) will end up as a professional-looking programme. Grumble, Grumble. It was all much better in my day, etc.
