|
|
Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 7 |
|
HE WHO MUST BE REVERRED
|
Rumpole's creator wasn't
any ordinary lawyer
of TheColumnists.com
Before I interviewed John Mortimer in 1995, I researched his background and was more flabbergasted with each page I turned in his remarkakble biography. How could one individual pack so much accomplishment into a single lifetime, I wondered. And I'm still wondering how he managed to do it.
Mortimer, who died Jan. 16 at age 85, long ago established himself as one of the most creative and successful literary men in England. He wrote novels, stage plays, radio dramas, television scripts and did them all successfully. He'd be famous if he'd only written the teleplay for the immortal 1981 TV miniseries masterpiece "Brideshead Revisited," which today is regarded as one of the most-reverred classic TV sagas.
But then he also created one of TV's most beloved characters--Horace Rumpole of the long-running television series "Rumpole of the Bailey," one of the most popular series in the history of PBS' "Mystery!"
As a playwright, he wrote the extraordinary "A Voyage Round My Father," based on his own relationship with his lawyer father, which was a hit on the London stage with Alec Guinness. Later, he adapted it for television and Laurence Olivier played the father. Olivier also had starred in one of Mortimer's other great television programs, "The Ebony Tower," based on the novel by John Fowles.
Mortimer also wrote lots of movies, including one of the very best ghost stories of all time, "The Innocents" (1961), adapted from Henry James' "Turn of the Screw" and starring Deborah Kerr.
But then you need to consider his career as a lawyer. Mortimer was one of England's most respected trial lawyers, a QC (Queen's Counsel) whose specialty was free speech cases. He successfully defended the British publishers of D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" in a precedent-setting censorship case and also defended Hubert Selby's novel "Last Exit to Brooklyn" against obscenity charges. Among his other successful cases: Defending the punk rockers The Sex Pistols against obscenity charges and defending Wole Soyinka, the Nobel-prizewinnng author, in a free speech case in Nigeria. (Mortimer was hired by Amnesty International for that case.)
In fact, Mortimer was such an acclaimed lawyer that it always seemed strange that he would have created Horace Rumpole, a clever lawyer, but one who was widely believed to be a tosspot worthy of defending only the lowlifes of British society. Under constant criticism by his wife, Hilda ("She who must be obeyed") for his lack of ambition, Rumpole was a humorous character who seemed happy to be relegated to the role of defender of the lumpen proletariat's seamier criminal types.
In our 1995 inteview, done for "Mystery! A Celebration," my companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" TV series, Mortimer explained that he was more than 50 years old when he first created Horace Rumpole out of bits and pieces of his own and his father's personalities, mixed with the odds and ends of characters he'd come across in his many years in the legal profession.
He admitted he'd been searching for a literary character to "tide him over" in his old age with a story published here or there. He was totally unprepared for Rumpole to become his most celebrated accomplishment, but certainly was happy when Rumpole became a phenomenon on TV in both the U.S. and the U.K.
Though PBS's "Mystery!" has resumed production of the Hercule Poirot series with David Suchet, "Rumpole of the Bailey" currently holds the crown as the series with the most episodes on "Mystery!"--39 altogther, four more than "Poirot" so far. Mortimer told me he was flummoxed by the popularity of Rumpole on American public television because he didn't think Americans would "get" a series about England's quite different judicial system.
In fact, Mortimer told me he thought "Rumpole" was only going to play on a Boston PBS station, not throughout the whole nation. ("Mystery!" is produced at WGBH, the PBS station in Boston.)
Mortimer first wrote Rumpole as a one-shot TV play for the BBC called "Rumpole of the Bailey." It was a great success--with actor Leo McKern playing Rumpole--but the BBC somehow didn't realize what a goldmine Mortimer had presented it with and passed up the chance to turn it into a series. Thames Television stepped in and made the subsequent series.
Mortimer always wrote the TV plays first, then turned them into stories for print. He continued that trend until McKern tired of playing the role and gave up the series. Mortimer continued to write Rumpole stories and novels after the TV series left the air, which is probably why efforts to revive the series with a different actor have been discussed ever since McKern died. So far it hasn't happened.
Oddly, Mortimer made Rumpole 68 years old when he first appeared in print. He laughed and explained, "He must be over 100 by now!"
When our talk was over, I knew that I'd just spoken with a true literary genius, not to mention a barrister who obviously was world class. Mortimer was convivial, thoughtful and refreshingly self-effacing. He remains in my memory one of the truly great individuals I've met in a long career as a journalist.
Now that he's gone, I believe it's time for me to prowl once more through all his books and all those wonderful "Rumpole" episodes. They'll be forever entertaining, of that I'm absolutely certain.
©2009 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Jan. 19, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|