Interview with Peter Cotes from 1990. He came to Australia and made some TV plays.
Tape 1 - talks about childhood and family. Being a Boulting. A bit bitchy about brothers calls Roy "an unhappy man". Says "actors on the whole are very stupid people" except his wife Joan. Talks Donald Wolfit working with Herbert Wilcox. Tape 2 - talks about acting. A lot about Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle. Very bitchy. Tape 3 talks about Wilcox and his brothers and father. Tape 3 more film stuff. Tape 4 talks about Upturned Glass. Tape 5... Talks about directors, including Brian Desmond Hurst who would "flaunt his homosexuality" and who PC disliked. Mentions Carol Reed's nice manners. Mostly talks about acting. Tape 6 talks about Joan and Basil Dean. (This is boring interview). Tape 7 40 minutes in talks about studying under Royston Morley along with Ken Tynan and Tony Richardson.
Tape 8 41 mins in finally talks about Australia. After three years "I accepted a very big contract well big by those days to go to Australia and I opened up the drama dpt they had no drama there. They had Graham Kennedy... Most of their stuff came from American. It was a receptible for all the crap everywhere in the world, Australia, until they made their own... I went over and did the first drama series they ever had. And it was called... [he struggles to remember name] He says he's got books and books and books of "his Australian adventure" Remembers year 1961. Became an executive. After experience of Associated Rediffusion "I was capable of living up to the title of executive to the hilt". Then the interviewer gets him back to Associated.
Tape 9 34 mins talks about going out to Australia again Channel 7 Melbourne - liased between Melbourne and Sydney in a plane. "I not only taught a whole crew how to do it but I also directed myself four productions". Backed by General Motors. Says "was very well reecived... there were so many phonies who'd gone out there and kidded the boys. I was a bloody Pom but jolly well received later on" when they saw how hard he worked. He said would ask them to do half what he did. He was senior producer and directed first four TV productions. Says they were an hour and a half. Found good cast. Found Scottish actress called Sophie Stewart who came out to Australia. Played Marigold. I cast Dixon who played with Roberty Morley. Some of the actors were completely Australian. Bill Hodges became more Australian than the Australians. Talks about Hodge, married an Australian girl who had a lot of money. Cotes says it was a "very happy" time and only went home because his mother was sick. Said Joan liked it. She went to Australia expecting another Canada and was agreeably surprised. Later on said was sad couldn't say. Cotes says there for a year. Says trained people who became feature film director. His immediate bosses were the Melbourne Herald. Then 1961 went back to script a documentary for World Wide Pictures in the Snowy Mountains. A dramatised documentary showing Count Streslecki who opened up Snowy Mountains.
Tape 10 he talks about The Mousetrap and getting sacked as director of Bitter Harvest the 1963 film.
Tape 11 and 12 talks about his brothers and other matters.
Tape 13 resumes interview. He's really mean spirit about people. Tape 14 talks about Young and Willing and Bitter Harvest briefly. And Goldwyn. Makes vaguely anti-Semitic cracks about Hollywood moguls. Mentions Constance Smith at the end. Tape 15 mentions Richard Burton test for Waterfront.
Tape 16 39 mints talks of being taught by Royston morley with Ken Tynan. Says Morley hired by Michael Barry. "It was a very nice job for Royston he had all this clay and he liked hearing the sound of his own voice." Tape 19 up to 35 mins.
Directed Hot Summer Night on stage in England in 1958 see review here.
Arrived in Oz March 1961 to work for HSV-7. To make six plays. Wound up making four at a cost of 26,000 pounds and only one was shown. "My wife and I came here to found a drama department. The plan didn't include the plays being 'canned'. I was under the impression they would be televised while we were still in Australia... four plays in six months is not a failure when you have to start from scratch. Live drama is prominent on British TV but the sponsor set up s different. In Australia it appears the sponsor has to pay a proportion of the production costs."
April 1961 interviewed on TV show for ABC called People - see here. Flew back Aug 1961.
Picture of him on top of Mt Kosziusko in 1962.
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LITV 25 March 1961
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LITV 3 Dec 1960
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The Australian Women's Weekly Wed 19 Apr 1961 Page 54
Boost for local TV drama
By NAN MUSGROVE
The arrival in Australia of Peter Cotes, one of Britain's leading tele- vision producers, is a shot in the arm for live drama on commercial TV. MR. Cotes, under con- tract to Melbourne's HSV7 for six months, will produce six dramas in that time. The first of them will prob- ably be George Bernard Shaw's "Candida." They will be seen on TV all over Aus- tralia. Mr. Cotes is accompanied by his wife, actress Joan Miller, who will appear in the plays he produces. Mr. and Mrs. Cotes, who are soon to move into their own home in Melbourne, are delighted with Australia and what they have so far seen of live theatre here. When they visited Sydney they hadn't seen enough of Australia's live TV to give a real opinion, but it was obvious that they both had their reser- vations about what they had seen.
Mr. Cotes said courteously that he believed it to be bad- mannered when a guest in a country criticised his host with- out having given him a chance to display all his talents. Talent quest The talent Mr. Cotes is looking for is not only among actors and actresses; he is ex- tremely anxious to promote and produce the work of Aus- tralian playwrights. "I will produce plays by famous overseas playwrights," he said, "but all the time I will be looking for an Aus- tralian play, preferably one which is indigenous to the Australian scene."
A tip for the playwrights who feel they might have a play for him — Mr. Cotes can't stand half-hour plays. He thinks they are just a beginning and an ending, without the important middle part. I told him I thought they were often better than a half- hour play padded to fill an hour. "I mean plays of quality," he said. "Take those two ex- cellent films 'Marty' and 'Twelve Angry Men.' Both of those were written originally as hour-long TV plays."
Mr. Cotes is for more and more live TV drama, believes that it is the only way TV will "come of age." "I think live carama is abso- lutely essential to TV. It is far more exciting than any film, done as it is at the moment of seeing."
Programme director for HSV7, Peter Randall, who was squiring the Cotes' on their Sydney visit, told me that he believed HSV's importation of Mr. Cotes was a natural development in commercial TV following the producers' and technicians' teeth-cutting on variety shows. "It is a bold enterprise," he said, "but we, are now ready and poised to undertake it."
During Mr. Cotes' visit here, 12 young directors and pro- ducers at HSV7 will be train- ing with him in drama pro- duction, observing and learn- ing his methods. Mr. Cotes, 48, founded the none Help British TV producer Peter Cotes with his wife, actress Joan Miller. Drama Division of Associated Re-Diffusion, Britain’s com- mercial TV undertaking, which has been responsible for some excellent TV. He has also produced featured plays for the B.B.C. On the legitimate stage he has produced in London’s West End, in New York, and many European capitals.
Wife plays part, too
YOU can see now why Mr. Cotes is such a shot in the arm for local TV. But that’s only half the story. His wife, Joan Miller, one of the most experienced dram- atic actresses in British TV, will also play a big role in helping to boost the quality of live drama here. Joan’s TV career goes right back to 1936 when she pre- sented the first programme shown on British screens. “It was the first of a series called ‘Picture Page,’ in which I interviewed celebrities,” she said. “I was also in the last programme when TV shut down just before war was de- clared.” After 25 years as an actress in theatre, films, and TV, Joan believes very strongly that TV is the most demanding medium of the three. But demanding or not, it’s a medium in which she has consistently brought the praise of hardened critics, so her performances on Australian screens should be a treat for viewers.
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Vic TV Times March 1961
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NAA Melb
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