The untold story of how the BBC tried to persuade Laurence Olivier to make his first TV appearance is to be released in a new archive project from the corporation.
The BBC will also publish a chain of correspondence between the broadcaster and Vanessa Redgrave, containing a letter from 1952 when the 15-year-old aspiring actress seeks an audition for herself and her brother Corin.
Both will be contained in a new archives initiative, which will publish a tranche of 50,000 files detailing part of the 100-year-old national broadcaster’s history.
There is also a letter from the BBC inviting David Attenborough to apply for the Television Training Scheme following his unsuccessful application for a producer role in 1952 – a decision that arguably changed the course of broadcasting history.
Olivier appeared in a number of hit ITV series like Brideshead Revisited, along with American TV including The Moon and Sixpence, but he was never in a BBC drama. This could have been different, the BBC archives reveal, with internal memos showing how the national broadcaster tried to persuade Olivier to make his debut TV appearance. Olivier is a doyen of the British screen and stage, winning an Oscar and five BAFTAs.
The BBC said the archives will also show Attenborough’s application for the TV training scheme. Attenborough is best known for his nature documentaries, for which he is unquestionably the world’s best, but he was also the second controller of BBC Two back in the 1960s. The channel thrived under his tenure and he went on to be probably its most successful presenter.
The BBC archives initiative, which will release 50,000 files, will also publish reports and cables from the 1930s and 1940s documenting President Franklin D Roosevelt’s presidential inauguration and wartime broadcasts, and correspondence detailing Jawaharlal Nehru’s special BBC broadcasts on Gandhi and world development.
“This release is part of our plans to make more of the BBC’s written archives available to the public, opening up the stories behind our programmes and people who have helped shape British broadcasting,” said Noreen Adams, the BBC’s Director of Archives Technology & Services. “This first batch includes extraordinary material with some of our biggest household names, alongside thousands of other documents that give fresh context to our cultural history.”
