Val Gielgud

Following education at Oxford University, Gielgud began his career as a secretary to a member of parliament, before moving into writing when he took a job as the sub-editor of a comic book / magazine.

[1] Maschwitz and Gielgud were close friends, and even wrote detective fiction together – Gielgud would later on go on to be responsible in whole or part for twenty-six detective / mystery novels, one short story collection, two historical novels, nineteen stage plays, four film screenplays, forty radio plays, seven non-fiction books and be the editor of a further two books.

He proved to be highly successful in this role, remaining in it for the next twenty years and overseeing all of the radio drama produced during the period, writing many plays himself and worked as an actor in small parts in six of them.

He was not an advocate of the soap opera genre[1] – which was rising to prominence on radio in the United States at the time – instead, he preferred to concentrate on producing a variety of one-off dramas, rather than continuing series.

In July 1930, Gielgud was invited in his position as the senior drama producer at BBC radio to oversee the experimental transmission of a short play on the new medium of television.

The play, The Man With the Flower in His Mouth by Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, was chosen because of its confined setting, small cast of characters and short length of around half an hour.

Gielgud remained in radio for the rest of the decade, also working occasionally in film, adapting his thriller Death at Broadcasting House, in which he also appeared in a small acting role.

By this time Gielgud was in conflict with junior colleagues in the drama department; unlike them he was unable to appreciate the work of playwrights such as Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett.