Born: August 21 1933;
Died: June 30 2017
BARRY Norman, who has died aged 83, was amongst other things a print journalist, comic-strip writer, novelist and purveyor of pickled onions, but was best-known as the presenter of the BBC’s film review programme from Film 72 until Film 98 (the second half of the title was the year).
For most of that time, though avid film buffs might read criticism by Dilys Powell, Derek Malcolm or Philip French in the papers, Norman was probably the only critic known to the general public. His easy manner and balanced yet forthright judgments inspired viewers’ trust while his delivery – though it could hardly be called affected – was distinctive enough to lead to imitations. Indeed, his best-known catchphrase, “And why not?”, was not his at all, but invented in a sketch performed by the impressionist Rory Bremner, and reinforced by frequent outings on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image. By the time he wrote his autobiography in 2002, it was so firmly established that Norman adopted it as the book’s title.
Film… catered for a resolutely mainstream audience, and there were occasional complaints that arthouse and foreign-language cinema received little coverage. But Norman never made any claim to rival Cahiers du Cinéma and had little time for the pompous Marxist criticism of film schools and the BFI. Instead he concentrated on well-crafted and intelligent, if middle-brow, assessments of popular film for the ordinary picture-goer.
But if his remit at the BBC was largely that of the mid-market tabloid entertainment writer he had once been, his tastes were broader than many gave him credit for. His film of the year for 1989, for example, was Peter Greenaway’s highly stylised The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and the films of major foreign directors such as Alain Resnais and Akira Kurasawa got at least a look-in on the show, even if they had to play second fiddle to Hollywood blockbusters.
Though Norman had an easy familiarity with the showbusiness world, and interviewed many of the biggest names in the film world, he was never cowed by reputation or status: there were tetchy encounters with Robert de Niro and John Wayne, and he took a dim view of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Madonna.
Barry Leslie Norman was born on August 21 1933, the son of the producer and director Leslie Norman and his wife Elizabeth. Leslie Norman had begun his career as a runner and then an editor before producing films such as The Cruel Sea (1953) and directing Dunkirk (1958) and The Long and the Short and the Tall (1961); he also directed a good deal of television, including episodes of The Saint, The Avengers, The Persuaders and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Elizabeth Norman worked in the cutting room at Ealing Studios.
But they discouraged their son from following them into the industry and, after leaving Highgate School in north London, Barry became a trainee reporter on the Kensington Times before moving to the Daily Sketch as a diary reporter then going, aged 24, to the Daily Mail, where he worked first as a gossip columnist and latterly as the Entertainment Editor. He was made redundant in 1971 – something which grated so much that he mentioned it in his entry in Who’s Who – but later expressed the view that it was “the nicest thing the Daily Mail did for me in all the 13 years I worked for them”.
As a freelance, he signed up with The Times to write a weekly film review and took on shifts at the Sunday Mirror and The Observer. He also worked for some time as a leader writer on The Guardian (he supported the Labour Party until the formation of the SDP, to which he transferred his affections, and backed the Liberal Democrats after the party changed its name). He then had a column with the paper and was one of a group of writers (including Barry Took and George Melly) who wrote the storylines for Wally Fawkes’s long-running comic strip Flook in the Daily Mail.
His television debut came in 1971, when he appeared on Late Night Line-Up to talk about the TV Play of the Year; on the strength of it, he was asked to present Film 72 the following year. Though at first he was not intended to be the only presenter, he soon established his position as the show’s writer and frontman, a post he held from 1973 until 1998, with a hiatus in 1982, during which he presented the BBC’s arts programme Omnibus instead.
From 1974 until 1976 he was a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and in the late 1970s worked on two travel shows, Going Places and Breakaway. On radio, he was also the first chairman of The News Quiz.
Norman was a perfect fit for Film… but he had one persistent complaint: the corporation’s readiness to shunt the programme around the schedules, often putting it on very late at night. In 1998 he finally lost patience when he was approached by Sky, which offered him a much larger salary. He claimed that no one from the BBC’s hierarchy ever spoke to him again. He eventually retired from broadcasting in 2001, though he continued to write film reviews for the Radio Times right up to his death.
Barry Norman produced a string of books; The Hollywood Greats and The Movie Greats were tie-ins with programmes he had made for television, but he also wrote several comic novels, including A Series of Defeats (1977), about a jaded journalist, and Have a Nice Day (1981), about a TV crew interviewing actors in Hollywood.
From 1996 to 2001 he was a governor of the BFI, and he received the Richard Dimbleby Award from Bafta in 1981; he was appointed CBE in 1998. One improbable career departure came in 2007 when he lent his name to a brand of pickled onions, after a friend was impressed by his family’s recipe. They are now sold in several leading supermarkets.
He was an avid cricket fan, playing in village teams, and a member of MCC.
Barry Norman married, in 1957, (Mary) Diana Narracott, who was then a journalist on the Daily Herald and later a historical novelist, both as Diana Norman and Ariana Franklin. She died in 2011 and Barry Norman is survived by their two daughters, Samantha and Emma.
ANDREW MCKIE
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