The family of OM Norman Swallow, the celebrated BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning TV producer/editor/director, have over recent years generously donated a sizeable collection of archive material to the school, featuring photographs and ephemera alongside the famed BAFTA award itself, all of which now reside in the school archive. Much of the material in the collection relates to the major 1967 TV production of Ten Days that Shook the World, a joint Granada/Novosti production documenting the Russian Revolution, billed as “the first time Britain and the U.S.S.R. have ever made a film together”, co-produced by the legendary Gregori Alexandrov, who had also co-directed Eisenstein’s iconic October 1917 film. The featured image above shows Swallow (centre) with associate producer Michael Darlow (left) working on the film in Moscow outside the Kremlin wall.
Promotional pamphlet for Ten Days that Shook the World (1967)
Swallow had attended MGS from 1932 to 1939, followed by studies at Keble College Oxford before going on to serve in the army until 1946, shortly after which his career as a TV documentary producer and writer began. Prior to the Ten Days that Shook the World project, working for the BBC, he had focused on hard-hitting, socially-conscious documentaries as part of three high profile series: Special Enquiry (1952-57), Panorama (from 1953), and The World is Ours (1954-56), tackling such controversial, often overlooked issues as housing, poverty, and racial prejudice, the latter issue memorably addressed in the Special Enquiry film, Has Britain a Colour Bar? The Special Enquiry series’ first episode featured an acclaimed programme focusing on the slum tenements of Glasgow. This period also saw Swallow working on a series for Granada TV called This England in collaboration with director Denis Mitchell, including one particularly well-known film documenting a wedding in a northern mining village: A Wedding on Saturday, which won the Prix Italia in 1965.
Working on Ten Days that Shook the World seems to have been a personal highlight of Norman Swallow’s career, not least because it allowed him to work closely with Gregori Alexandrov, associate of Sergei Eisenstein, a film director Swallow revered to the point of making a documentary and book based on his life and work in 1976: Eisenstein: A Documentary Portrait.
Grigori Alexandrov (left) with Norman Swallow (centre) examining a strip of film
The composer responsible for scoring the film was also a notable character, Revol Bunin (appropriately named after the 1917 revolution), having apparently been Shostakovich’s ‘favourite pupil’ during a spell of teaching in the early 1940s, the two composers remaining in contact until the latter’s death in 1975. Bunin was also an established and notable composer in his own right, completing ten symphonies and a number of concertos.
Composer Revol Bunin (centre) in his flat with Swallow (left) and Associate Producer Michael Darlow
Another important presence on the set of Ten Days that Shook the World was Alexandrov’s glamorous film-star wife, Lyubov Orlova, seen below in two items from the archive: on the front of a promotional Russian publication, and on a signed photograph given to Norman and his wife Madeline. (Apparently Jean Paul Sartre was a big fan of Orlova, after she starred in a 1962 production of his play The Respectful Prostitute, describing her as the best ‘Lizzie’ – the main protagonist – he’d seen.)
Another extraordinary photograph within the collection (pictured below) deserves a special mention, showing Grigori Alexandrov with his mentor Sergei Eisenstein and a bohemian-looking crowd of film crew and acquaintances in the grounds of Sarraz Castle in Switzerland, where they were making a film in 1929 which ultimately remained unfinished. Alexandrov can be seen seated front left, while cameraman Eduard Tisse is reclining at the front (with the young lady in his lap) with Eisenstein just behind him to the left. It is unclear how the picture ended up in the possession of Norman Swallow, but one must assume that it was given to him by Alexandrov during their time together while working on the films Ten Days That Shook the World and Eisenstein.
Following his work on Ten Days that Shook the World, Swallow went on to be involved in many more successful TV programs, including a stint as Series Editor for Omnibus, resulting in such important and highly influential music documentaries as Ken Russell’s Delius and Tony Palmer’s All My Loving, as well as the major Granada history series The Christians presented by Bamber Gascoigne, and A Lot of Happiness, for which he received an Emmy in 1982.
Receiving an Emmy in 1982 for the film A Lot of Happiness
In conclusion, one of the items in the collection is a booklet containing typescripts of speeches by various key figures within the world of television made during a special BAFTA celebration night in 2001, clearly demonstrating how highly regarded – both professionally and personally – Norman Swallow was considered amongst his friends and colleagues. In addition, many more people will undoubtedly have been impressed or moved by seeing one or more of the many films or programmes in which this inspiring Old Mancunian was involved, without necessarily being aware of his name.
Otto Smart
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