Dennis Potter Biography and List of Works

British dramatist, novelist, television, screenwriter, and nonfiction writer, whose fusion of fantasy and reality, both broke and redefined the rules and limits of television drama. Potter's plays show an original and inventive use of the medium, and he gained cult status in his native Britain, and eventually the world. Among his best-known works are PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1978), about a sheet-music salesman, and THE SINGING DETECTIVE (1986), in which Philip Marlow, a bedridden, suffering writer of detective stories, believes he is losing his mind when his real-life memories mix with pop culture fantasies.

"The stories we read in childhood have a potency that cannot be destroyed, not even by the nostalgia which is normally the most powerful disinfectant known to man."
(Potter in New Statesman, 10 November 1972)

Dennis Potter was born in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, a locale that recurs in his work. His father Walter Potter was a coal miner and his mother had been born and raised in London. Potter was educated at Bell's Grammar School. After a language course undertaken during his national service, Potter became a Russian-language clerk in the War Office. In 1959 he received his B.A. from New College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics. In the same year he married Margaret Morgan, a journalist; they had two daughters and a son. In Oxford Potter became involved in left-wing politics, and subsequently worked as journalist and critic. THE GLITTERING COFFIN (1960) was an analysis of the Labour Party and the political climate of the time.

In his mid-twenties Potter developed psoriatic skin irritation. He suffered attacks of psoriatic arthropathy and this left him drug-dependent for much of the rest of his life. Potter later used his hospital experiences in The Singing Detective (1986), a highly succesfull six part television drama he wrote for the BBC.

Potter joined the BBC as a graduate trainee and made a documentary, BETWEEN TWO RIVERS, about his home region. In 1961 he joined the London Daily Herald as a feature and television critic. He also wrote sketches for the television series That Was the Week That Was. In 1964 Potter became an editorial writer for the London Sun, but he resigned in the same year in order to become a free-lance writer.

Potter's television dramas aroused much controversy in the 1960s and 70s. VOTE, VOTE, VOTE FOR NIGEL BARTON (1965) was based in his experiences as an unsuccessful Labour candidate from East Hertfordshire in the 1964 General Election. STAND UP, NIGEL BARTON (1965) dealt with the career of an aspiring working-class, Oxford-educated politician. THE CONFIDENCE COURSE (1965) brought threats of lawsuits. SON OF MAN (1969) portrayed Christ as an earthy hippie and was accused of blasphemy, and ONLY MAKE BELIEVE (1973) was considered indecent. BRIMSTONE AND TREACLE (1975) was banned by the BBC for eleven years. In the story a devil-like creature rapes a brain-damage girl, and her recovery begins after this violent act. Nevertheless Potter's television plays were praised and received several awards.

"He had once seen an old lady in a greetings-card shop moving her lips as she read the verse in one birthday card after another, and he had realized for the first time that neither the ability nor the motives of those who had written the banal little rhymes were at issue: the old woman was seeking the most appropriate clutch of words to express the truth of her feelings for whoever she wanted to send the card to. She was the one who brought the truth, and the dignity, to what had been written without either."
(from Blackeyes, 1987)

Among Potter's widely acclaimed dramas is Pennies From Heaven, which found its inspiration from classic Hollywood musicals. The story concerns a sheet-music salesman, Arthur Parker, during the Depression. Parker's unhappy life and the harsh realities of the period are contrasted with the cheery and romantic songs of the day and 1930s-style RKO and M-G-M musical numbers. Bob Hoskins played the central role in the BBC-TV series, Steve Martin in the film version. Potter's script received and Academy Award nomination. The film included re-creations of paintings by Edward Hoper and other painters and photographers of the period. In The Singing Detective a writer, named Marlow, lies in a hospital paralysed with psoriasis. He retreats to fantasy and goes through the events of his life. Moralizers condemned the scene in which Marlow as a child, witnesses his mother's adultery in the Forest of Dean.

Although Potter was best known for his own television plays, he also adapted novels for television, among them Agnus Wilson's Late Call (1975) and F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (televised in 1985). In 1994 Potter was diagnosed as having inoperable cancer. He died on June 7, 1994 - his wife had died only nine days before. Potter managed to complete two more television plays, KARAOKE (1994) and COLD LAZARUS (1994). In a television interview from the same year he said: "My only regret is if I die four pages too soon."

For further reading: Dennis Potter by Humphrey Carpenter (1999); Dennis Potter by Glen Creeber (1999); The Passion of Dennis Potter: International Collected Essays, ed. by Vernon W. Gras, John R. Cook (1999) ; The Life and Work of Dennis Potter by W. Stephen Gilbert (1998); Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen by John R. Cook, et al (1995); Dennis Potter by Peter Sted (1994); Potter on Potter by Dennis Potter (1994) - See also: Lewis Carroll

THE GLITTERING COFFIN, (1960)