Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist.
41 Facts About Dennis Potter
2.
Dennis Potter is best known for his BBC television serials Pennies from Heaven, The Singing Detective, and the BBC television plays Blue Remembered Hills and Brimstone and Treacle.
3.
Dennis Potter began with contributions to BBC1's regular series The Wednesday Play from 1965, and he continued to work in the medium for the rest of his life, including writing screenplay adaptations for Hollywood studios.
4.
Dennis Potter was born in Berry Hill, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire.
5.
Dennis Potter's father, Walter Edward Potter, was a coal miner in this rural mining area between Gloucester and Wales; his mother was Margaret Constance.
6.
In 1946, Dennis Potter passed the eleven-plus and attended Bell's Grammar School at Coleford.
7.
Daily Herald journalist David Nathan persuaded Dennis Potter to collaborate with him on sketches for That Was the Week That Was.
8.
Dennis Potter stood as the Labour Party candidate for Hertfordshire East, a safe Conservative Party seat, in the 1964 general election against the incumbent Derek Walker-Smith.
9.
Dennis Potter had begun to suffer in 1962 from a condition known as psoriatic arthropathy causing arthritis to develop in his joints as well as affecting his skin with psoriasis.
10.
The Confidence Course script was liked by Wednesday Play script editor Roger Smith who then commissioned Dennis Potter to write what became the second Nigel Barton play for the new anthology series.
11.
In 1978, Herbert Ross was shooting Nijinsky at Shepperton Studios and invited Dennis Potter to write the screenplay for his next project Unexpected Valleys.
12.
Dennis Potter was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar that year.
13.
Dennis Potter returned to the BBC for a co-production with 20th Century Fox, writing the scripts for a widely praised but seldom-seen miniseries of F Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night with Mary Steenburgen as Nicole Diver.
14.
The critical backlash against Dennis Potter following Blackeyes led to Dennis Potter being labelled 'Dirty Den' by the British tabloid press, and resulted in a period of reclusion from television.
15.
Dennis Potter's mother won substantial damages from the BBC and The Listener.
16.
Dennis Potter wrote the screenplay for Dreamchild, a film which shared themes with his script for the Alice television play.
17.
Dennis Potter adapted his television play Schmoedipus for the cinema.
18.
The ensuing film, Track 29, directed by Nicolas Roeg, was Dennis Potter's last filmed American project.
19.
Dennis Potter makes a sly reference to this in Karaoke when the character Daniel Feeld is invited to provide dialogue for an "arthritic goat" in a children's film.
20.
Dennis Potter is known to have written adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The White Hotel and his earlier television play Double Dare : all these reached the preproduction stage before work was suspended.
21.
The last film Dennis Potter actively worked on was Midnight Movie, an adaptation of Rosalind Ashe's novel Moths.
22.
In 1993, Dennis Potter was given a half-hour slot in prime time by Channel 4 in their Opinions strand produced by Open Media.
23.
Dennis Potter's talk was published in The Guardian in abbreviated form as "Murdoch's Desolate View of Human Life" Craig Brown described the programme in the Sunday Times:.
24.
The last serial broadcast during Dennis Potter's lifetime was the romantic comedy Lipstick on Your Collar.
25.
On 15 March 1994, three months before his death while his health was deteriorating, Dennis Potter gave an interview to Melvyn Bragg, later broadcast on 5 April 1994 by Channel 4.
26.
Dennis Potter had broken most of his ties with the BBC as a result of his disenchantment with Directors-General Michael Checkland and John Birt.
27.
Dennis Potter described his work and his determination to continue writing until his death.
28.
Dennis Potter turned down the option of writing a novelisation for the film version of Brimstone and Treacle, allowing his daughter Sarah to write it instead.
29.
Dennis Potter proposed to write an "intermedia" stage play for producers Geisler-Roberdeau based on William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris, or The New Pygmalion, but he died before it could be commenced.
30.
Dennis Potter's work is known for its use of non-naturalistic devices.
31.
Dennis Potter's pioneering method of using music in his work emerged when developing Pennies from Heaven, one of his biggest successes.
32.
Dennis Potter asked actors to mime along to period songs.
33.
Dennis Potter had previously experimented with Bowlly's voice in Moonlight on the Highway.
34.
Dennis Potter's characters are frequently "doubled up"; either by Doppelganger, using the same actor to play two roles, or two actors whose characters' destinies and personalities appear linked.
35.
Dennis Potter's papers, including unproduced plays and unpublished fiction, are being catalogued and preserved at the Dean Heritage Centre in Gloucestershire.
36.
Dennis Potter married Margaret Amy Morgan on 10 January 1959, at the Christ Church parish church in Berry Hill.
37.
In 1961, while covering a meeting of the Young Conservatives, Dennis Potter was suddenly unable to rise from the press table and his knee felt hot.
38.
On 14 February 1994, Dennis Potter experienced more than his usual daily pain.
39.
Dennis Potter was told he was suffering from incurable pancreas and liver cancer.
40.
Months before Dennis Potter was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, his wife, Margaret, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
41.
Nine days later, on 7 June 1994, Dennis Potter died of pancreatic cancer in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, England, at age 59.