{"id":252,"date":"2015-09-14T09:43:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T08:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/?p=252"},"modified":"2024-06-19T09:49:44","modified_gmt":"2024-06-19T08:49:44","slug":"living-legends-the-marks-and-gran-archive-at-the-borthwick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/2015\/09\/14\/living-legends-the-marks-and-gran-archive-at-the-borthwick\/","title":{"rendered":"Living Legends: the Marks and Gran Archive at the Borthwick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by Gary Brannan and Sally-Anne Shearn<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 13th<\/sup> September saw the presentation of the British Comedy Society\u2019s Living Legends of Comedy Award to the writing partnership Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. Often thought of solely as comedy writers, the Marks and Gran Archive<\/a> held at the Borthwick illustrates their wider work in the development of television comedy; and especially their ground-breaking work in the \u2018comedy drama\u2019 genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in north London, Maurice Gran (1949) and Laurence Marks (1948) initially met at a Jewish youth club in Finsbury Park, North London in the 1960s, though their creative partnership would not spark into like until they began attending \u2018Player-Playwrights,\u2019 a scriptwriting club that met at the British Drama League offices in Fitzroy Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A chance meeting between Marks and comedy writer Barry Took led to an opportunity for Marks and Gran to write for The Frankie Howerd Show. They continued to submit scripts and in 1980 their sitcom, \u2018Holding the Fort,\u2019 was commissioned by London Weekend Television and ran for two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their comedy-drama \u2018Shine on Harvey Moon\u2019 was a success, running for three years in the 1980s before being revived in 1995. The duo followed up this success with popular sitcoms such as \u2018The New Statesman,\u2019 1987\u201392, \u2018Birds of a Feather,\u2019 1989\u201398, and \u2018Goodnight Sweetheart,\u2019 1993\u201399. \u2018The New Statesman\u2019 won an International Emmy Award in 1988 and a BAFTA for best comedy series in 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1989 Marks and Gran set up their own production company, Alomo Productions. The company\u2019s first production was ‘Birds of a Feather’. Subsequent Alomo productions include \u2018Get Back,\u2019 1992-93, featuring Ray Winstone as a victim of the economic recession, \u2018Goodnight Sweetheart,\u2019 and comedy drama \u2018Love Hurts,\u2019 which ran from 1992-1994. In 1992 Marks and Gran were awarded the prestigious BAFTA Writers\u2019 Award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photograph
Marks and Gran (left) with the cast and production team of Birds of a Feather<\/em>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1996 they were commissioned by Channel 4 to write \u2018Mosley,\u2019 a mini-series telling the story of the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. In 1993 a meeting with playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn led to Marks and Gran their first play, \u2018Playing God,\u2019 a comedy about a dying rock star that premi\u00e8red at Ayckbourn\u2019s Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In 2006 they followed this with \u2018The B\u2019Stard Project,\u2019 a stage adaptation of their New Statesman sitcom which toured the UK until 2007 and enjoyed a run in the West End, and in 2010 their play \u2018Von Ribbentrop\u2019s Watch\u2019 premiered at the Oxford Playhouse, based on their 2008 Radio 4 drama of the same name. In 2012 they co-wrote a \u2018Birds of a Feather\u2019 stage show which subsequently toured the UK before the show\u2019s revival on television in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2008 Marks and Gran were invited to write the script for a new musical, \u2018Dreamboats and Petticoats,\u2019 based on a popular compilation album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to writing for stage and screen, both Marks and Gran are Visiting Lecturers at the University of York, running student workshops in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stretching over 35 boxes of diverse material, the Marks and Gran Archive (ref MGRA) presents the researcher with a unique archive of drafts. scripts, audio-visual recordings, correspondence and background research material that give a unique insight into the duo\u2019s creative process.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Typed\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Fourth draft script of 
Relative Strangers, <\/em>1986<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Archive includes items related to Birds of a Feather, Shine on Harvey Moon, the Frankie Howerd Show, The New Statesman (both stage and screen) and Goodnight Sweetheart (again, both stage and screen versions). The archive also contains a wealth of supporting materials (including research, drafts and correspondence) enabling the researcher to get inside the creative process \u2013 the tensions, the successes and creative precision which brings a production to life. Additionally, there are scripts for projects which, for one reason or another, never saw the light of day, including scripts and a rare recording of Still William, excerpts of which will be shown on Sunday as part of the British Comedy Society presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the collection is still in the process of being fully listed, a detailed box list is available. The Archive was deposited with us as part of the Samuel Storey Writing and Performance collection<\/a>, which includes the archives of Sir Alan Ayckbourn, David Storey, Charles Wood, Julia Pascal, Peter Whelan and Barry Took.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Gary Brannan and Sally-Anne Shearn Sunday 13th September saw the presentation of the British Comedy Society\u2019s Living Legends of Comedy Award to the writing partnership Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. Often thought of solely as comedy writers, the Marks and Gran Archive held at the Borthwick illustrates their wider work in the development … Continue reading Living Legends: the Marks and Gran Archive at the Borthwick<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,65,69,74,34],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-20th-century","tag-author-gary-brannan","tag-author-sally-anne-shearn","tag-television-and-film","tag-writing-and-performance"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"custom_fields":{"_edit_lock":["1718786842:242"],"_last_editor_used_jetpack":["block-editor"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/borthwick-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}