Joan Littlewood on Brian Murphy's This is Your Life

I've written several times about Joan Littlewood and her extraordinary influence on British theatre. Here is a short clip of her, recorded for Brian Murphy's This is Your Life.

In the run up to it, you hear what an extraordinary struggle it was for someone from the working class, like Murphy, to get training as an actor.

And after it, there's confirmation that Joan Littlewood didn't just have connections with ITV comedy (half the cast of On the Buses came from her Stratford East company), she had them with BBC comedy too.

I've written about the 30 years of slog Nigel Hawthorne experienced before he became famous overnight in Yes Minister. As I say in that post, he once said he owed his career to Joan Littlewood – she had cast him as Field Marshall Haig in a touring production of Oh! What a Lovely War.

I'd also read that Jimmy Perry, one of the writers of Dad's Army, had spent time at Stratford East, and here he is confirming it.