Lew Grade

• 1. Introduction

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  Lew Grade won the Charleston Championship of the World in 1926 at the Royal Albert Hall. Fred Astaire was one of the judges. The teenage competitor had been born Lev Winogradsky in the Russian Empire. His family had settled in the East End of London after emigrating from Odessa. None of that background suggested he would become the dominant figure in British commercial television. His companies would one day control the Lennon-McCartney song catalogue. How a refugee dancer rose to that position is one question. Why a single catastrophic film unravelled it all is another.

• 2. A Family on the Run

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  The Winogradsky family started in Tokmak, a town in the Taurida Governorate of the Russian Empire, now part of Ukraine. Isaak and Olga had three sons, with Lev the eldest, born on the 25th of December 1906. When Lev was five, in 1912, his Jewish family fled the pogroms and made their way via Berlin to London. They settled on Brick Lane near Shoreditch, in rented rooms at the north end of the street. Isaak found work as a trouser-presser. His three sons attended the Rochelle Street Elementary School near Shoreditch, where ninety per cent of the pupils spoke Yiddish. The two younger brothers, Bernard and Leslie, would later go by the names Bernard Delfont and Leslie Grade, each becoming a prominent figure in British entertainment. After two years in those rented rooms, the family moved to the nearby Boundary Estate. At fifteen, Lev took a job as an agent for a clothing company, and shortly afterwards started his own business.

• 3. From Stage to Agency

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  Joe Collins, father of Jackie and Joan Collins, signed Grade as a dancer in 1931. Grade had been performing professionally under the stage name Louis Grad, billed as "The Dancer with the Humorous Feet." His permanent name came from a happy accident. A Paris reporter had mistyped "Louis Grad," and Grade liked the result well enough to keep it. Around 1934, he moved from performing to representing talent, forming a partnership with Joe Collins under the name Collins and Grade. Among their earliest clients were the harmonica player Larry Adler and the jazz group Quintette du Hot Club de France. When the Second World War began in 1939, Grade arranged entertainment for soldiers in Harrogate before joining the British Army. He was discharged after two years when an old knee problem recurred. That same condition had earlier forced him off the stage. In 1945, with the Collins arrangement concluded, Grade formed a new partnership with his brother Leslie. Their firm, Lew and Leslie Grade Ltd., eventually became known as the Grade Organisation. The brothers' roster included Bob Hope; Judy Garland performed in Britain for the first time through their arrangements. By 1948, they were the principal bookers of artists for the London Palladium. The Palladium was then managed by Val Parnell for the Moss Empires Group, whose ownership lay with the family of Prince Littler. The agency grew into the most successful in Britain. In 1967, EMI acquired it for $21 million, and Grade and his two brothers joined the EMI board. Thirteen years before that sale, a phone call had set Grade on a different path entirely.

• 4. The ITV Opportunity

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  In 1954, Grade received a call from Mike Nidorf, the manager of singer Jo Stafford. Nidorf had spotted an advertisement in The Times: the Independent Television Authority was inviting franchise bids for Britain's new commercial television network. Grade assembled a consortium that included Val Parnell and Prince Littler. Their company was first called the Incorporated Television Programme Company, then renamed the Incorporated Television Company, or ITC. The ITA rejected ITC's initial bid, citing a conflict of interest arising from the company's dominance in artist management. Grade's group then joined with the already-approved Associated Broadcasting Development Company, which held licences but lacked the capital to use them. The resulting venture became Associated Television, known as ATV. Grade served as deputy managing director under Parnell until 1962, when he manoeuvred Parnell out and took the top role himself. Sunday Night at the London Palladium ran from 1955 to 1967, and returned from 1973 to 1974. In its day, it ranked among the most popular programmes on British television. Grade also made room for more demanding material. In 1958, Sir Kenneth Clark began speaking about the history of art on television through ATV. Grade had already committed funds to what would become ITC's first transatlantic success. The Adventures of Robin Hood, commissioned by Hannah Weinstein, ran from 1955 to 1960 and opened the American market for ITC's programming. ITC became a wholly owned ATV subsidiary in 1957. ATV established a music publishing division, ATV Music, that same year. In 1959, ATV acquired a half interest in Pye Records, which later became a wholly owned subsidiary. Once managing director, Grade decided the Midlands deserved its own soap opera to rival Coronation Street. Crossroads began its run in November 1964 and lasted roughly a quarter century. Howard Thomas, managing director of ABC Weekend TV, would complain that Grade was distributing programming for "Birmingham, Alabama, rather than Birmingham, England."

• 5. The Transatlantic Factory

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  The Saint ran from 1962 to 1969 and was sold to over 80 countries. Two series featuring Patrick McGoohan extended ITC's range: Danger Man ran from 1960 to 1968, and The Prisoner from 1967 to 1968. These were initially scheduled as American summer replacements; as their quality proved consistent, they drew broader audiences year-round. Grade had observed something the American networks had not. A British cast, performing in a British register, often travelled further than a series built around American leads. In 1962, AP Films, co-founded by Gerry Anderson, became a subsidiary of ITC. Anderson's team specialised in "Supermarionation," a form of puppet animation they applied to two major children's series. After screening the Thunderbirds pilot, "Trapped in the Sky," in 1964, Grade insisted that each episode be extended to fill a full hour. He paid £22,000 per episode, an exceptional commitment for children's television at the time. Thunderbirds ran from 1965 to 1966; Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons followed from 1967 to 1968. Both series were produced in colour and proved successful internationally. In 1966, Grade's companies were reorganised as the Associated Communications Corporation, or ACC. That same year, The Sunday Times examined the interlocking interests of Grade and his brothers, Bernard Delfont and Leslie Grade. The investigation described their combined control of talent, theatres, and television as amounting to a cartel. Foreign sales reached $30 million in 1970. ACC received the Queen's Award for Export in both 1967 and 1969. ATV lost its London weekend franchise to what became London Weekend Television in 1967. ATV's Midlands coverage was expanded to run throughout the week from July 1968. In the mid-1970s, Grade's attention would turn to an American puppeteer who had been rejected by every major network in the United States.

• 6. Henson, Zeffirelli, and Elstree

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  Jim Henson had been dismissed by American networks when he proposed a new variety show built around his Muppet characters. The networks' objection centred on his association with children's programming, specifically Sesame Street. CBS came close to agreeing, but only on the condition that The Muppet Show appear within a syndicated block. Grade had watched one of Henson's pilots. He also recalled a special that had been made in one of his studios, and offered to produce the new series in Britain. The Muppet Show was recorded at the ATV Elstree Studios, a facility later bought by the BBC and used primarily for EastEnders. Grade's decision brought the programme to screen in 1976, and it ran until 1981. Grade was also the force behind Jesus of Nazareth, the 1977 mini-series directed by Franco Zeffirelli. The arrangement with Zeffirelli and the Italian broadcaster RAI had been announced three years before the broadcast. The finished series achieved a record-breaking $12 million in American rights fees. The decade also had its setbacks. The Julie Andrews Hour aired for only one season on the ABC Television Network in the United States, in 1972-73. It received positive reviews and seven Emmy Awards, including recognition as best variety series, but it did not return for a second year. Gerry Anderson continued with ITC, though he shifted from puppetry to live-action science fiction: UFO ran from 1969 to 1971, and Space: 1999 from 1975 to 1977. After Space: 1999, Anderson made no further series for ITC, though he maintained his connection to Grade until Grade lost control of his companies in 1982.

• 7. The Film Gamble

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  Blake Edwards came to Grade with a proposal to revive the Pink Panther as a television series. Edwards was not keen on the television format himself, but he worked on developing scripts while negotiations continued. Eventually, Edwards persuaded Grade to finance the property as a feature film. Edwards and Peter Sellers waived their fees in return for a profit-sharing arrangement; both men's careers had not been prospering for some years. The Return of the Pink Panther, Grade's second major feature production, was released in 1975. United Artists, which had earlier rejected the project, secured distribution rights and a five per cent share of the profits. The film was a commercial success and drew Grade further into feature film financing. Farewell My Lovely also came out in 1975. The Boys from Brazil was co-released with 20th Century Fox in 1978, and Movie Movie appeared the same year with Warner Bros. Grade served as producer on two Ingmar Bergman films: Autumn Sonata in 1978 and From the Life of the Marionettes in 1980. He was executive producer of The Muppet Movie in 1979 and The Great Muppet Caper in 1981. In The Muppet Movie, Orson Welles played a studio executive named "Lew Lord." One domestic British production caused a different kind of problem. The Long Good Friday, made by the ITC subsidiary Black Lion Films in 1980, was effectively disowned by Grade, reportedly because it seemed sympathetic to the IRA. HandMade Films purchased and released it instead. Then came Raise the Titanic. The 1980 adaptation of Clive Cussler's novel cost $36 million to produce and returned only $8 million in rentals. Grade himself said that "it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic." Saturn 3 and The Legend of the Lone Ranger, released in 1980 and 1981, compounded the losses. These failures marked the end of Grade's involvement in major film production. Critical successes still arrived: On Golden Pond, released in 1981, and Sophie's Choice, released in 1982, both won Academy Awards. The Dark Crystal, also from 1982, was Jim Henson's final project made in association with ITC. Even as those losses mounted, regulators were preparing a decision that would cost Grade the company he had spent three decades building.

• 8. The Fall and After

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  From the 1st of January 1982, ATV Midlands was required to sever its ties with Grade and ITC as a condition of retaining its licence. The network was ultimately rebranded as Central Television. Grade had resigned during the preceding negotiations. Later that year, Robert Holmes a Court gained control of ACC and dismissed Grade along with all his staff. Norman Lear, the American television producer, brought Grade back to active work in June 1982, appointing him to head the London division of Embassy Communications International. There, Grade worked in film and television production and distribution. He also became a producer of Starlight Express, the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. When Coca-Cola acquired Embassy, Grade launched a new venture, the Grade Company, in 1985. He was elected a vice-president of the Loews Group chain of cinemas in the United States. The Grade Company produced television adaptations of works by Dame Barbara Cartland; Grade held the rights to 450 of her romances. By the early to mid-1990s, he had returned to ITC to lead the company one final time, a position he held until his death. Grade had been knighted in 1969. On the 22nd of June 1976, he was created a life peer as Baron Grade of Elstree in the County of Hertfordshire. He chose Elstree as his territorial designation because ATV's main studios had been based there. In 1978, speaking to Mike Wallace on the CBS programme 60 Minutes, Grade said: "I don't intend to retire until the year 2000." He died of heart failure in London on the 13th of December 1998, aged 91, within two years of that stated intention. He was buried at the Liberal Jewish Cemetery in Willesden. BBC Radio 2 marked the centenary of his birth with two one-hour tribute programmes, broadcast on the 24th and the 25th of December 2006.