Dorothea Brooking
Dorothea Brooking ( born December 7, 1916 in Slough, Berkshire, England as Dorothea Smith Wright, † March 23, 1999 in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, England) was a British television producer, screenwriter and director mainly of children's television programs for the BBC. So she created among others the very popular in Germany television miniseries The moon mold.
Life and career
Born as Dorothea Smith Wright in 1916 in Slough a city in the county of Berkshire, she was educated first at a boarding school in England and then completed her secondary schooling in Montreux, Switzerland. Back on the island Dorothea studied acting at the Old Vic in London. The theatrical tradition had in the family, you have an ancestor had given the Hamlet in the 19th century and her brother became an actor. At the Old Vic theater, she met then the fellow students John Brooking know and the two were married.
After the birth of her son, Timothy, the family went to Shanghai. There Dorothea worked for two years for the Shanghai Radio as a writer and producer for a local radio station. Fearing the Japanese occupation in World War II, the family moved back to England and Dorothea Brooking found a job with the BBC. She was one of seven producers - four women and three men - selected from over 100 applicants.
From the production Zenter at Alexandra Palace to the British Broadcasting Corporation from 1950 there was appointed head of the newly formed within the BBC children's department. Given the opportunity, programs, and high quality standards for young children's television to shape, they adapted literary works by famous authors such as Edith Nesbit, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles Dickens or Mark Twain and got such great importance for the British children's television in the 1950s and 1960s. Over the next quarter century, she was responsible for numerous adaptations of many popular children's classics like The Secret Garden (1952, 1960 and 1975 ), The Railway Children (1951 and 1957 ) or The Treasure Seekers ( 1961). They also undertook adaptations of contemporary works, including Tom 's Midnight Garden in 1974.
In 1963, the BBC children's television with the women's program under the title " Family Programs" fused and Dorothea Brooking also transfer this department. The mid-1960s, however, she left the BBC and became a freelance television producer.
She has produced, among others, John Tully's exciting adaptation of Burton Hester Castors Away ( BBC, 1968), about two children who lived at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar. It was their first collaboration (of seven television stations) with the writer John Tully.
The theme of the mystical in conjunction with the history Brooking had been fascinated since childhood. In particular, the literature about the legendary figure of King Arthur had it done to her. The result was a fruitful collaboration with writer Brian Hayles, in the multi-part television film The moon mold culminated in 1978, which put Dorothea Brooking with great attention to detail and historical original locations in Uffington and environment scene. The main characters are James Greene, Sarah Sutton, John Abineri, Caroline Goodall and David Haig played.
In 1980, she was honored at the Pye Colour Television Awards in London with a Special Award for her services to children's television.
1982 staged with The Haunting of Cassie Palmer, a drama about the supernatural, her last work for British television.
Dorothea Brooking wrote and produced in its over 30 -year career consequences for numerous well-known TV series and often also resulted in yourself directing.
On March 23, 1999, she died in Haywards Heath in West Sussex at the age of 82 years.