Obit!! Alan Pickford, theatrer & TV designer; Times
Hyfler/Rosner
Theatre and television designer who created the award-winning
sets of The Jewel in the Crown
AN IMAGINATIVE and highly talented theatre and television
designer, Alan Pickford was never out of work during his 40-year career.
Although equally at ease designing for stage or screen, he is best
remembered for his work on Granada Television's monumental 14-part series
The Jewel in the Crown.
Based on Paul Scott's novels about the closing period of British
rule in India, the series boasted many star names, including Tim
Pigott-Smith, Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Eric Porter, and was four years in the
making. Such was the demand for elaborate sets that Pickford was installed
as co-designer alongside Vic Symonds, with whom he had worked at Associated
Television. Interviewed for the American magazine Theatre Crafts in 1985,
the designers described their relationship as one of trust. Symonds said: "I
knew what Alan would do, he knows how I do things. We diced it up between us
and from then on hardly needed to speak to one another." As well as the
work, they shared the resulting Royal Television Society Award.
Alan Pickford was born in Hazel Grove, Stockport, and spent his
childhood in Macclesfield, where his father ran a cork manufacturing
company. Annual visits to the pantomime in Manchester enthralled him, and
when he left school he enrolled at art college, determined to work in the
theatre. His course was interrupted by National Service (he joined the Royal
Air Force and was stationed in Berlin during the Berlin airlift).
After completing his studies he received his first taste of
set-designing with the West of England Theatre Company in the early Fifties,
and then had three years at the Liverpool Playhouse, where his duties
included designing costumes. It was while working there that he met the
actress Helen Lindsay, whom he married in 1958.
Before the decade was out, Pickford had moved to London and was
working in the design department at the Royal Opera House, where he worked
with such luminaries as Franco Zefferelli, Lila De Nobili and Sir John
Gielgud, for whom he designed the principals' costumes for A Midsummer
Night's Dream.
Although he enjoyed his time at Covent Garden, Pickford was keen
to broaden his experience, and the medium of television beckoned. He joined
ATV and for several years designed sets for dramas, working with many
directors. He eventually turned freelance and designed the first colour
television film for America, A Month in the Country, starring Susannah York.
His other small-screen credits included the series Dickens of London, The
Brontės of Haworth, The Good Companions, Tales of the Unexpected and The
Jewel in the Crown.
He continued working in the theatre, too, on plays including
Whistle in the Dark, My Fat Friend, Council of Love, The Winter's Tale,
Rookery Nook and The Prisoner of Zenda. Two particular stage successes were
Journey's End, directed by Eric Thompson in 1972, and Alan Ayckbourn's
trilogy The Norman Conquests, which was transferred from Greenwich to the
Globe Theatre in 1974.
In later years (1989-90) Pickford designed the sets and costumes
for Pirandello's Henry IV at the Parco Theatre in Tokyo. His last job before
retiring in 1992 was as production designer for a co-production of 12 Edgar
Wallace stories by Yorkshire Television and the Austrian company Satel.
His retirement years were dogged by health problems. He fought
cancer stoically while retaining a zest for life. He was enjoying a
Christmas break in Venice, a city he adored, with his wife and son when he
suffered a major brain haemorrhage.
He is survived by his wife, the actress Helen Lindsay, and their
son.
Alan Pickford, set designer, was born on July 21, 1929. He died
on December 31, 2002, aged 73.
