Brian Clemens

Infobox Person
name = Brian Clemens

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birth_date = 1931
birth_place = Croydon, England
United Kingdom
death_date =
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education =
occupation = Film and television producer, screenwriter
spouse =
parents =
children = Samuel Joshua Twain
George Langhorne Clemens

Brian Horace Clemens (born 1931 in Croydon, England) is a screenwriter and television producer, possibly best known for his work on "The Avengers" and "The Professionals". Clemens is related to Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), a fact reflected in the naming of his two sons, Samuel Joshua Twain Clemens and George Langhorne Clemens. [cite web |url=http://www.bbcamericashop.com/default.asp?cpa=product&id=4042&ctl=81&cc=21248&tt=UpsellClick|title= BBC America website] cite web |url=http://www.classicimages.com/1999/may99/clemens.html|title= Interview with Brian Clemens, Classic Images website, May 1999]

Early career

His father was an engineer, but also worked in British music halls. Brian Clemens left school aged 14.cite web |url=http://deadline.theavengers.tv/tvtClemens77.htm|title= TV Times magazine, page 22, 22nd October, 1977]

Following National Service in the British Army at Aldershot, where he was a weapons training instructor in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Brian Clemens wanted to be a journalist but decided he didn't have any qualifications. He was offered a job with a private detective agency, but this involved taking a training course in the Northern English city of Leeds and, as he had been away from home in London for two years, he decided he didn't want to go away again. Instead, he worked his way up from messenger boy at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency.cite web |url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/473675/index.html|title= British Film Institute profile of Brian Clemens] While he was a copywriter there, he had a thriller screenplay accepted and shot by BBC TV - "Valid for Single Journey Only" (1955). This brought him to the attention of independent, low-budget movie producers the Danziger brothers.

From the mid-1950s onwards, he was a staff writer for the Danzigers, churning out dozens of quickie scripts for assembly-line 'B' movies and half-hour television series such as "Mark Saber" (ITV, 1957-1959; aka "Saber of London"), "White Hunter" (ITV, 1958-1960), "Man From Interpol" (ITV, 1960-1961) and "Richard The Lionheart" (ITV, 1961-1965).

However, he also wrote for ITC's thriller series "The Invisible Man" (ITV, 1958-1959), "Sir Francis Drake" (ITV, 1961-1962) and "Danger Man" (ITV, 1960-1961; 1964-1967; aka "Secret Agent")), for which he had also written the pilot.

TV Success

He wrote the original pilot episode for "The Avengers" in 1961 and was the script editor, associate producer and main scriptwriter for "The Avengers" series (ITV, 1961-1969) and, according to the British Film Institute's profile of him, "brought this spirit of burlesque to his other series - most notably with "Adam Adamant Lives!" (BBC, 1966-1967), but also with "The Baron" (ITV, 1966-1967), "The Persuaders!" (ITV, 1971-1972), "The Protectors" (ITV, 1972-1974), and "The Adventurer" (ITV, 1972-1974) - resoundingly poking fun both at the genre they were imitating and the sources of their inspiration."

It was he who cast Diana Rigg to replace original star Honor Blackman in "The Avengers". He was later quoted as saying: "I didn't do Diana a very good service. It made her an international star but I think I could have done more for her as far as the script was concerned. She was rather a stooge to Patrick Macnee's Steed." He did not choose Linda Thorson to replace Rigg.

In 1972, he created and produced but did not script a BBC TV sitcom "My Wife Next Door" which won a BAFTA Award

He followed this with a twist-in-the-tail anthology series "Thriller" (ITV 1973-1976; aka "Menace"), for which he wrote 38 scripts.

Then his company The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises Ltd created as a French/Canadian/British co-production "The New Avengers" (ITV 1976-1977). The series cost £125,000 an episode to produce and was not a critical success, but sold to 120 countries. To cast the central female role of Purdey, Clemens considered "about 700 girls", interviewed 200, read scripts with 40 and screen-tested 15.

His company Avengers Mark One Productions went on to produce "The Professionals" (ITV, 1977-1983)

In the early 1980s, he was twice asked to produce a US version of his most successful series - "The Avengers U.S.A." for producer Quinn Martin and "The Avengers International" for Taft Entertainment but neither version materialised. However, he did write episodes for the US TV series "Darkroom" (ABC-TV, 1981-1982), "Remington Steele" (NBC, 1982-1987), and "Max Monroe: Loose Cannon" (CBS, 1990).

Back in the UK, he worked on the BBC TV's "Bergerac" (1981-1991), the anthologies "Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense" (ITV, 1984-1986) and "Worlds Beyond" (ITV, 1984-1989) and adaptated Gavin Lyall's espionage thriller "The Secret Servant" as a 3-part drama for BBC TV (1984).

He then, in the US again, worked on the "Father Dowling Mysteries" (NBC, 1989; ABC-TV, 1990-1991), as executive script consultant for the feature-length revival series of Raymond Burr's "Perry Mason" (CBS, 1985-1995) for which he also wrote three screenplays. And he also wrote for the Dick Van Dyke mystery series "" (CBS, 1992-2001).

He also wrote for the "Bugs" TV series in the UK (BBC, 1995-1999) and "" in the US.

Feature Films

In 1971 he wrote and produced for Hammer films "Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde" and, in 1974, wrote and directed "Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter". He also wrote the screenplays and/or stories for the feature films "Operation Murder" (1957), "Station Six Sahara" (1963), "The Peking Medallion" (1967), "And Soon The Darkness" (1970), "See No Evil" (1971), "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" (1974), "The Watcher in the Woods" (1980) and "" (1991).

Court Case

In a British High Court of Justice case in the mid-1970s, which was abandoned by both sides due to escalating costs, Clemens claimed that he had told writer Terry Nation the concept for Nation's 1975 TV series "Survivors" in the late 1960s and had registered the idea with the Writers' Guild of Great Britain in 1965. [ Bignell, Jonathan & O'Day, Andrew: "Terry Nation" (page 21), pub Manchester University Press, 2004, ISBN 071906547X, 9780719065477 ] Nation strenuously denied this.

Personal life

Clemens divorced his wife Brenda in 1966. From 1967, he was with the actress Diane Enright, who was Emma Peel's stand-in during the 1965-1967 Avengers seasons. She committed suicide in 1976.

References

External links

*imdb name|id=0166018|name=Brian Clemens
* [http://www.classicimages.com/1999/may99/clemens.html The Man Who Created The Avengers: An Interview with Brian Clemens]
* [http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsC/clemens-brian.html Brian Clemens at The Playwrights Database]