- Dorothea Brooking
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Dorothea Brooking (born Dorothea Smith Wright on 7 December 1916 – 23 March 1999) was a British television producer and director of children's television programmes for the BBC. She also adapted some works for the small screen which she worked on in her other capacities.
Before the Second World War she had been an actress for the Old Vic company, where she met her husband John Brooking, who had the stage name of John Franklyn (they divorced in 1951). During the war her husband worked in Shanghai, and Brooking herself was on the staff of a radio station in the city in the two years before the Japanese invaded.
After returning to London, she worked for the BBCs Overseas Service as a continuity announcer before being appointed as a producer in 1950 for the BBCs Children's Department at Alexandra Palace. Over the next quarter of a century she was responsible for numerous adaptions of children's classics such as The Secret Garden (1952, 1960 and 1975) and The Railway Children (1951 and 1957). She also undertook adaptions of contemporary works including Tom's Midnight Garden in 1974.
Leaving the BBC in the mid-1960s, after a period in schools' broadcasting, she went freelance. When Monica Sims was appointed to head the Children's Department in 1968, Brooking resumed working for the BBC. Her last directing responsibility was Haunting of Cassie Palmer in 1982.
External links
- Obituary in The Guardian by Edward Barnes, May 3, 1999
- Obituary in The Independent by June Averill, April 6, 1999
- Dorothea Brooking at the Internet Movie Database
- Screenonline profile
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