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Jane Morgan directed the BBC serialisation of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. She recalls the trials and tribulations of the recording of 26 half-hour episodes.

I wish I could claim that it was my idea to produce Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings for radio, but it was Richard Imison, Head of the Script Unit, who thought of it and asked me to take it on. There were moments when I cursed him as we wrestled with the problems of transferring it to the airways; deciding how to begin and end it (using Bilbo’s Last Song was an inspired idea for an ending); how to divide it into episodes and the major problem of deciding, because of the time constraints, what to leave out. The style of the production came out of the long discussions on the script (often held round my kitchen table) and my own personal preference for a degree of realism. I didn’t want it to sound like science fiction and I was determined to choose actors who sounded right and whose voices wouldn’t need treatment, so Douglas Livingstone’s gruff voice was just right for Gimli the Dwarf and David Collings’ fluting tones suited Legolas the Elf. Michael Hordern was a wizard and I never considered anyone else for Gandalf, nor anyone else for Frodo save Ian Holm, one of the best actors in England and who gives one of the best performances you will ever hear on radio. I was incredibly lucky – being able to assemble such a magnificent cast to create Tolkien’s world and to have the support of a technical team who certainly responded to the challenge and pulled out all the stops when they were needed.

The music was to play a vital part in the production. Finding the right composer wasn’t easy, but Stephen Oliver was the ideal person for the job and wrote a superb theme, created the elf kingdom in music and also, and very importantly, the battles. I was anxious to avoid effects that were to literal but it was the music that made these great battle sequences work. The music was recorded before the drama, to the delight of Stephen Oliver, who relished the thought that the actors would have to adjust to his music and not vice versa. With over 100 cues the music sessions were hard work, but exciting and I was fortunate in having a narrator, Gerard Murphy, who knew how to ride the music and to respond to it.

Penny Leicester, the other director, and I both found the recording of the series stimulating, though never easy. We took one and a half days per half-hour episode for the simpler episodes and two days for the really difficult ones. This would be regarded as luxury nowadays, but it meant that we were able to experiment and never had to compromise. I still remember Ian Holm having reduced us to tears in the scene at the Crack of Doom, dashing into the sound gallery asking to try something else, which was even better – it’s not often that a director is given such choices.

There was a feeling of euphoria all around when we finished the production because we knew that we had done something very special. It was, however, with a feeling of trepidation that I listened to the first broadcast and it wasn’t until the letters came flooding in that I knew we had got it right. The Tolkien aficionados loved it, though we got a lot of stick for having left out Tom Bombadil, and those who’d abandoned reading the book found themselves spell-bound for 26-weeks. As one listener wrote, ‘preparing the Sunday lunch will never be the same again’.
Jane Morgan, Director, The Lord of the Rings 

The making of the Rings – Brian Sibley
The cast of the BBC dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings

Posted: July 5th, 2008
Author: Lee