Fifty years ago next month, a dapper new drama brought something a little different to Saturday nights. Not only was The Duchess of Duke Street a prestige production in itself, it was also central to a copper-bottomed, mid-70s schedule. It debuted after a new series of Tom Baker’s Doctor Who and light-ent colossus The Generation Game, and before comedy smash The Two Ronnies and hit import Starsky and Hutch.
Lasting for two series and 31 episodes, the rags-to-riches tale followed cockney-born Louisa Trotter on her eventful journey from hard-working maid to famous cook, mistress of the Prince of Wales and owner of the fictional Bentinck Hotel in Duke Street, London. “Gemma Jones was excellent casting,” says Wheeler, “and the right age [then 33] to cover the whole story.
Inspired by real-life Rosa Lewis, a servant from the age of 12 who ended up running the Cavendish Hotel, The Duchess of Duke Street was the creation of John Hawkesworth, who had produced Upstairs Downstairs for ITV. “John was a very organised producer, focusing on scripts, directors and principal casting,” Wheeler recalls. “He had a huge whiteboard on one wall of his office, with titles, dates, writers and directors for each episode.”
"[At the time] I was supposed to be doing I Claudius. John Hawksworth was not a BBC producer, so Richard Beynon was allocated to be the BBC producer with him. Richard asked for me to be the PUM and I was swapped with Denis Curran."
But there were disagreements over the direction that the drama should take. "Richard fell out with John and departed round about episode four. He thought that the early struggles to establish the hotel should run further into the series, while John wanted to get this over and move to more self-contained stories. Years later he admitted to me that Richard had been right!"
A major key to the show’s success was attention to detail, but then, as Wheeler explains, “Authenticity was second nature to BBC designers, costume and make-up. One of the strengths of the BBC at that time was that one could find an expert on almost anything.
"Moreover there was a music library, a reference library and an information service – for news, but accessible by anyone – which provided information and contacts for anywhere in the world."
View Green Video on the source websiteThese forgotten dishes were re-created for the Duke Street kitchens by chef and broadcaster Michael Smith. As he told Radio Times in 1976, "Everything you see in Louisa’s hands, or being eaten at table, is the real thing. In one scene, for instance, in which the maid drops a tray of grouse, we had prepared six trays of six grouse each, just in case anything went wrong with the shot."
In one episode, when things go downhill at the Bentinck and to make ends meet Louisa starts cooking hand-raised pork pies, 400 pies had to be cooked. "To save expense, we filled a lot of them with sawdust," added Smith. "I was often coming across pies with a bite taken out of them, and a small pile of sawdust on the floor."
Nevertheless, with its huge standings sets (the hotel lobby and spacious kitchens) and dazzling cast, the series was destined to be a classy affair. Depicting the denizens of Duke Street, among others, were Christopher Cazenove as the charming but rakish Charles Tyrrell, later Lord Haslemere; June Brown as Louisa's manipulative mother; and Richard Vernon as the twinkly but hard-up Major Smith-Barton.
"It was dressed to look correct for the period. A retired porter – hired as an extra because he could carry a stack of baskets on his head – burst into tears when he saw it. The dockside filming was also spectacular.”
For the last item, "I managed to share the cost of this with Esther Waters [a four-part 1978 drama] on which I was also working – the designers collaborated. If things looked as if they were getting too expensive, I’d go up to John’s smoke-filled office, he’d look at his whiteboard and say, 'Oh, x is doing that episode and he isn’t very good at filming,' he’d rub out the location work, making a note to tell the writer, and I could balance the books!"
For Marcia Wheeler, The Duchess of Duke Street was "a source of satisfaction", and one that was made by a happy team – "They had scripts, competent directors and good casts to work with."
Such a strong-willed, resourceful heroine as Louisa Trotter is happily familiar today, but female-led dramas were far from common in 1976. Worthy indeed of a champagne toast. Happy 50th to a Duke and Duchess!
The Duchess of Duke Street repeats continue on Saturday at 8pm on Talking Pictures TV.
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