Yvonne Littlewood, who has died aged 95, was BBC television’s first female producer and director in its light entertainment department. Along with Patricia Foy for music, Margaret Dale for dance and Grace Wyndham Goldie for talk programmes, she was a trailblazer for women behind the scenes in television.
Her early successes included the Eurovision song contest in 1960, when the fifth annual extravaganza of countries battling for the musical title took place in London for the first time, at the Royal Festival Hall. Littlewood worked on it as the programme coordinator, not helped when the scoreboard recorded Austria’s five votes to France as seven.
The following year, she directed the British heats and then, in 1963, the final, hosted by BBC Television Centre. It was a logistical challenge, spread over three studios, with the audience, the host, Katie Boyle, and the scoreboard in one, the performers and orchestra in another and the British jury in a third. The quick changeover of sets between the 16 acts led to rumours that parts of the live programme were recorded, but this was emphatically denied.
Another controversy came when Norway’s jury was not ready with its votes as Boyle asked for them, and gave intermediate scores – which proved very different from the final ones it read out later, securing victory for its Scandinavian neighbour Denmark.
Littlewood began the programme with shots from the sky above, showing off the newly built Television Centre. “You have to do something to establish the country, wherever it’s being held,” she explained. “We landed this helicopter on the roof. It was exciting to do that.”
Over the next 27 years, Littlewood immersed herself as a producer in light entertainment series and specials starring popular singers. She had long runs with Petula Clark (1966-74), Nana Mouskouri (1968-76), whom she had met at the 1963 Eurovision song contest, and Val Doonican (1976-88).
In 1968, the BBC released her for six weeks when she was asked to co-produce an American TV special for Clark on the NBC network. The programme, Petula, featured Harry Belafonte as the guest star. After Clark held his arm while singing a duet, the director insisted on reshooting it, with the stars standing apart, because of objections from the show’s sponsor on racial grounds. Clark subsequently objected, Littlewood wiped the second version and the original was used.
Although she disliked the nature of programme-making by committee in the US, Littlewood made further shows there with Clark.
She retired from the BBC in 1986 but continued as a guest producer until 1990, when she made A Royal Birthday Gala as Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, celebrated her 90th.
Born in Maidstone, Kent, Yvonne was the daughter of Joan (nee Ball) and Eric Littlewood, a bank manager. The family moved briefly to King’s Lynn, Norfolk, then Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, where Yvonne excelled at ballet and played the piano while her parents sang with the local amateur operatic and dramatic society.
In 1944, she joined the BBC as a secretary in its finance department at the Alexandra Palace studios in London. Two years later, she moved to television and, in 1947, became production secretary to the first producer-director of TV light entertainment programmes, Michael Mills. Together, they worked on shows such as Saturday Night at the Palace (1947-48). Littlewood, who had a particular love of music, was then promoted to production assistant.
She said: “In those days, the BBC was very much a man’s world.” Nevertheless, she managed to demonstrate her skill, particularly when in 1956 Bill Cotton – the BBC’s future head of light entertainment – began as a producer-director and found himself in a tangle. She was able to show him how to cut from one camera to another in sync with the music.
Her own career as a producer began with Soft Lights and Sweet Music, The Perry Como Music Hall (both 1960-61) and a 1961 Russ Conway series. The following year, her star-studded programmes featured Kenny Ball, Nelson Riddle, Shirley Bassey, Cleo Laine and Johnny Dankworth, and Johnny Mathis. Later specials included stars such as Olivia Newton-John (1977), Tony Bennett (1979), Tommy Steele (1981), John Denver (1982) and James Galway (1986). Littlewood also worked as producer or director on four Royal Variety Performances between 1970 and 1986.
In the 1970s, she was still the only woman among 20 male producers in light entertainment, but the situation at the BBC slowly improved as a result of a report in 1985 by Monica Sims, the corporation’s first female director of radio programmes.
Littlewood was appointed MBE in 1986.
• Yvonne Mary Pearl Littlewood, producer and director, born 22 July 1927; died 7 July 2023
