Arthur Marshall (broadcaster)

Arthur Marshall, MBE (10 May 1910 – 27 January 1989) was a British writer and broadcaster, born in Barnes, London in the UK. He was best known as a team captain on the BBC's Call My Bluff.

Life and career

Charles Arthur Bertram Marshall was the son of Charles Marshall, an electrical engineer from Colchester and Dorothy from Manchester. He was educated at Oundle School and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he became President of the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, and wanted to be an actor. As he could not find enough acting work he became a school teacher (modern languages), again at Oundle School.

His first work in entertainment was writing scripts for three-minute radio sketches in 1935, and a year later began reviewing - with school-girl stories in the New Statesman.

During the war Marshall's knowledge of French and German led to his being enrolled in the Intelligence Corps, and he was soon sent as part of the British Expeditionary Force (World War II) to northern France. After the rapid German advance he soon became a part of the Dunkirk evacuation. He wrote in his autobiography; "Absence of food, coupled with exhaustion, made the nights seem unusually cold and there is little of comfort, save protection of a sort, to be found in a sand dune. One's childhood love of sand and beaches disappeared in a trice." Later in the war he was appointed a Security Officer with the rank of Major to Combined Operations, and by the end of 1943 was transferred to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force HQ in Bushy Park, Twickenham. On June 6, 1944 the invasion of Europe began and the SHAEF HQ followed it. In 1945 Marshall was in Flensburg and lodged on Hitler's yacht at the time that Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel were being interrogated. At the end of the war, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and an MBE, he returned to Oundle School as a Housemaster.

During this period Marshall had some success on radio and the stage. His wartime radio programme A Date with Nurse Dugdale was very popular, and he wrote numerous revue sketches for performers such as Hermione Gingold. He adapted the novel Every Third Thought by American writer Dorothea Malm into the play Season of Goodwill. This starred Sybil Thorndike and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, but was not a success. He also wrote the British version of the French play Fleur de Cactus which had been adapted for the American stage by Abe Burrows' as Cactus Flower. This starred Margaret Leighton and Tony Britton and was a smash hit on the West End stage, until Leighton left to go to Broadway.

He appeared on radio and TV occasionally and published books of humorous pieces among other writings. The most widely known of these were his skits on the life and antics of public schoolgirls. From a relatively early age he had been an ardent admirer of the girls' school stories of Angela Brazil. He found them hilarious, although he noted "Miss Brazil had, of course, no comic intention when she started, in 1906, to write her books."

In 1954 he left Oundle and, after being private secretary to Victor, Lord Rothschild, worked for the London theatrical firm H. M. Tennent. In the fifties he began work in the theatre in London as a scriptwriter and also began having his humorous books published. As he became better known he appeared on radio and TV (although his first radio broadcast had been in 1934), and then in 1979 began his time as a regular team captain on Call My Bluff, which continued until shortly before his death. Marshall took over from Patrick Campbell. They had been friends for many years, ever since they both used to write, from around 1948 onwards, for Lilliput.

Marshall was also a newspaper and magazine columnist, writing for The Sunday Telegraph in the 1970s and 1980s, and enjoying an association with the New Statesman that began in 1935 when he wrote his first of many Christmas reviews of books for girls, and ended in 1981 when he was sacked from its "First Person" column, which he had been writing since the beginning of 1976, allegedly for being overtly sympathetic to Margaret Thatcher.

Having retired to Devon in 1970 where he shared a cottage with his partner, Marshall suffered a minor heart attack in 1988; he began writing the second part of his autobiography, but died shortly after a more serious illness.

List of writings

• Nineteen to the dozen
• Girls will be Girls (1974)
• I Say! (1977)
• I'll let you know (Musing from 'Myrtlebank')
• Smile please (Further Musings from 'Myrtlebank')
• Life's Rich Pageant (autobiography)
• Sunny Side Up

He also edited Salome, Dear, not in the Fridge, Never Rub Bottoms with a Porcupine, Whimpering in the Rhododendrons, and Giggling in the Shrubbery.

References

• Marshall, Arthur (1984). Life's Rich Pageant. London: Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 0-241-11306-7. 
• Bailey, Paul (2001). Three Queer Lives: An Alternative Biography of Fred Barnes, Naomi Jacob and Arthur Marshall. London: Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 0-241-13455-2. 
• The Times, Obituary, 28 January 1989