Set Designed by Eileen Diss for Philadelphia, Here I Come!

Eileen Diss the Multi Bafta Award Winning Designer whose work includes classic films such as 84 Charing Cross Road, Jeeves and Wooster and the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, to name but a few, is the designer of Philadelphia, Here I Come! On opening night she gave as a good luck card to all the cast and crew a card with the most exquisite drawing detailing the Set of Philadelphia, Here I Come!

The following interview that I found on the Bafta.org website gives an idea of what an illustrious and diverse career Eileen has had.


Award-winning production designer Eileen Diss reflects on her 50-year career with Quentin Falk.

Eileen Diss wears more than half a century of production design very lightly indeed. Yes, she admits that the idea of driving herself to a remote film or TV location at six in the morning is, these days, perhaps less than appealing. But that hasn't stopped her from recently commuting between Dublin's Gate Theatre and London's Barbican where she has been tirelessly involved with simultaneously staging no fewer than ten of Samuel Beckett's plays.

It has, by any standards, been a brilliant career from those very earliest days at the BBC in the Fifties where her skills were required on everything from 'The Sunday Play' and Muffin The Mule to Maigret and The Railway Children. Film and theatre followed along with BAFTA awards for TV's Jeeves & Wooster and Longitude as well as further nominations for A Dance To The Music Of Time and Porterhouse Blue.

That kind of small-screen recognition, along with an RTS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, together with this year's Special Award at the British Academy Television Craft Awards might explain why, when pressed about her preference, she notes that TV has probably afforded her most enjoyment. No, not because of the trophies but, she explains ever businesslike, "simply because of the multi-camera. Logistically, it's very interesting to plot a studio." This was especially true in the days of live television drama. "That was fun," she sighs, a little nostalgically.

The daughter of a dental technician and a sometime dress designer, Diss grew up in East London with an addiction for film from her teens and a burning desire to get into the industry. Her letters to the likes of legendary art director Carmen Dillon received polite replies but no concrete result.

But after eventually graduating in theatre design at the Central School, one of her father's wartime contacts paid off with an invitation for to meet the head of design at the BBC. Six months later, she received a letter asking if she'd like to join one of their production courses. She'd love to, Diss replied, but how much would it cost her? "No, we will be paying you £9 a week."

It was such fun, she recalls, "but then everything was fun when you're 21. After the six-week course we went into Lime Grove to assist people. I'd never done any technical drawing as such but you learn that very quickly. There were ten designers in all and I had no long term thoughts at all; I was happy just getting on with it."

After her second child - Diss, who was widowed a decade ago, has three children (her oldest, Dany, is an award-winning costume designer) and six grandchildren - she went freelance in 1959, "although I still worked totally for the BBC. The idea was that I wouldn't be working full-time as I had two small children, but it didn't seem to work out like that; it was as intense as ever."

Early highlights for her include Maigret and one of Ken Loach's earliest TV plays, Up The Junction - "Ken looked rather like a sixth former then - come to think of it, he still does" - before, thanks to introduction from Harold Pinter, her feature film debut in 1973 for Joseph Losey. A Doll's House, with a contractually all-powerful Jane Fonda, took her "to a little town in Norway just below the Arctic Circle. It was all a bit of a shock for me because I had to go by myself and set it all up. At the BBC I'd been used to big backup; now I was all alone in the snow. It was very hard and although educational, I can't say I really enjoyed it struggling to keep 10 minutes ahead of things.

"Did I have a bigger budget to work with? Oh God, no. I've never done anything with a big budget. They've always been minute. I'm not even sure I'd be comfortable with a big budget because I'm now so used to small art departments."

Her award-nominated production design has generally been associated with period drama - Longitude skilfully recreated the mid 18th Century while Jeeves & Wooster veritably dripped turn of the Thirties - though her own historical preference is for the 19th and early 20th Century. "I like in particular the social history of those periods and have a read a lot of it."

It is, though, typical of Diss, at just 75 still ever the team player, that TV design-wise, she prefers instead not to sing her own successes but rather pay tribute "to a whole area out there which is far more inventive.

"I'm talking about really big studio complexes for something like Strictly Come Dancing. Those are staggering sets, yet they never seem to be considered for awards," she harrumphed, elegantly.