Rising to the apex of television design in the 1950s and 1960s, Clifford Hatts was acclaimed as a highly imaginative yet practical artist. “Design was written in big letters in those days,” he said. Later, he moved to lead — Hatts preferred this to the word “manage” — the whole range of TV-related activities: scenery, costumes, graphics, special effects, and make-up.
His first job, however, was asa designer of an exhibit at the 365ft-diameter aluminium “Dome of Discovery” at the Festival of Britain in 1951.It was a “major” piece of luck, he said, to have been offered the job by the architect Misha Black, a visiting examiner at the Royal College of Art where Hatts was a student. Black was also a founder of the Design Research Unit (DRU), the firm which created the British Rail logo and was put in charge of the dome.
Drafted into the team in September 1949, Hatts was assigned “the physical world” — the area to show the achievements of Britain’s scientists from Sir Isaac Newton to Sir Frank Whittle. When a section on interior lighting was left in darkness as King George VI came to inspect it, the monarch remarked to Clement Attlee, “Another of your power cuts, prime minister?” These teething problems did not dampen Hatts’s sense of excitement. “It was all about turning our backs on the war,” he said, “it was about the future.”
Clifford Ronald Hatts was born in 1921 in Woolwich, London, the youngest son of Harold, a shipping clerk, and Harriet, a gymnast. At the age of 12, he won a place at the Woolwich School of Arts and Crafts, and later obtained a scholarship to the Royal College of Art; the war intervened.
A “founder member” of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, he became a sergeant with specialist radio and radar knowledge. In 1945, he was posted to India, marrying Barbara Osman, a fellow art student, on embarkation leave. His most dangerous military experience, Hatts would later say, was being cut off on the roof of an Indian temple by a swarm of angry bees. He never regretted this period of technical training: it meant he could speak the same language as his BBC engineering colleagues. Acknowledgement proved rare: “In many respects, the BBC didn’t believe in credits,” he said. “Their attitude was rather paternalistic: we were getting paid, so what did we want a credit for?” He received the designer of the year award from Bafta in 1960 for his designs for the science fiction series, Quatermass and the Pit.
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Seven years later, he was persuaded to become head of scenic design and, in 1972, head of design group. A managerial role, this involved the recruitment, training and leadership of several hundred creative — and sometimes temperamental — staff. Hatts accepted that budgets were inevitable and that a studio had four walls: “How can you write a sonnet if you don’t accept the sonnet form?” he would say. Some of his staff found the equation more difficult. Much of his time was spent adjudicating over resources.
Hatts’s bugbear was the backdrop for current-affairs programmes. He fought to refresh the tired format of armchairs and book-lined walls: “The Regency library belongs in the drama department,” he remarked drily, “but we have only been partially successful in keeping it there.”
Never fulfilled by administration, he sometimes managed to escape to lecture abroad. Here, the extrovert came to the fore. Once, in the Arabian peninsula, he made a dramatic entrance in the full garb of an Arab sheikh; for a moment there was silence. He had the ghastly feeling that he had committed a disastrous faux pas — and then from the back of the hall came a cry of, “Ah, Lawrence”, followed by a gale of clapping and laughter.
He was the BBC’s main link with the Royal College of Art and the Royal Society of Arts, and he was critical of the trendy teaching of the Sixties that suggested students need not learn the basic disciplines of draughtsmanship.
On retiring in 1980, he returned to his easel, painting portraits and landscapes. Never happier than when he was the centre of attention at family gatherings, Hatts had three daughters: Gabrielle, who became an art teacher; Julia, who is a designer; and Caroline, a Montessori teacher.
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A man of warmth, he made a good friend and a hopeless enemy. This was shown during the filming of a production of Offenbach’s opera, La Belle Hélène. BBC technicians had painted giant letters across Hatts’s carefully painted floor for filming positions, which had then appeared in shot. Hatts complained to the camera operator, who pointed out that the marks were necessary. “I realise that,” replied Hatts, “but do they have to be quite so Wagnerian?”
Clifford Hatts, OBE, head of BBC television design, was born on November 10, 1921. He died on July 29, 2015, aged 93