Adrian Malone
| Adrian Malone | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Hugh Adrian Malone 3 February 1937 Bootle, Liverpool, England |
| Died | 13 March 2015 (aged 78) North Shields, Northumberland, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Documentary filmmaker |
Hugh Adrian Malone (3 February 1937 – 13 March 2015) was a British documentary filmmaker who produced and directed a number of documentaries, including The Ascent of Man, The Age of Uncertainty, and Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
Malone was born in Bootle, Liverpool, to Philip and Mary Malone. His parents were immigrants from Ireland and ran a fish and chip shop in Bootle. Malone quit his Jesuit school and did not go to university. However, " his reading was deep and wide and his knowledge of history, philosophy, music and art became prodigious."
In the 1960s, Malone worked for Border Television. In 1968, his documentary about chemical warfare, A Plague on Your Children, "earned him applause from the peace movement, but the undying suspicion of conventional authority." He later began working for the BBC.
Malone wrote a 40-page document for the Annan Committee, recommending the centralized BBC re-organise as a federation. The suggestion, however, "was not welcomed." In 1977, the same year the Annan Committee's report was published, Malone left the BBC and moved to the United States. He was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in history of science, and supported Walter Annenberg's idea for the 'center of the visual arts', where documentaries could be produced. After that fell through, Malone moved to California where he began working on the production of Cosmos.
In 1980, Malone was the executive producer and director of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which starred Carl Sagan. It was the highest rated program in the history of public television until 1990, airing in more than 60 countries and having hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. Sagan and Malone often clashed in production, with associate producer Judy Flannery later describing them as "...like oil and water. There was a lot of personal competition." Malone recalled their disputes as "somewhat childish . . . the sort of thing you try not to remember." However, he went on to say: "That tension really made things move along pretty quick and made us think always twice, possibly three times, in order to make sure we were getting ahead of each other."
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