Cecil McGivern

Cecil McGivern CBE (22 May 1907, Newcastle, England – 30 January 1963, Buckinghamshire, England) was a British broadcasting executive, who initially worked for BBC Radio before transferring to BBC Television in the late 1940s.

The son of Irish immigrants, McGivern was educated at St Cuthbert's Grammar School and later attended Durham University. His initial ambition was to be an actor, but he quickly realised that he lacked the necessary talent and so pursued a career as a teacher instead. He did, however, continue working in the theatre as a producer of amateur productions.

He joined the BBC in 1936, working as a producer of drama and documentary programmes in his native Newcastle and also in Manchester. In 1939, he was promoted to occupy the newly created position of programmes director for the North-East of England. However, he only held this post for a short time before being seconded to the BBC in London after the outbreak of war, to become part of a group of producers working on war-related programming. During World War II, he wrote and directed several acclaimed radio documentary features, such as Bombers Over Berlin, The Harbour Called Mulberry, Fighter Pilot, and Junction X.

Following the end of the war in 1945, McGivern left the staff of the BBC to join the Rank Organisation film company, where he worked as a screenwriter. Probably the best-known film on which he worked for the company was Great Expectations (1946), starring John Mills. The script was nominated for the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay.

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