Roger MacDougall

(1910-1993)

Thomas Roger MacDougall was born in Bearsden, Glasgow, on 2 August 1910, son of Thomas and Maggie MacDougall. He studied Law at Glasgow University, then moved down to London, with his cousin Alexander Mackendrick (their mothers were sisters) to pursue a career as a writer. To earn money Roger wrote popular songs and Alexander got a job as a designer for an advertising agency.

In 1935 Roger was commissioned to write words and music for George Black's revue Round About Regent Street and married his Glasgow fiancée Renee Dunlop. They had a daughter, Elspeth, born in 1936 and, later, a son, Lindsay, born in 1948.

Having sold the story idea for the film Midnight at Madame Tussaud's (1936) to Highbury Studios he wrote an original screenplay in collaboration with Mackendrick which they sent to various studios without success. As the political tension in Europe increased, they realised they could turn their screenplay into a topical story. After several nights' revision, they sold the scenario, in which an international arms manufacturer plans to start a war in Europe by bombing London, to Grosvenor Films who filmed it as Midnight Menace (1937). The script was rewritten by G.H. Moresby-White and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis.

Roger continued to write for films in collaboration with other writers, including Allan MacKinnon, with whom he also wrote four musical burlesques for the BBC's new medium of television (King of the Congo, They're Off!, Anything May Happen and Pest Pilot), while Alexander concentrated on his job as an art director at advertising agency J W Thompson, where he started storyboarding short cartoon advertising films for their animation department, run by John Halas and Joy Batchelor.

With the outbreak of war in 1939 the government commissioned propaganda films from J W Thompson, and Mackendrick worked with Halas and Batchelor on several of these. But JWT was used to telling their clients how best to put over their message in a rather high-handed manner that was not appreciated by the Ministry of Information. When, in April 1941, a bomb damaged their London flat Halas and Batchelor moved out to Bushey, near Watford, and set up their own studio, working directly for the MOI. Mackendrick was also required to work directly for the MOI, and needing to set up a company to do so he approached Roger, who was successfully writing scripts and songs for films produced by Michael Balcon at Ealing Studios. Together the cousins formed MacDougall & Mackendrick and made several 90-second films for the MOI which were shown as part of the cinema newsreels produced by various distributors. These included Save Your Bacon (8 October 1942), in which a farmer urges housewives to put their food waste into a pig bin to ensure the continued supply of bacon, and Contraries (1 July 1943), where the Walrus and the Carpenter stress the need to separate "contraries" (the paper-recycling term for extraneous matter such as metal or rubber) from paper salvage. These films consist of sequences of rendered cartoon drawings by Mackendrick, with some jump-cuts in lieu of animation, to songs written by MacDougall (the song in Save Your Bacon is a reworking of the "Old Sow" comic song, complete with the snort, raspberry and whistle interjections). They also made a 3-minute Technicolor advertising film for JWT called I Like Lobsters (1943), featuring a song written by Roger and performed by Geraldo and his Orchestra, done in the same technique and promoting an indigestion remedy.

As well as scripting feature films, government information films and advertising films, Roger wrote and directed some live-action documentaries for Mike Hankinson's Merlin Films during the 1940s and 50s. He scripted some cartoon films for Halas and Batchelor and several for Larkins Studio.

After the War he continued writing film scripts, including The Man in the White Suit, directed by Mackendrick. Although most of his script work was for films, he preferred writing plays, saying "I am interested in words and ideas. Films are all 'what-happens-next'. To me 'why-did-that-happen' is more interesting. Only in the theater is the writer in control.” His plays include The Gentle Gunman, To Dorothy a Son, Macadam and Eve (all 1950), and Escapade (1952).

In 1953 he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which impaired his sight and confined him to a wheelchair. He continued working, using a dictaphone to record his scripts. He gained virtually total remission after adopting a paleolithic-style diet, and published a pamphlet to help other sufferers. The rest of his life he studied dietary methods for controlling various ailments.

After a trip to Hollywood in 1975 with his wife and son to visit Mackendrick, Roger and his family moved to California in 1963. Mackendrick, however, was not happy in Hollywood, falling out with his producers, and returned to Britain. Roger worked for Disney and Paramount, but with no success. For two years he taught scriptwriting at UCLA, and then returned to England.

Renee died in 1976. Roger continued his campaign to get the medical profession to properly investigate diet as means of managing ailments, but with little success. In 1993, in a letter to his friend Bryan Forbes, who had benefitted from Roger's dietary advice, he wrote that he was "Still waiting hopefully, with a touch of anxiety." He died on 27 May 1993.

Filmography (Animation Only)

Links to Other Sites

The British Entertainment History Project Roger MacDougall 2-part audio interview (16 Feb 1993).

Direct-MS Roger McDougall Story Online digest of Roger MacDougall's pamphlet My Fight Against Muliple Sclerosis, with a biography of the Author.

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