Obituary
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Dee Dee Glass
Feisty filmmaker on a quest to expose society's ills
Jonathan Silver and Nancy Platt
Friday October 1, 2004
The Guardian
The American-born Dee Dee Glass, who has died, aged 55, of complications
following treatment for leukaemia, was a campaigning filmmaker, writer and
activist who worked almost exclusively in Britain. Her work illuminated
the underside of society, whose least powerful members she championed.
Those who appeared less than enthusiastic about her work would be
upbraided with American Jewish humour, execrable language and formidable
threats.
Born in Chicago, and educated at the Berklee School of Music in Boston,
Dee Dee arrived in England in 1972, and became a student at the newly
formed National Film School. There, her major project was a film about the
first women's refuge, in Chiswick, west London. She went on to Granada
Television in the early 1970s, one of a number of bright young filmmakers,
with a passion for tackling and overcoming every barrier in her way.
In Manchester, she was required to work as a director on local stories.
But even then, all such assignments were assessed through the prism of her
commitment to the feminist movement, and a desire to expose and reverse
social injustice. Many a hapless press officer - initially pleased to
learn that a local television news crew had turned up to cover his event -
soon discovered that Dee Dee had her own agenda.
In 1978, she became the first woman documentary producer at Southern
Television, in Southampton. She was delighted to disrupt their usual
coverage of sailing and riding with films about anorexia, army wives and
women tattooists.
Continuing a habit of being ahead of the pack, Dee Dee investigated the
slimming industry for BBC2's Man Alive, in a programme entitled Fats And
Figures (1979); for BBC's Inside Story, she made Partners In Crime (1989),
about the first police domestic violence unit.
She relished controversy, though not for its own sake. It always arose
from her ferocious principles - a pro-fur film, Flying Fur (1991), for the
BBC Community Programme Unit, criticised anti-semitism among animal rights
groups; her One Man In Ten (1993), for Channel 4's Dispatches, showed
interviews with prostitutes' clients. Her standard response to stories
about the prevalence of rape or paedophilia was, "It can't all be the same
12 guys."
Dee Dee's one foray into feature-length drama came in 1984 with Sacred
Hearts, which she produced for Channel Four. Typically, she paid everyone
proper overtime (not always common practice at the time) and hired a
predominantly female film crew. Her own company, Reality Productions, was
set up in 1981. She also worked for the all-women company, Broadside.
In her book All My Fault: Why Women Don't Leave Abusive Men (1995), Dee
Dee carefully assembled stories from a cross-section of anonymous women to
answer the question that had been put to her so many times.
Filmmakers do not often carry their commitment beyond a programme
transmission date, but Dee Dee had an alternative (unpaid) career speaking
at conferences, sitting on management committees, and training newcomers
to the industry.
Once you overcame her rather fearsome persona, she was charming, brave and
funny. She loved challenging the preconceptions of the young, and, with a
good bottle of wine to hand, would enthral them for hours with her radical
views and scurrilous gossip. One beneficiary of this mentoring was her
goddaughter, Rhiannon Tise, now a successful playwright.
Dee Dee was a fighter and, in her later years, applied her characteristic
determination to overcome her considerable health problems. She became an
expert on current medical knowledge, and possible innovative treatments.
There was never a moment of self-pity, though she endured years of
debilitating symptoms.
When well enough, she generously entertained - and was entertained by -
her considerable band of friends, as well as pursuing her love of opera,
music, theatre, film - and the Archers. Although she was passionate about
events she admired, she was equally unafraid of making an ostentatious
departure from those she did not.
She was married to Paul Bamborough, though subsequently divorced. She is
survived by her mother and her brother. · Diana 'Dee Dee' Glass,
filmmaker, born October 21 1948; died September 13 2004
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