The Flight of the Dimbleby

As Americans watched the wedding of Britain's Princess Margaret on NBC-TV last week (see FOREIGN NEWS), they heard a flow of murmured Mayfairisms that were almost as impressive as the Archbishop of Canterbury's solemnity. It was the sable-tongued voice of Richard Dimbleby, a tall, benign, Pickwickian commentator so unfailingly proper that he all but calls the thing in his hand a Michael. Dropping sterling syllables into the air from his glass-paneled aerie 60 ft. above Westminster Abbey's nave, Dimbleby lived up not only to his reputation as England's best commentator, but to his nicknames--"Bishop Dimbleby," "Dick Dimbleboom," and "The Royal Plum Pudding."

In two impressive, hour-long BBC tapes flown from London to Canada and picked up in full from there by NBC (other networks ran only newscasts and, later, highlights), Commentator Dimbleby described the princess tensely awaiting the walk to the altar, reassuringly reminded his audience of "the comforting, tall, friendly and alert figure of the Duke of Edinburgh, on whose right arm she can rely." He sifted the guests ("What a tower of strength Lady Churchill is"), spoke as the Voice of England when the bride's coach left the Abbey: "All of us wish, as she goes back through London, that her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peaceful."

Teleprayer. Full of subdued color, Dimbleby had a kindly plug or two for Queen Elizabeth's coachman, Joseph Cooze. He described the mounted Sovereign's Escort as "this lovely, twinkling jingle of breastplates," and back at Buckingham Palace, when a telescopic longshot followed the royal family as they left the balcony and got a candid peek at the Queen Mother mimicking a part of the ceremony, Dimbleby was propriety itself: "I think we ought not to stand and watch the royal family inside their own house any more."

When the hour arrived for the honeymoon couple's departure on the yacht Britannia, Dimbleby met the severest test of his career: Margaret and Tony were late, leaving Dick Dimbleboom to fill the BBC air with 55 minutes of spontaneous prose. It was a pukka job, a splendid sort of flight of the Dimbleby. He talked fluently of the Thames, sturdily of Tower Bridge, thickly of the city's occasional fog. Five helicopters coptered overhead. Mounting to lance, Dimbleby told his audience: "If I had a really good air gun, I'd know what to do with those five." When the couple arrived at last, Dimbleby sent the princess "down Father Thames and down to the sea" with the teleprayer that "the sun shine on her in all the years that lie beyond."

Teleknight? If he keeps it up, Richard Dimbleby may well become what many British show people hope he will be: the first knight of television. He has lent his faultless, icky-wicket comments to nearly every royal occasion since World War II, including the funeral of King George VI, the wedding and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. A merry, good-tempered pro, he was the BBC's first war correspondent, even broadcast from a Royal Air Force bomber on a raid over Berlin. In 1945, he was arrested in Berlin by suspicious Russian soldiers, won his freedom by taking advantage of certain physical resemblances, gloweringly insisting that he was "a Churchill."

For such royal ceremonies, he commands a fee of about $1,500, once quipped: "What am I supposed to do between coronations--starve?" The joke had a comfortably hollow leg. Dimbleby is the most courted freelance broadcaster in Britain, covers state visits and elections, does two regular weekly shows, owns three provincial newspapers, a 30-acre farm, a 17th century pad, a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce.

With Dick Dimbleby aloft. BBC scored a clear victory over the competing ITV (commercial television), and its coverage was consummately skillful. With a total of 25 cameras inside the Abbey and well-spaced along the streets, British television showed a precision that was enough to jar U.S. pros out of their technical complacence. Handled by TV with grace and unfaltering taste, the wedding was nonetheless a moving and spectacular show, and no spectator was more moved than Richard Dimbleby--described by a colleague as "the only man working in the Abbey [except for the groom] who owns his own morning coat," and by himself as "a monarchist through and through."

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