N.p. [Elstree]: N.p. [ABPC], 1963

2pp. typescript, rectos only, dated 13 January 1963 to title page. Perforations down left edges from office binding. Very well preserved.

CONTEMPORARY REVIEW OF THE MADHOUSE ON CASTLE STREET, THE LOST BBC PLAY OF 1963 FEATURING A 21-YEAR-OLD BOB DYLAN IN HIS FIRST ACTING ROLE, AND GIVING HIS FIRST TELEVISED PERFORMANCE OF BLOWIN' IN THE WIND.

Located in a corner block on the Elstree lot opposite the main administration building, the job of Associated British Picture Corporation's Reading Department was to identify potential film projects for the studio. Most of the material considered by the studio between the early 1940s and 1969 came in the form of new novels, either selected by the readers themselves or submitted to ABPC by their authors' literary agents or publishers. Unsolicited screenplays were also read, as were older titles by authors whose work had enjoyed recent screen success and whose back catalogues might contain more material suitable for filming. Readers attended new plays to assess their potential for film adaptation.

ABPC appraised television and radio plays, too: the prevailing culture of live programming and no repeats made TV and radio output potentially lucrative territory for cinema exploitation, and readers paid avid attention to the drama output of domestic media. On 13 January 1963 ABPC assessed The Madhouse on Castle Street, a play written by Evan Jones and directed by Philip Saville for the BBC's Sunday Night Play strand. Its cast included Ursula Howells, David Warner in his first year out of RADA -- and Bob Dylan, twenty-one years old and in his first dramatic role.

In the summer of 1962 Dylan was spotted by the English television director Philip Saville, playing in a Greenwich Village basement club. Despite never having acted before, Dylan was offered a fee of 500 guineas to play Bobby, referred to in ABPC's report as a 'guitar-playing hobo', in Saville's next project, The Madhouse on Castle Street, a play set in a boarding house, one of whose residents has decided to lock himself in his room and withdraw from the world. Dylan accepted the offer and was flown to London, where folk music icon Martin Carthy became his guide to the British folk scene.

But Dylan was in the UK to appear in a television play -- something which came to him less naturally. While there was no problem with the songs he was scripted to sing, he announced at the read-through that he wasn't an actor and had no interest in becoming one. The script was hastily rewritten, with Dylan's role remoulded as a sort of singing Greek chorus, and the young David Warner drafted in to play what had been Dylan's non-singing character. Dylan sang four songs (all his own) in the play: Hang Me, O Hang Me; Cuckoo Bird; The Ballad of the Gliding Swan -- and Blowin' in the Wind. While staying at Philip Saville's house Dylan sang Blowin' in the Wind to Saville's two enchanted au pairs. Saville overheard him, and persuaded Dylan to let him use the song to play over the film's opening and closing credits.

The broadcast of The Madhouse on Castle Street was watched by ABPC Reading Department Head Kathleen Leaver, whose report gives a detailed two-page breakdown of the plot -- and a dismissive assessment of the play's chances of big screen success. It reads, in full: 'This is not a subject likely to appeal to cinema audiences.'

The film was broadcast on Sunday 13 January 1963. It was never repeated, the tape was wiped by the BBC in 1968, and no copy is known to exist. Bob Dylan's first ever appearance on film is now lost. But audio recordings of the songs Dylan performed in The Madhouse on Castle Street have survived, taped off-air as the show went out by enterprising folk fans, eerie echoes of a lost cultural landmark.

Film production companies have been basing themselves at Elstree since 1914, and in most cases their archives have been dispersed, lost or destroyed. This unique and hitherto unknown document from surviving ABPC reader reports has not been seen since its composition more than sixty years ago, and has never before been offered for sale.