Larry Stephens

Lawrence Geoffrey Stephens (16 July 1923 26 January 1959) was a BBC radio scriptwriter, best remembered for co-writing The Goon Show with Spike Milligan. Stephens was a regular writer of the show for the first two years, and then returned to The Goon Show to assist Milligan. From his association with Milligan, Stephens became involved with Associated London Scripts (ALS), and was said to have been "one of the most eye-catching characters, in the earliest days of the company...he played a significant cameo role in the first phase of success for ALS". Trained as an accountant, Stephens distinguished himself as a jazz pianist before the onset of World War II. Following service in the war, during which he served as a Commando captain, Milligan once remarked that "Larry and Tony were like brothers".

Career

In 1952, he developed a potential radio series for Hancock, which was designed to run for a full half-hour without musical breaks, then usual, called Vacant Lot. Although Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and others were provisionally attached to the project, it was never recorded.

Elements of Vacant Lot were later re-written by Stephens and broadcast by the BBC as Welcome to Welkham, but with Brian Reece, instead of Hancock.

The original script for Vacant Lot re-emerged in 2015.

Stephens wrote for a number of popular shows, comedians and entertainers in the 1950s including Arthur Askey, Jon Pertwee and Dick Emery, Dickie Valentine,

The radio shows he contributed to included Pertwee's Progress, Bumblethorpe (with Spike Milligan and Peter Ling), The Forces Show (with Jimmy Grafton), Arthur's Inn, Forces All-Star Bill (with Spike Milligan) and Star Bill (with Eric Sykes), and Bring On The Girls.

He wrote for Hancock again on The Tony Hancock Show (1956–57), which was screened on ITV by Associated-Rediffusion. Stephens also wrote for other popular television series too, such as The Army Game with Maurice Wiltshire, with whom he also co-wrote three Goon Show episodes (later, Wiltshire also rewrote an unused Stephens script for the show). Several of his radio scripts for The Goon Show were later adapted by Wiltshire for the TV puppet version, The Telegoons.

According to a BBC Radio 4 programme on Stephens' life, it was while working on the second season of The Goon Show that Stephens, doubling both as a key contributor and as Milligan's agent, began to drink so heavily it affected his work. Graham McCann (2006) states that Stephens' partnership with Milligan "foundered initially in the early 1950s – when he was drinking more than four bottles of rum and a couple of bottles of whisky each week". In February 1954, the BBC asserted that Stephens had violated the terms of his contract by failing to deliver scripts for The Goon Show on time, and that, thereafter, his work would only be considered on spec. Insulted, Stephens refused to have anything further to do with The Goon Show. Two years after the BBC cancelled his contract, Milligan managed to rehire Stephens for The Goon Show on the condition that Milligan, not the BBC, pay his salary.

Stephens was probably at his busiest during 1955 and 1956, during which time, apart from co-writing The Goon Show, he also supplied the story and helped shape the screenplay for The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn (1956), and made countless last-minute re-writes of various comedians' scripts, innumerable gags for a wide range of variety shows and quite a few unofficial edits of troublesome television scripts. Stephens' heavy drinking had aggravated his high blood pressure, and he died on 26 January 1959; the official cause of death was a cerebral haemorrhage brought about by chronic hypertension. It was most likely that Stephens' death was the reason that The Goon Show episode, "Dishonoured – Again" (broadcast on 26 January 1959) was a remake of the show "Dishonoured" (broadcast on 14 December 1954).

A biography of Stephens has been written by his cousin Julie Warren. The book is entitled It's All In The Mind: The Life and Legacy of Larry Stephens.

Filmography (as writer) The Super Secret Service (1953), film The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn (1956), film The Tony Hancock Show (1956–1957), TV series The Army Game (1957), TV series The Telegoons (1963–1964), TV series