Guardian

Leslie Megahey, who has died aged 77, was a director of arts documentaries on subjects across a wide spectrum, from movie legends such as Orson Welles to ...

He directed it in the West End (Criterion theatre, 1994), then in Los Angeles and on Broadway two years later. As BBC television’s head of music and arts (1988-91), as before he juggled his executive position with making his own documentaries. Megahey even directed opera, with his film of Béla Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1988) winning the 1989 Prix Italia music award. He produced and directed Omnibus from 1972, and was executive producer of Arena (1976-78) and editor of Omnibus (1978-81), later jointly editing both with Alan Yentob and others (1985-87), mixing high and low culture in his commissions. Later, in 1986, the Japanese director [Akira Kurosawa](https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2010/mar/23/akira-kurosawa-100-google-doodle-anniversary) gave him an interview for Arena. John Russell wrote in the New York Times: “The programme has a beauty and integrity of tone that are rare in films about art and artists.” Then, in 1969, Megahey contributed documentaries to Canvas, a series allowing David Hockney and others to give their view on great works of art, before producing First Eleven (1970), with similar personal assessments. [Charles Gray](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/mar/09/guardianobituaries2) narrated both Schalcken the Painter and Cariani and the Courtesans (1987), which Megahey wrote and directed for the BBC’s Screenplay series. Leslie was born in Belfast to Beatrice (nee Walton) and the Rev Thomas Megahey. His career as a director began the following year with a portrait of the music-hall performer Dan Leno for another arts programme, Contrasts. Away from painters, one of Megahey’s most notable pieces of documentary-making was The Orson Welles Story (1982), a Bafta-winning two-part programme encompassing the Hollywood giant’s long career. [Schalcken the Painter](https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/why-i-love-schalcken-painter) (1979), made as a drama-documentary weaving fact and fiction, and based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1839 gothic tale, filled the BBC’s traditional pre-Christmas ghost story slot.