Norman Campbell

Born in Los Angeles to Canadian parents in February 1924, Campbell grew up in Vancouver, where from a very young age he began to write songs. He met Elaine Leiterman in 1947, and they married in 1949. Although he took a degree in meteorology from the University of British Columbia, he began his career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1946 as a songwriter when he was asked to write a song a week for a series called Summer Romance. He joined them full time in 1948. In 1952, he moved to Toronto, where he directed some of Canada's first live TV shows. In 1955, he wrote his first musical for television, Take to the Woods, starring Robert Goulet with a book by Eric Nicol and lyrics by Elaine Campbell. But it was in 1956 that, along with his wife Elaine and actor Don Harron, he wrote the show that he will be remembered for, Anne of Green Gables. Campbell established a reputation for adapting ballet for television, winning two Emmy awards - including one in 1972 for Sleeping Beauty with Rudolph Nureyev. Walt Disney hired him in 1966 to direct the feature film Ballerina, filmed in Denmark and starring a very young Jenny Agutter. He later said, "I remember Walt Disney as I screened our first tests in Hollywood; I was told to watch out for his fingers. I did. As the scenes unraveled on the screen I could see his fingers, perfectly still. This was the Good Sign. He loved it." In 1965, the new Confederation Centre for the Arts in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island commissioned a stage version of Anne of Green Gables, directed and choreographed by the late Alan Lund. In 1969, the show ran for nine months at the New (later Albery, now Noel Coward) Theatre in London's West End, presented by Canadian expatriate Bill Freedman. It has been presented several times in Tokyo in a Japanese language version, beginning in 1980, and it is now in its fortieth season in Charlottetown. His other musicals include Turvey (1966) and The Wonder Of It All (1971 on television, 1980 on stage in Victoria, B.C.), both with books by Don Harron and lyrics by Elaine Campbell. Norman was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 1978.