O'Donovan, Frederick Michael ('Fred')

by Linde Lunney

O'Donovan, Frederick Michael ('Fred') (1929–2010), theatrical impresario, theatre and radio producer, and public figure, was born 27 May 1929 at the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin, the fourth of six sons of John O'Donovan, of 53 Casino Road, Croydon Park, Fairview, north Dublin, who worked as a shop assistant for a stationery company, and his wife Kathleen (née Connolly). He attended national school in Marino and then St Joseph's CBS in Fairview. After sitting his intermediate certificate, he started studying radio engineering in the College of Technology, Kevin Street, but, when he was aged just 15, he and his friend Cathal O'Shannon (1928–2011) ran away to Belfast, bearing altered baptismal certificates and lying about their ages, to join the RAF. Their hopes of careers as pilots were dashed, as the war came to an end, but O'Donovan stayed in the RAF and was sent with an international team to search for missing airmen, dead or alive, and war criminals, in various parts of Europe. He contracted tuberculosis during this time, and had to give up plans to become a professional footballer, having represented the RAF in soccer, boxing and hockey.

After some time in hospital in Moira, Co. Down, he spent a year in a Swiss sanitorium, not at first expected to recover. After helping to put on a show, involving the American singer Paul Robeson, for military personnel stationed in Northern Ireland, he enjoyed the experience so much he decided to try a career in show business. The RAF paid for him to do a two-year course to train as a radio producer with the BBC in Birmingham, and he toured briefly as stage manager and director with a repertory company in Britain.

While O'Donovan was holidaying in Ireland in the early 1950s, his tuberculosis returned, and he spent some time in the Adelaide Hospital, Dublin. This coincided with the development of drug treatments for the disease. Regaining his health, he decided in 1953 to stay in Dublin. He picked up a succession of theatre jobs, and on occasion was assistant stage manager and producer in the Gaiety Theatre with Cyril Cusack (qv). He met Sean O'Casey (qv) and George Bernard Shaw (qv), worked with Hilton Edwards (qv) and Micheál MacLiammóir (qv), and got to know anyone who was anyone in show business. Though he acknowledged that his acting skills were very limited, O'Donovan quickly developed other, more commercially useful, abilities, which were to mark him out as one of Ireland's most notable show business impresarios. He formed a company that produced hundreds of radio shows for Radio Éireann and American stations, and produced many recordings, of dramatic performances as well as all kinds of popular music.

By 1956 O'Donovan's small recording studio was becoming such a notable rival to the Dublin operations of Eamonn Andrews (qv), that Andrews approached him to work out an arrangement, and the two companies merged. O'Donovan took responsibility (as managing director from 1957) for running the various strands of the business in Dublin, while Andrews spent most of his time in London. The new company continued the production of hundreds of radio shows each year, but quickly diversified its activities, running discotheques and owning the Television Club and Portmarnock Country Club. It was increasingly successful under O'Donovan's guidance, with a turnover in 1980 of £1 million. In his role as artistic director and producer in the Andrews organisation, O'Donovan was associated for twenty-four years with Christmas pantomimes, cabarets and summer variety shows in Jury's Hotel and Dublin theatres, especially the Gaiety. Several performers who later became well known owed much to O'Donovan: the Bachelors, Maureen Potter (qv), Hal Roach (1927–2012) and Larry Gogan (b. 1938) among them. For years, O'Donovan took Irish artists to New York to put on Irish variety shows, and produced shows for Frank Patterson (qv) in Carnegie Hall. O'Donovan was particularly associated with the 'Gaels of laughter' show at the Gaiety Theatre, which ran for fifteen summers (1965–79), starring Maureen Potter and Milo O'Shea (1926–2013). In 1980 O'Donovan achieved a major success with the ambitious Gaiety production of the Broadway musical Annie.

That same year, however, O'Donovan underwent a heart-bypass operation, possibly owing to overwork. While convalescing, he had a visit from an old friend and rival impresario, Noel Pearson, and was angered to hear that Pearson had been recruited by Eamonn Andrews to take over some of O'Donovan's responsibilities. Andrews claimed that he had been concerned for O'Donovan's health, but the latter was not mollified, and a very public falling-out led to O'Donovan resigning in January 1981 with a golden handshake.

As he was prohibited by the agreement with Eamonn Andrews Studios from producing any theatrical shows in Ireland for three years, O'Donovan, in renewed health, considered moving to the US to make films. However, in March 1981 his old friend Charles J. Haughey (qv) appointed him first chairman of the new National Concert Hall (NCH). O'Donovan threw himself into the role with gusto. His considerable experience of all aspects of concert promotion and his day-to-day involvement in the running of the venue (though technically not the CEO, he found himself an office onsite) gave the new venture a flying start, but annoyed staff and some members of the NCH board, who felt he was too involved, even to the extent of booking performers, and also alleged he was too close to Haughey and other leading Fianna Fáil politicians. Nonetheless, O'Donovan was proud of what was achieved in his five years, leaving the NCH in profit in 1986.

In June 1981 Haughey's Fianna Fáil government was about to be replaced by a Fine Gael–Labour coalition and, in almost its last act, appointed O'Donovan to chair the RTÉ Authority. The appointment, though seen as a characteristic parting shot by the outgoing taoiseach, was not unpopular in RTÉ, where O'Donovan's experience and commitment to native talent and productions were acknowledged. However, he was again soon criticised for ignoring the proper distinction between the responsibilities of the executive and the duties of the chairman. On occasion he was happy to sidestep the requirement to consult and inform his board, while he made enemies by giving media interviews in which RTÉ affairs were publicly aired before others involved had been consulted or informed.

In his RTÉ years O'Donovan's enthusiasm for getting things done verged on the autocratic, and his intervention in the making of programmes led to friction within the organisation and public controversy, most notably in January 1983. O'Donovan's personal opposition to abortion led him to demand the blocking of a programme planned by the Late late show on the abortion referendum. He was accused of breaching the code of impartiality statutorily demanded of the RTÉ Authority and there were calls for his resignation. In March 1985 he again courted controversy when the authority named John Sorohan as its preferred choice for appointment as director general, despite opposition from all levels of RTÉ staff, and defying the minister for communication's expressed wish that the appointment of the director general should be delayed. Critics alleged afterwards that the appointment had been made by an interview board (unusually, chaired by O'Donovan himself) lacking political balance, and in the event, after discussions in the dáil on 12–13 March 1985, the authority's recommended candidate was not ratified by the Fine Gael minister, Jim Mitchell (qv), with whom O'Donovan was to cross swords again.

In June 1985 Mitchell did not re-appoint O'Donovan to the RTÉ Authority. Even though no longer involved in the state broadcaster, O'Donovan was still a force to be reckoned with, and from October 1988 served as a member of the newly established Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC), charged with overseeing the granting of licences to commercial radio stations. Once again, O'Donovan's role was controversial. While still chairman of the RTÉ Authority, he had met and become friendly with a young and ambitious businessman, Denis O'Brien (b. 1958), and set up several companies with him. A consortium exploring satellite broadcasting was unsuccessful, but in January 1986 O'Donovan and O'Brien established E-Sat, a company of which they were the only directors. They found wealthy backers for a planned satellite entertainment channel, but had to acknowledge, after an expensive feasibility study, that the plans were unrealistic. O'Brien started planning a shopping channel, but O'Donovan cut his losses, and disposed of his shares in E-Sat in July 1988, before taking up his position on the IRTC later that year. In March 1989 the IRTC granted a licence for radio broadcasting in Dublin to an E-Sat-controlled radio station, Radio 2000. Robbie Robinson, the owner of an unsuccessful applicant, Sunshine Radio, took a case to the high court to seek a judicial review of the processes involved. In May 1989 the high court found that O'Donovan had not acted improperly (though noting that his resignation from E-Sat had not been properly notified to the official company records) and that the licence had been granted legitimately.

O'Donovan, not accustomed to failure, and somewhat shaken by the transactions with O'Brien, seems to have stepped back from further involvement in risky financial ventures and from major projects, but concentrated again on existing business commitments and on the kind of events with which he had made his reputation. He regularly spent time in the United States, putting on shows in large venues, including Carnegie Hall. In 1990 he was involved with an arts festival in Adare, Co. Limerick, and is said to have organised the Irish army to provide cannon fire outside the marquee where Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was performed. He remained on the board of the Gaiety School of Acting, which he had helped establish, until his death. His efforts to save the Gaiety Theatre, with which he had been associated as promoter and board member for most of his long career, culminated in his success in getting a preservation order for the historic old building. In November 2009, O'Donovan's commitment was honoured in a ceremony at the theatre, and a tribute one-night production of 'Gaels of laughter' took place there in January 2010. At his request, the proceeds went to the Irish Cancer Society; he had been a founder of the society's predecessor, the Conquer Cancer Campaign, and felt that this charity work had been one of the greatest achievements of his career. (O'Donovan had scored a major publicity and philanthropic coup early in his partnership with O'Brien; disturbed by the news of the Ethiopian famine, he contacted O'Brien on 29 October 1984 to ask if Tony Ryan (qv) could supply a plane to fly supplies to Africa. Supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs, by Concern's Aengus Finucane (qv), and by other charities and organisations, the first Irish plane sent to help in the crisis was filled with supplies and despatched within three days. O'Donovan and a film crew accompanied the flight (31 October), though it seems that some of the charities involved regarded their presence as a potential distraction.)

O'Donovan wrote letters to newspapers expressing his customarily strong opinions on many subjects, and also campaigned for the Adelaide Hospital, where he had been a TB patient in the 1950s, and where he met his wife, Sally Tennent, a Scottish nurse. They married in 1956 and had three daughters and one son. Loyal to political and show business friends, O'Donovan decided not to write his memoirs, although he had known and dealt with many of the notable figures in Irish life. A guest list at a surprise 70th birthday party was a who's who of the Irish entertainment industry. He was given a 'living legend' award by the Variety Club of Ireland in acknowledgement of his prime importance in light entertainment over so many years. Two of O'Donovan's brothers were also involved in the media: Richard ('Dick') O'Donovan wrote for radio shows, and Bill O'Donovan was a radio producer and influential head of RTÉ 2FM for many years. Fred O'Donovan died on 14 May 2010 in the Bon Secours Hospital, Glasnevin, Dublin.