McGreevy, John, 1942- : John McGreevy was born in London, England, in 1942 and educated at Southampton. He emigrated to Canada while still in his teens, finding work in 1962 in CBC's mailroom after settling in Toronto. By 1967, he was working on CBC variety programmes and, between 1970 and 1972, he began freelance producing and directing programmes for CBC TV's Man Alive series, including docudramas on Becket, starring Peter Donat and William Hutt, on Martin Luther, starring John Colicos, and on Louis Riel, starring Bruno Gerussi. In 1974 he created a series on prominent writers and thinkers for CBC, called People of Our Time, with interviews with Mordecai Richler, Mavis Gallant, Michel Tremblay, R.D. Laing and Arnold Toynbee, among others. In 1975, he wrote, produced and directed a docudrama on Lord Beaverbrook, Beaverbrook: the Life and Times of Max Aitken.
In 1976, McGreevy founded his own company, John McGreevy Productions (JMP), which grew into a successful production company producing films and documentaries on video for Canadian and international markets. His first independent project, a series called Cities, featured well-known personalities and their cities (Glenn Gould in Toronto, Peter Ustinov in Leningrad, etc.). In 1978, he returned to CBC to direct an episode of The Newcomers series written by Timothy Findley. In 1983, he produced a documentary on Robertson Davies for BBC's Writers and Places (and in 1996 another one on Davies for CBC's Life and Times series) and a docudrama on General Douglas MacArthur, starring John Huston, for American television. He worked on the documentary Quintet - Visions of Five (1984). He returned to his cities theme in 1985 with a second series called Return Journey, again featuring well-known personalities figures and their cities (Margot Kidder in Yellowknife, Wilf Carter in Calgary, Placido Domingo in Madrid, etc.). He produced a documentary on the International PEN Congress in New York in 1986 and a multi-media show for CN at Expo '86. Throughout his career, McGreevy has often worked with the writer and actor Peter Ustinov. After their first collaboration on the Cities series, McGreevy directed Ustinov in the 6-part Peter Ustinov's Russia (1986), then in Peter Ustinov in China (1987), Peter Ustinov's Voyage Across the 80s (1989), Ustinov on the Orient Express (1991) and An Evening With Peter Ustinov (1996). McGreevy's 6-part Inside the Vatican (1994) also featured Peter Ustinov. Other projects produced by McGreevy include a tribute to actor-director John Neville in 1989, a 4-part documentary on language with Jonathan Miller, Born Talking (1990), and an 8-part documentary on Greek mythology, Paths of the Gods (1995).
Many of McGreevy's projects have been done in collaboration with other production companies, most notably with Primedia Productions, and with the assistance of his partner, Jennifer Puncher. John McGreevy's recent work includes a 4-part documentary, Empire of the Bay companies (1998), based on Peter Newman's history of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Visions of an Island (2000), featuring Christopher Ondaatje in Sri Lanka.
