The Citizens became immensely popular and had full houses, including school audiences and touring to communities, and staged a wide selection of productions in its first 25 years. Innovation and growth From inception, the Citizens Theatre company was a full-time professional company. The first managing director was novelist Guy McCrone assisted by his wife and soon after that the post was held by George Singleton of cinema fame. One of the first business managers was Winifred Savile formerly producer and manageress of Perth Theatre which had been created by her father J.H. Savile. By coincidence, her uncle, H.Cecil Beryl was lessee of the Royal Princess's Theatre from 1879 to 1887. The board of directors included R.W.Greig, chairman of the Scottish National Orchestra, Norman Duthie, chartered accountant, and Sir John Boyd, lawyer. Following upon the first year in Buchanan street, which washed its face financially and the second year there which made a small profit, the first year 1945/46 in the larger and more comfortable theatre on the south-side attracted all its Athenaeum customers and a further 5,000 new patrons. Playwrights in the Citizens in its first year were: JB Priestley, Robert McLellan, Paul Vincent Carroll, James Bridie, Patrick Griffin, John Wilson, JM Barrie, Peter Ustinov, Robert Kemp, Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham, Anna LLouise Romoff, Gordon Daviot, Robins Millar, Gordon Bottomley and Moray McLaren. Seven of the productions were premieres. In its first 21 years the Citizens presented nearly 300 plays, of which 72 were British or world premieres. Production and art directors from 1943 to 1964 include : Eric Capon, Jennifer Sounes, Edmund Bacley, Matthew Forsyth, John Casson, James Gibson, Kenneth Mackintosh, Denis Carey, Michael Finlayson, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Peter Potter, Alastair Sim, Colin Chandler, Richard Mathews, Fulton Mackay, Peter Duguid, Iain Cuthbertson, Albert Finney, Piers Hagard and Eric Jones. Michael Blakemore was especially associated with the company, first working there as an actor in 1966–67, where his parts included George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Maitland in Inadmissible Evidence. After this Blakemore turned to directing, becoming co-director in 1968 after his great success with Peter Nichols A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967), which transferred to London that year and to Broadway in 1968. In the 1960s Glasgow Corporation decided to plan the construction of a new Theatre and Concert Hall in the city centre. This eventually emerged in the late 1980s as the Glasgow