by Stephen Vagg
The First Joanna (1961)
This was one of two stage plays by Australian writer Dorothy Blewett (1898-1965) that the ABC filmed in 1961, the other being Quiet Night. AustLit did a superb analysis on the plays of Blewett – they really did her justice, including reproducing the several different versions of The First Joanna.
Originally performed in 1943, the play concerns a woman called Joanna who lives in a South Australian vineyard, who reads about another Joanna who lived there in the nineteenth century. Blewett said she wanted to produce a drama of character and ideas, illustrating the value of family tradition but emphasising the dangers that arrive if that tradition is misunderstood or misapplied. “So many Australians are proud of the wrong things in their heritage,” declared Blewett. “We should face up to the truth of our beginnings and be grateful to the adventurous spirits who fought hard and subdued our hard country in the early days.”
The play won a competition in 1947 from the Playwrights Advisory Board. Head of this was Leslie Rees who said that The First Joanna was a play of professional competence that could be given on any stage.” Rees worked at the ABC as a drama editor, and I assume he recommended it to Aunty: The First Joanna was adapted for ABC radio in 1948 before its 1961 television incarnation (in 1961 Rees was Acting Deputy Director of Drama and Features while former Deputy Director Paul O’Loughlin became Acting Director, while the actual director, Neil Hutchison, was away running the Elizabethan Theatre Trust).
Wal Cherry adapted The First Joanna for television, and the play was shot at the Melbourne ABC TV studios at Ripponlea with additional location filming for a vineyard scene at Chateau Tahbilk. Chris Muir directed and the cast included a young Norman Kaye, who went on to a very distinguished career, particularly in the movies of Paul Cox (some random trivia: Kaye was the partner of Elke Neidhardt who was once married to Chris Muir – the Melbourne arts scene was a bit incestuous back in the day).
I’ve only seen about 40 minutes of The First Joanna (it went for 75). To be frank, it has an amateurish feel – most of the acting is over the top, the sets and costumes come across as “am dram”. Blewett’s original play has a terrific central concept, strong characters and ideas, and could have been the basis of a strong drama. It definitely had flaws – too many characters, too many subplots – but these could have been fixed with a proper adaptation. Cherry’s script is too faithful to the original. In fairness, I only viewed half the production, and it is good to see Norman Kaye in an early role.
Muir went on to direct an adaptation of Blewett’s Quiet Night, the tale of one night in a hospital. The original play text of Quiet Night is also available on AustLit. It shares many of the flaws of The First Joanna – too many characters and subplots – but again, also contains plenty of material that could be realised through a skilled adaptation. I’m not sure that was done in the ABC production, though I haven’t seen it. None of Blewett’s other works were filmed but something is better than nothing.
Murder in the Cathedral (1962)
TS (Cats) Elliot wrote this 1936 verse play about the murder of the feisty medieval priest Thomas a’Beckett – you know, “who will rid me of this troublesome priest” and all that. You can read Elliot’s work here.
Murder in the Cathedral was a big success in its day and revived the popularity of verse drama in the Anglosphere. The BBC did it for radio in 1936, 1941 and 1953 and for TV in 1936, 1947 and 1964 – and had been produced by the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, so thus it was irresistible for the ABC, who wanted to film it as early as 1957. This was considered too expensive at the time, but not so much in 1962 – the budget was £3443, high for the ABC (only Shakespeare adaptations got as much dosh from the accounts department).
William Sterling directed a cast of super familiar Melbourne actors – people like Wyn Roberts and Patricia Kennedy. It is beautifully shot with wonderful design though at two hours, it’s not an easy watch. Two hours of plot-light verse drama, all in the one set. Two. Hours. Cripes. Different time.
By my count, the ABC filmed 24 verse dramas for television in all, from authors such as Elliot, Chris Fry, Ben Jonson, and the Bard of Avon. Only one was written in Australia: Douglas Stewart’s Ned Kelly. There were actually a few local verse dramas performed on ABC radio that were highly acclaimed (several others by Stewart, The Illusionists by Morris West, Stockade by Richard Lane, Path of the Eagle by Catherine Duncan), but when it came to doing them on TV it was “yay England”. Two hours!
A Piece of Ribbon (1963)
To my knowledge, this is the only Australian television drama set during the Malayan Emergency, the military action that went from roughly 1948 until 1960, in which 39 Australians were killed (most by accident but some in combat). It’s a shame, then, that this was based on a British TV script, by a British (Welsh, to be specific) writer, about British troops.
Mind you, it’s a very good production. The scribe was Leslie Thomas, a veteran of Malaya who later wrote the classic novel The Virgin Soldiers, also set during that conflict, which became a popular 1969 film. Thomas was a journalist who originally wrote A Piece of Ribbon for BBC television in 1962 – it was his first credit and helped launched his career (in his memoirs, Thomas said the BBC production benefited from starring Jacqui Chan who had gone out with Princess Margaret’s fiancee). Thomas pitched the idea of filming Ribbons to the ABC when visiting Australia in 1963 to cover the Queen’s tour. Auntie doffed its cap accordingly and shot the script in Melbourne later that year. The cast includes familiar actors like George Whaley and Dennis Miller. Heather Leembruggen, from Sri Lanka, plays a Malay whose murder triggers the plot.
A Piece of Ribbon is well written and entertaining – I just wish they’d done an Australian story instead. There was an option: Barbara Vernon (Multi Coloured Umbrella, Bellbird) wrote a stage play, Naked Possum, about Australian troops in the Malayan Emergency. It had a run at the Independent Theatre in Sydney in 1956 and contained a similar whodunnit plot. But it was Australian. Still, I thought it was important that someone should remember it – that and A Piece of Ribbon. Anyway, the Malayan Emergency – a more interesting story than you might think.
