Forgotten Australian Television Plays: The Twelve Pound Look

by Stephen Vagg

One of the main reasons I’ve been writing these pieces on forgotten Australian television plays is the fact that they’re, well, forgotten… no one much remembers them. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that local drama wasn’t really a priority here during those early days. The focus was more on getting everything up and running, making sure they got hold of the right popular American shows, and turning out decent local news, chat and variety programs. And it remained that way on the commercial stations until the success of Homicide came along in the mid-1960s and demonstrated how large audiences for Australian drama could be… and even then, they didn’t really get into it until the introduction of quotas in 1967.

It was different at the ABC, who were not dependent on the whims of advertisers and sponsors, and didn’t have to make a profit. The ABC were committed to making local television drama from the beginning – it wasn’t a massive commitment, but it was better than nothing, which is what their commercial colleagues did for a long time. Proof of this lies in the fact that on the very night the ABC commenced broadcasting television – 5 November 1956, out of Sydney’s ABN-2 (Melbourne’s ABV-2 began two weeks later) – a locally made drama was part of the line-up.

Now, if you were an ABC executive in 1956, what would you pick to make and show? Technical limitations minimise your selection pool to something that runs for thirty minutes, can be done live, and involves no more than two sets and no filmed sequences.

You could devise something original but that would be a very risky move on what was an important occasion. Some Australian TV drama had already been shot (I Found Joe Barton, the TV series The Adventures of Long John Silver), but this would be the first one broadcast locally. Better to use something road-tested.

The BBC, the parent organisation the ABC was constantly trying to emulate and/or impress, had been producing live television plays since 1937, and some of these had been written by Australians and set in Australia (The Bunyip, The Crock of Gold, Seven Little Australians, Rain Before Seven, Stand Still Time) – you could use one of those scripts.

Or maybe adapt a radio play. The ABC had a thriving radio drama department which had been broadcasting local drama since the 1930s – one of those plays could be adapted for television. To pick out the good ones, one of your staff members, Leslie Rees, has edited an anthology called Best Australian Radio Plays.

Or maybe you could adapt a one act play – there was a book called Best Australian One Act Plays which includes works by writers such as Miles Franklin and Louis Esson.

So, lots of material to choose from.

In the end, the ABC decided on The Twelve Pound Look, based on J.M. Barrie’s one-act play from 1910. Barrie (1860-1937) is best known for writing Peter Pan and being played by Johnny Depp in the movie Finding Neverland which produced a popular meme; I think Barrie’s cancelled now because it’s assumed he was a pedophile, but in 1956 he was very culturally respected (the following year saw the release of a popular British film based on his play The Admirable Crichton). The Twelve Pound Look isn’t regarded as one of his major works but enjoyed a decent popularity over the years, in part because it was a bit zeitgeist-y, dealing with the “new independence” of women.

The plot revolves around Sir Harry Sims, a wealthy businessman who is about to be knighted, to the delight of his wife. He hires a typist to help him with responding to letters of congratulations and she turns to be Sir Harry’s first wife, who left him years ago because she wanted independence. You can read a copy of the play here.

It’s quite a good little play, a bit feminist in the George Bernard Shaw style. Barrie did a few “battle of the sexes” comedies in his career (Quality Street, What Every Woman Knows), and it’s an enjoyable read.

The Twelve Pound Look was popular with Australian drama societies and had been broadcast a number of times on ABC radio, most recently in June 1956. The BBC had filmed it for television in 1950 and 1953, and would do so again in 1957 (with Wendy Hiller).

So, the material was thoroughly road tested on stage, radio and television, as well as being entertaining, smart and about something. It only used a main cast of three (there was a minor butler character in there as well) on set. And the subject matter was safe. Which was important.

The ABC conducted television workshops through 1955 to 1956 in preparation for the new medium. These included trial presentations of various dramas, all of which was foreign written and safe: The Valiant, Elizabeth Refuses, Winter Cruise, The Wraith, In the Zone, Distress Phase, The Rose and Crown (most of these plays would go to air on the ABC in the first six months of television in Australia).

I am sympathetic. The ABC were launching a whole new genre – local television drama – and there were many people in radio and theatre begging for it to fail. I just wish they’d picked some safe Australian-written material.

Anyway, the person chosen to direct The Twelve Pound Look was Paul O’Loughlin, a former actor who was one of the ABC’s leading radio directors and had trained in television at the BBC. The cast consisted of Alexander Archdale (Sir Harry), Margot Lee (first wife), Joan Lord (second wife) and John Brunskill (butler), all very experienced thespians – all had even made TV before (Archdale  and Lord in England, Lee in I Found Joe Barton and Lux Video Theatre, John Brunskill in The Adventures of Long John Silver). The costumes were done by Thelma Afford.

The line-up on that first night of ABC television was eccentric. Thanks to Michelle Rayner at the ABC, I was able to source a copy of the first 90 minutes of the evening (it only ran for three hours). The broadcast began at 7pm with an opening ceremony hosted by a smug looking Michael Charlton, and featuring various dignitaries such as Prime Minister Menzies, the Acting Leader of the Opposition (the actual leader, Doc Evatt, was sick), the Postmaster General (the Minister responsible for the ABC), the ABC chairman and managing director, the BBC managing director (who was in the country on a junket a.k.a. a Commonwealth conference designed to coincide with the Melbourne Olympics). Then there’s a variety show segment with a comedian and various acts including puppets, singers, kids and a live cat. The very white Julitha Walsh banged together some corroboree sticks and sung an Aboriginal song, a performance which is easy to mock, and I’ve mocked it, but at least it’s some acknowledgement of Aboriginals, and better than ignoring them (Walsh had performed on BBC television prior to this). Paul O’Loughlin appears to talk the viewers through what they’re about to experience with The Twelve Pound Look and introduces the cast before being interrupted by the floor manager who got a call from an unseen Mungo MacCallum, which is just too cute.

There’s a very live TV feel to all this – dignitaries wince under the lights and don’t seem to quite know where to stand or look, someone noisily knocks over a light stand off camera, the sound cuts out as a violinist plays and you can hear a technician go “there’s no sound”, the cat looks terrified. There’s a lot of apologising by various speakers.

The Twelve Pound Look started around 8pm and ran for thirty minutes. I’ve seen a copy of the whole thing but unfortunately it doesn’t have any sound (it aired with sound, there’s just none on the copy that survives). Which is frustrating, but I was so thrilled to be able to actually see it when so many old television plays have vanished. And having read the play, it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on.

It felt to be a very accomplished, smooth production. The leads can all act, the sets and costumes are impressive, and the camera work is absolutely fine (there were only two cameras but the cuts all make sense). Most of all, Margot Lee is terrific, full of life and spunk, even without sound, and O’Loughlin was smart enough to keep the camera on her most of the time. It is filmed theatre, but skilled filmed theatre – and because the production was so rehearsed there were no technical SNAFUs. The ABC followed it by showing an episode of the American sitcom My Hero, then some documentaries, War in the Air and This is the ABC, before wrapping it up at 10pm. The Twelve Pound Look was a definite highlight of the night.

The ABC’s Melbourne station, ABV-2 started on 19 November but did not show any Australian drama until 4 January 1957. This was the TV play Roundabout by Michael Clayton Hutton, which had a less distinguished lineage than Twelve Pound Look (when it aired, Hutton had just committed suicide over frustration at the lack of progress in his career.) It was similarly safe material though: another comedy about the martial shenanigans of the upper classes.

ABC Sydney (ABN-2) would broadcast its own version of Roundabout in February 1957, and ABC Melbourne (ABV-2) would do its own version of Twelve Pound Look in April, both with entirely different casts. Eventually, it was recognised that this was a waste of time and starting with The Proposal in February 1957, the ABC began broadcasting a drama live in one city, then record it off the camera and show it in other territories later.

Paul O’Loughlin went on to direct a number of other television plays (A Phoenix Too Frequent, Sunday Costs Five Pesos, Three Cornered Moon, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Passionate Pianist from Australian writer Barbara Vernon, Act of Violence from Australian-in-England writer Iain MacCormick) before moving up to being head of drama when Neil Hutchison went over to the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. He is barely remembered these days – neither is Archdale, Lord or Lee, or any of the others who contributed to making The Twelve Pound Look but that night in November 1956 they all combined to make a piece of history that looks like it was a lot of fun and I was so excited to watch at least some of it.

The author would like to thank Michelle Rayner of the ABC for her assistance with this article. All opinions are the author’s.