Forgotten Australian TV Plays: The Multi-Coloured Umbrella

by Stephen Vagg

A frustrating aspect of researching old Australian television plays is that so few survive – they were mostly shot on tape, which could be re-used, so people would record over them, regardless of their historical value.

However, one never knows, a case in point being The Multi-Coloured Umbrella. This originally aired on 29 January 1958, and I assumed all copies had been destroyed until Michelle Rayner of ABC Radio tracked down a 30-minute extract for me (I’m doing a radio feature on early TV plays for the ABC’s 90th anniversary next year). I was delighted at the discovery because Umbrella is one of the legendary productions of early Australian television drama.

Okay, yes, I’m being a little generous with my definition of “legendary”, but it was a big deal: an Australian-written script on television at a time when that was extremely rare, and the play chosen by the ABC to commemorate the opening of its Gore Hill Studios in Sydney. Furthermore, the broadcast triggered several protests – it was the first “controversial” local drama – and led, I believe, to the ABC recoiling from Australian-penned plays for 18 months.

The Multi-Coloured Umbrella was based on a stage play by Barbara Vernon (1916-78). She was a doctor’s daughter from Inverell, a former librarian and WAAF veteran who became an announcer for the local radio station, 2NZ. Vernon wrote plays in her spare time for the neighbourhood dramatic society, one of which, Naked Possum, about Australian troops in the Malayan Emergency, had a run at Sydney’s Independent Theatre in 1956.

Vernon said she was inspired to write Umbrella after reading out radio ads for the local bookie which would say “do your punting under the multi-coloured umbrella”. She thought about umbrellas and how they protected you from the light – just as some people cannot see the light (their own motives) and have trouble clarifying their thoughts and actions. Vernon qualified that she didn’t think her play “throbs with psychology. It’s a comedy drama – a family play about ordinary people.”

The action of Umbrella takes place over the course of one hot afternoon/evening in the Bondi flat of a family of successful working-class bookmakers: Kevin and Gloria Donnelly and their sons Ben and Joe. Joe has been married for a year to Kate, who comes from a posh family (mum and dad are doctors), while the older Ben is a swinging bachelor.

Act one begins on Kevin and Gloria in Greek chorus mode, with the latter worried Ben might be coveting thy brother’s wife. Joe and Kate arrive from the racecourse, where Joe has lost money earlier that day in a race involving a horse called Honey Flow. Ben turns up drunk and it’s revealed that Kate made a suggestive comment to him at the races, which upsets Ben; he brings it up with Kate who insists she still loves Joe. Ben confronts Joe about the losses on Honey Flow and Joe admits he has been taking money from the family business to buy things for Kate.

In act two, Gloria and Kevin suspect something is up between Ben and Joe, but they are unable to ascertain exactly what. Ben thinks they prefer Joe as a son. Kate’s teenage sister Eileen arrives with the news that their father has left their mother for another woman. Kate is not surprised, and clearly dislikes her mother. She denies that she tries to dominate Joe the way their mother dominates their father (“it’s just that I don’t want him to be weak like daddy”). Kate advises Eileen that families should mind their own business, and that her sister should marry a man who “satisfies” her. Eileen declares that she will join a convent. Joe suggests Eileen stay with them, but Kate just wants to be alone with Joe, away from their respective families. (“I wish there was only you and me in the world. Then I’d have nothing to be afraid of.”) Joe takes Eileen home and Ben appears. Ben propositions Kate, who says she only made the comment at the races earlier in order to make Joe jealous. Ben grabs Kate, hurting her, when Joe appears. A fight breaks out between the brothers, which results in Joe throwing Ben off a balcony.

Act three starts ten minutes later. Kate’s (unseen) mother is tending Ben off-stage while Kevin confronts Joe, who admits that he stole eight hundred pounds from the business. Kevin attacks his youngest son who doesn’t resist; they are interrupted by Ben, who, it turns out, is not that badly injured. Ben and Joe talk alone; Ben admits he made a pass at Kate, but Joe isn’t angry, admitting that he heard Kate make the comment and says it wasn’t the first time this had happened. Kate arrives and there’s a big argument where Kate gets fired up, and Ben accuses her of making the comment to him because “Joe wasn’t too good in, bed, was he? He didn’t satisfy you and you didn’t satisfy him.” Ben hypothesises that Kate was worried about her sex appeal, so she began flirting with Ben (and other men) to reassure her ego. Kate doesn’t deny this. Joe admits he recently went to a whorehouse to prove “it wasn’t me” and felt so guilty as a result that he started stealing from the firm to buy things for Kate. Joe says that he loves Kate and will stay with her as long as she doesn’t worship him and they have lots of friends and family, and says if she looks at another man, he will hit her. The couple run off outside together, reunited, watched by Gloria and Ben.

If you want to read a copy of the original stage play, it isn’t hard to source, at least not for an old Australian work – it was published by Currency Press in an anthology called Plays of the 50s: Volume 2, which is available online and is in a lot of Australian libraries. The anthology was edited by Katherine Brisbane, who described Umbrella (accurately) as “a melodrama in which the background colour of turf lingo supplies the necessary working class vitality… It has three good curtains and there is no doubting the authenticity of the characters.”

The Multi-Coloured Umbrella is a well-made play in the style of the time. Vernon once said her advice to other playwrights was to do 27 double spaced foolscap pages for the first and second acts, and 25 for the third; have a physical climax at the end of act two and the emotional climax as near as possible to the end of the play. “And remember you have to get audience out of the theatre around 10.30 allow for the two intervals as well.” Umbrella fits within this structure.

It’s also, well, a horny play – again in the style of the time. Stages of the 1950s were full of lustful characters, with playwrights such as Tennessee Williams, William Inge and Terence Rattigan leading the charge. Like a lot of works from those three (gay) men, one gets the sense that Barbara Vernon wants to root her male lead character (Ben) via her female character surrogate (Kate); for instance, in the big print Vernon describes Ben as “very well worth it – handsome, virile with a long cheek scar” – while no other character gets a description. No judgement on that, by the way, just pointing it out: a lot of writers lust after their characters (see: Williamson, David). Vernon never married, but had an intense romantic life, internally and externally, as some of the racier entries in her diaries (kept at the State Library of NSW) attest (not to mention the cut out pictures of Yul Brynner she posted in there).

But the fact that The Multi-Coloured Umbrella comes from a female writer does, I feel, make a difference. Kate is really the protagonist of the play, a three-dimensional woman who is smart, ambitious, confused, dissatisfied, and, well, horny (“I love storms – they excite me”). “Being married isn’t being sentimental about someone,” she tells her young sister Eileen. “It means… you’re lifted up to a sort of ecstasy. And if someone can’t give you that, you’ve got to find some way to rouse them. Because wanting it and not getting it… is hell.”

She also advises her sister, “Mother never satisfied Daddy. That was what was wrong… It isn’t always the woman’s fault. It happens when outside things – like families, or religion, or other people – get in the way… Take a man who can satisfy you. Or one that you can make strong. It isn’t owning someone. It’s being owned by someone completely. Whether you want it or not.”

Cripes. This was on stage in 1957 Australia! Katherine Brisbane pointed out the sexual dynamics are the most interesting thing about the play, calling it “refreshingly outspoken” on the subject.

Some of the sexual politics are, admittedly, a bit iffy by today’s standards: the play is resolved by Joe being more dominant, forcing Kate to have kids and threatening to punch anyone who looks at her… and she digs it. Again, that wasn’t atypical of literature /theatre/film from the time, where female characters were often shown enjoying a bit of non-consensual seduction (eg. Peyton Place, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Bus Stop).

On a nicer level, The Multi-Coloured Umbrella is also about a couple learning to communicate with each other more honestly. Vernon said the theme was “It is unpleasant to study ourselves in the pure light of our own motives. We tend to keep an umbrella between us and the light. It is neither black not white, but multi-coloured with the complication of our loves, hates and desires.”

I will be honest here… I don’t think The Multi-Coloured Umbrella completely works as a play. It’s got lots of terrific stuff in it, but feels like it needs another draft which focuses Kate’s dilemma a little more – maybe we needed to see her mother on stage, and/or make Eileen older so she’s a genuine romantic prospect for Ben. Or something. I think this, along with the sexual politics, perhaps explains why the piece isn’t revived as often as, say, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll or The One Day of the Year. Still, the play has action and movement, some compelling characters, and terrific moments, and is constantly interesting. How many old Australian plays can you name that focus on mismatched libidos?

In the 1950s, the best way for Australian stage plays to get any sort of attention was by winning a competition. Summer of the Seventeenth Doll leapt to prominence when it came equal first (with The Torrents) in the 1954 Australian Playwrights Advisory Board Competition. The Multi-Coloured Umbrella came second in a 1956 Journalists Club competition for Best New Australian Plays; first prize went to Richard Beynon’s The Shifting Heart.

Vernon’s timing was fortuitous: the huge success of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll had made people (including many Australians) curious about playwriting from this exotic land down under. The Shifting Heart was picked up for productions around Australia and in London and also did well; no Doll but very respectably, and helped maintain a momentum which swept up The Multi-Coloured Umbrella, along with works such as Ned Kelly, Lola Montez, Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day, The Bastard Country, The One Day of the Year and the early plays of Patrick White. (The momentum declined in the mid 60s but picked up again in the 1970s.)

Umbrella debuted in Inverell in 1957, and was given a production later that year at Melbourne’s semi-amateur Little Theatre. The latter transferred to the Theatre Royal in Sydney for a limited professional run under the auspices of JC Williamsons. Reviews were mixed, but it was an impressive enough CV for the ABC to decide to film the play for television. Vernon was paid forty guineas for the rights, with more to come if there were repeats.

It was a rare honour. From November 1956 to January 1958 (when Umbrella screened), the ABC had put on 30 locally-shot television plays of which a grand total of three were from Australian writers. Not only that, Umbrella would be shown on 29 January 1958, the first night the ABC were officially broadcasting from its new £620,000 Gore Hill studios in Sydney.

Chairman of the ABC Sir Richard Boyer said “it is our greatest hope to make a contribution to Australian life and culture. We want to provide a medium to spread what is the genius of Australians.” He later added, “We thought it right to open the new Sydney studio with an Australian play.”

The Multi-Coloured Umbrella wasn’t the first Barbara Vernon play to be filmed by the ABC. She had written a one-act prequel to Umbrella called The Passionate Pianist, which focused on Ben and Joe Donnelly as teenagers, and revolved around an incident where they took out the family car one evening. The ABC televised a 30-minute version of this play on 2 October 1957. (Incidentally, The Passionate Pianist was one of three one-act plays Vernon wrote about the Donnelly boys over the years – the others were The Bishop and the Boxer and First Love – with all three forming a programme under the title of “The Growing Years”. In hindsight, this indicates why Vernon would become so successful writing serial drama – she clearly liked to tell different stories with the same characters. But that was down the track.)

The job of adapting The Multi-Coloured Umbrella for television was given to George F. Kerr, an Englishman with television-writing experience at the BBC, who had recently emigrated to Australia. By this stage, the ABC were presenting live dramas as long as 90 minutes (eg. a 1957 production of The Importance of Being Earnest) but for whatever reason, it was decided to reduce the running time of Umbrella to sixty minutes. You can read a complete copy of Kerr’s script at the NAA online.

On the whole, Kerr respected the text – it was more a big edit rather than a proper adaptation for the small screen. However, the shortened running time meant cuts had to be made, the most notable being the removal of the character of Eileen and the entire scene where she tells Kate about their father leaving their mother. This is one of those excisions that Kerr probably thought was okay because it doesn’t affect the story per se… but, in actual fact, it was massive because the Kate-Eileen moments are crucial for fleshing out Kate’s character. It is through these that the audience can properly see Kate’s world view, especially her feelings about Joe, marriage and sex – she can be honest with her sister in a way she can’t be with the Donnellys. Without those moments, her character’s actions don’t really make sense, and Kate goes from being the lead character to a support player in “The Ben and Joe Show”, throwing the whole play out of balance.

To compound this, Kerr still keeps the fact that Kate’s father has left their mother, but deals with it as a throwaway line of dialogue. This is irritating – you hear it and go “huh, what, he left? Why aren’t we talking more about that?” It would have been better to simply remove the reference altogether. Even better, however, would have been to keep the Eileen-Kate exchanges and look for cuts elsewhere. I think Eileen was more important to preserve than, say, having Kevin attack Joe.

The TV script has dialogue in it not in the stage play, at least not in the version of it I read published by Currency Press. On page 17 of the TV script, Joe makes a comment about Freud and sex which doesn’t feel in character. Neither does Joe’s dialogue on page 38, “well whacko for the beaut weather in sunny Aussie hey”. These feel like the sort of silly line additions made by a mediocre script editor – although in fairness, I have no proof of that.

More forgivably, there were some changes presumably for censorship reasons. Ben guessing that “Joe’s not too good in bed” becomes the vague “Joe’s not too good”, and Joe’s confession that he visited a whorehouse is removed entirely. Look, I get why these adjustments were made, but they do make character motivations less obvious, and one wishes Kerr had found some other way to get around the censor while still maintaining dramatic clarity. George F Kerr talked a good game in various interviews, but after reading a bunch of his scripts for Australian television, I’m not sure he knew as much about writing as he thought he did. This isn’t uncommon among the more third-rate script editors in the industry, who do more damage to Australian drama than people realise.

The director of Multi-Coloured Umbrella was Raymond Menmuir, and the cast included Ken Wayne (Joe), Deryck Barnes (Ben), Amber Mae Cecil (Katie), Edward Smith (Kevin) and Georgie Sterling (Gloria). Only Barnes had acted for television before, but everyone had long CVs in terms of radio and theatre: even Cecil, the baby of the cast at age 19, had been working professionally since she was 12. The main face you are likely to recognise today is Wayne, who popped up in a few feature films like Sons of Matthew and Dust in the Sun.

The bulk of the play was broadcast live from the ABC studios at Gore Hill. There were some exteriors of Bondi Beach that had been pre-recorded on film, used for transitions. The set was designed by Desmonde Dowling, who created a penthouse (home of the Donnelly family) overlooking a beach with a modern two-level patio, a lounge room with glimpses of the kitchen and dinette in the background.

While plays at the time were broadcast live, they were recorded off the screen on tape (“kinescope”) for broadcasting in other territories at a later date. As previously mentioned, because the tape could be re-used, many old Australian plays were wiped, especially the super early ones. I assumed this was the case for The Multi-Coloured Umbrella but as mentioned previously, thanks to Michelle Rayner of the ABC I was able to view the last thirty minutes of the original broadcast.

It’s a decent production, with an impressive set (bar the painted backdrops), interesting location cut-aways to Bondi Beach, well-choreographed fight sequences and very effective quiet moments. The best of the cast is Ken Wayne, who is superb as Joe, even if he’s too old for the part as written (Joe is meant to be aged 24 while the hard-living Wayne was a craggy-looking 33). Deryck Barnes, a fine actor, seems miscast as the swaggering, Burt Lancaster-y Ben – I get that there was a shortage of attractive, virile male actors in Australia at the time, but I kept wishing that, at the very least, Wayne had played Ben’s part and some younger, more obviously callow actor was cast as Joe. (Out of interest, Con Fardouly, a Greek cafe owner, originated the part of Ben on stage in Inverell – Vernon called him her favourite actor. Peter Aanensen and Jeffrey Hodgson played Ben and Joe on stage for the Melbourne and Sydney production but for whatever reason, none of the stage cast were asked to reprise their performances on camera.)

Edward and Georgie Sterling are very good as the parents. Amber Mae Cecil has potent moments as Kate, but is hampered by the lack of a Kate-Eileen scene and being so much younger than either Barnes or Wayne – you never really believe she’d intimidate either man, which distorts the drama.

The Australian Women’s Weekly called it “an excellent production”. However, the day after broadcast, the play was denounced by Walter Lawrence, a Member of the NSW Legislative Assembly and former Deputy Commissioner of Police. Lawrence, who clearly had too much time on his hands, said the production “had all the evil elements one can imagine” and showed hysterical scenes, blasphemy of a low type and an immoral level of entertainment… If this is persisted in we can only expect to have difficult times, and unsettled and unhinged minds among our people.”

There were calls of complaint to the station, one caller claiming that an actor said “Jesus, mama” on air. This was denied by ABC’s head of drama Neil Hutchison, who argued (accurately) the word was not in the script – and it is definitely not in the 30 minutes I have seen. There is a lot of shouting and it’s possible the complainant misheard.

The outcry did not go down well with Vernon, who wrote in her diary dated 30 January, that “This morning at 9 am I received news that Lawrence MLA was crusading against the TV show of Umbrella. This seemed the last straw. I felt that I could not go on.” She added, defiant, “I am not ashamed. The play is honest and about decent people. It offended. I am sorry. Frankness frequently offends.” Vernon then thought “in seeking to be fair” that Lawrence may have been offended by the fact that children might have watched considering “the early hour of the broadcast” (it showed at 8pm) and the fact that “it was a historical occasion”.

The chairman of the ABC, Sir Richard Boyer, a former Methodist minister, said he did not feel the broadcast could have offended public taste. “The version tonight was abridged from the stage presentation,” said Boyer. “The play is of the type of offering we hope to give and we hope will be accepted as worthwhile by the viewing public.” He added that “internationally accepted drama… continually covers subjects considerably harsher in content and manner than those portrayed in The Multi Coloured Umbrella.”

Neil Hutchison weighed in, telling the Herald that “the play concerns a warm-hearted Christian Australian family. They are a bit rough and uncouth but their true solid Christian values emerge as the play progresses.” The last bit wasn’t really true by the way, but Hutchison didn’t get to where he did in his career without the ability to peddle a neat line in soft soap. More accurately, he added, “Australia is just coming into its own in the drama field, which such plays as Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, The Shifting Heart and this play. In America top playwrights like Tennessee Williams are using realism to achieve authenticity in their plays. The Australian plays are doing this too but unlike the Americans and some of the prominent French authors they do not end on a note of despair.”

Vernon told the press that “The play has been performed in Sydney and Melbourne and both the Roman Catholic and the Anglican press praised it,” adding “I feel so very strongly against blasphemy on the stage or screen that when an actor ad-libbed the words ‘My God’ into a stage performance of the play, I put in writing that such words were not to be used.”

The Sydney Morning Herald, who hadn’t reviewed the TV production (they wouldn’t do that regularly for television plays until the following year) wrote an editorial calling Lawrence “an unmitigated bore” and Vernon “a serious playwright”, claiming Lawrence was motivated by a desire for personal publicity. Lawrence denied this in a subsequent letter, but who cares? Good on the Herald for giving him a kick up the backside. The paper’s response delighted Vernon, who wrote on 31 January that “The SMH has risen like St George and slain the dragon. They published a leader in which they called me a ‘serious playwright’.”

Still, the whinge genie had been let out of the bottle and other church leaders and critics also complained about the play. One writer to the Herald called Umbrella “common and vulgar”, another “sordid and moronic and in no way reflected the Australian way of life as most of us know it”; one said it would “drag Australia’s name further into the gutter” and asked “why must everyone present the Australian scene in the degrading manner of Rusty Bugles, The Doll, Shifting Heart and Multi-Coloured Umbrella.”

Others wrote in to defend the play. “I think you must be congratulated,” wrote one audience member to the ABC Weekly. Another said they were “vastly impressed”.

George F. Kerr defended the play in a letter to the editor of the Herald, claiming that “It is perfectly possible for a play to be good and yet give offence to some… The writer of a good play is likely to have broken new ground, either in thought or technique, to have given the audience a fresh vision on a scene as seemingly familiar as a Bondi family group. But many people could do without this fresh vision; they resent being told that whereas they thought the world was flat, it is in fact round.” He argued that the Donnellys of the play “are not the cosy Mr and Mrs Everybody of Bondi that many viewers may have expected to see on their screens and, in all honesty, be bored by. The Donnellys are closer to the truth; like all of us from time to time, they are people in trouble…. Certainly, this is not a cosy picture of the neighbours. But which is better? To lie about them or, knowing the truth about their trouble, to be glad for their sake that they emerged from it?”

“More letters,” wrote Vernon in her diary on 3 February. “George Kerr in defence. Please God, help me to bear this and not be bitter.” The following day she wrote “there was a particularly nasty letter in the Herald which I admit hurt me very much. However I must accept there is nothing else I can do.”

What got people upset? Even if only a few bored wowsers?

I used to think they were uneasy that Kate wanted her husband to be better in the sack, but after actually watching the production, that character motivation is not really clear, thanks to George F. Kerr’s inept adaptation. I think what got Mr Lawrence and company all hot and bothered was the scene where Ben manhandles Kate and basically tries to rape her. It was too confronting. There would be plenty of Australian television plays with people smacking each other around and even seduction and no one seemed to care (eg. The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day, Bodgie). But there was a similar near-rape scene in The Swagman in 1965, and that also provoked a number of angry letters. And while I feel William Lawrence was a pompous fool who did a lot of damage to Australia drama, I also think if someone did a play in the year 2022, where one of the male leads was portrayed as a sexy bad boy who attempted to sexually assault the female lead and wasn’t punished for that, viewers would write in angry letters (well, tweets) about it.

The Multi-Coloured Umbrella was meant to be shown on Melbourne television in February 1958. However, this did not happen, reportedly because the kinescope recording that was made of the broadcast was said to be “poor quality”. Melbourne audiences had to instead make do with a radio version of the play that aired in November.

Personally, I think the fix was in. The technical quality of the 30 minutes I saw was absolutely fine. ABC executives were clearly jittery about the criticism of local drama, even if it came from just one politician and a couple of letter writers. The ABC had announced plans to open its Melbourne television studios at Ripponlea with a production of The Shifting Heart… another social realist play with a lot of yelling and some violence. But this did not eventuate – no live Australian drama marked the opening of Ripponlea, and the first play broadcast from there was ultimately an English work, Captain Carvallo, by Britisher Dennis Cannan. The Shifting Heart was not filmed by the ABC until 1968; it was filmed first for British television in 1962.

The ABC kept showing locally shot television plays, roughly every fortnight, but would not do one actually written by an Australian and set here until Bodgie in August 1959. Until then, any locally-penned drama was from foreigners temporarily living here such as George F Kerr (Killer in Close Up, Enemy of the People), Royston Morley (Sixty Point Bold) and James Carhatt (Chance of a Ghost)… and of these, only Enemy of the People was set (unconvincingly) in Australia.

The controversy of The Multi-Coloured Umbrella didn’t kill the cause of local drama, but it certainly dented it for a while. It wouldn’t have helped that Neil Hutchison, the Oxford-educated head of television drama for the ABC, was a notorious critic of Australian writing, forever complaining about the standard of local scripts; the controversy of Umbrella would have played into his Australo-philic hands

Vernon’s next TV credit was an episode for ATN-7’s Shell Presents in 1960: No Picnic Tomorrow, the story of a romance between a Greek immigrant and Australian. However, she wasn’t abandoned by the ABC – she continued to write for them on radio and eventually moved back into television, her later credits including Enough to Make a Pair of Sailor’s Trousers and being the original story editor on Bellbird. Vernon also worked as script editor on shows like Pastures of the Blue Crane and Seven Little Australians. The BBC did a version of Multi-Coloured Umbrella on radio in 1966, and two years prior, they had done another work of hers, The Loquat Tree.

Some of these productions were spectacularly successful: in particular, Bellbird was one of the most influential Australian television series ever made (Vernon wrote the screenplay to the 1971 spin off movie, Country Town) and Seven Little Australians set the standard of ABC mini-series for the next decade. They were a magnificent recoupment by the ABC for the investment they had made in Vernon for The Multi-Coloured Umbrella… even if they behaved badly in its immediate aftermath. In showbusiness, as in life, a little bit of cowardice isn’t fatal as long as you’re brave in the long run. Vernon died in 1978, a true pioneer in Australian TV writing.