It was a comedy from Michael Boddy and starred the Kessey twins, Katherine and Karen, in roles specifically written for them.
Plot
A young woman who works for a gas company, Sarah, enters a competition for new talent being held by a variety TV program, "The Larry Show". The program is hosted by a duo, Larry and Amanda. Larry constantly undermines Amanda on air, speaking over her, holding her hand, and teasing her about her love life and the fact that the producer of the show, Ray, has a crush on her. Mr Handley is the sponsor of the show.
Amanda performs a song on air, "To Be a Performer". Sarah wins the competition and will be on air for the month. She comes on air and starts talking over Larry.
Sarah and Amanda practice dancing a number and discuss Larry and Ray. They perform a song together on air.
They end doing another song 'Nothing Can Stop Me Now'.
Cast
- Karen Kessey as Amanda
- Katherine Kessey as Sarah
- Barry Creyton as Larry
- Robert McDarra as Ray, the producer of the show
- Anthony Bazell as Mr Handley
- Peter Rowley as Frank
- Michael Bowie as man in coffee cup
Star Barry Creyton later recalled he "didn’t enjoy that... due to ego more than the script, though (laughs). My co-stars where these singing twins, two girls who were popular at the time (Katherine and Karen Kessey). At that time in the ‘60s, I was well enough known to have top billing and they didn’t give it to me, they gave it to the twins, and I was pretty pissed."
The Kessey twins were born in Perth in 1946. They were the daughters of West Australian cricketer Gwilym Kessey and travelled to England. They returned in early 1964 to appear in the Australian production of Stop the World I Want to Get Off. In June 1967 the Kessey twins returned to Australia after two years in England, during which time they had appeared in Stop the World I Want to Get Off on stage and Emergency Ward 10, Nelson: A Study in Miniature and Quick Before They Catch Us on TV. They returned to England and appeared together in an episode of The Persuaders. Katherine married actor Bill Treacher, who was famous for EastEnders after which she seems to have pretty much retired. She changed her name to Katherine Glyn so she wasn't always associated with her sister. Karen acted on her own, including doing There's a Girl in My Soup on stage with Charles Tingwell; she married an electrician called Roy Jones.
It was one of three scripts Boddy wrote for Australian Playhouse.
According to ABC records it was filmed 13 August 1967.
John Croyston told Graham Shirley he directed it in Croyston's 2004 oral history.
NAA has a copy of the script. Not online. See here.
Crew
Music arranged and conducted by Al Franks. Wigs - Joan Minor. Technical production - Bruce Valentine. Lighting - John Wharton. Design - Desmonde Downing. Executive producer - Pat Alexander. Director - John Croyston.
Reception
The Sydney Morning Herald called it "a disaster and seemed to show only that Boddy knows little about life in commercial TV but hates it all the same."
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| AWW 9 Aug 1967 p 45 |
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| SMH TV Guide 2 Oct 1967 |
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| SMH 2 Oct 1967 p 8 |
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| SMH 11 June 1967 p 74 |
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| SMH 5 Oct 1967 p 11 |
Forgotten Australian TV Plays: Two from Michael Boddy
by Stephen Vagg
October 2, 2021
Stephen Vagg’s series on forgotten Australian TV plays looks at two written by Michael Boddy, All Fall Down (1967) and Intersection (1967).
Michael Boddy (1934–2014) was a man of many talents, best known for acting and writing, but he did a lot of other things, including working as a farmer, columnist, nude model, teacher and director (see his obituary here).
I was mostly familiar with Boddy from co-writing (with Bob Ellis) the stage classic The Legend of King O’Malley (1970), but that was just one chapter in a storied life; another one was his stint as a “flavour of the month” TV scriptwriter in the late 1960s.
Over a short period of time, Boddy earned himself a significant number of credits, including episodes of You Can’t See Round Corners (1967) and Lane End (1972), as well as TV plays like John Forrester Awaits the Light (1967), Breakdown (1967), Curate of Bohemia (1972) and two I’m discussing today, All Fall Down and Intersection.
Both aired within a week of each other on the ABC in October 1967 and both were directed by John Croyston.
All Fall Down (1967)
This was an episode from the second season of Australian Playhouse, an anthology series that specialised in thrillers, comedies and dramas. All Fall Down, however, is basically a musical – despite running only 30 minutes it still packs in three songs and revolves around two musical performers, Katherine and Karen Kessey. The Kesseys were identical twins from West Australia, the daughter of Sheffield Shield cricketer Gwilym Kessey, who had some success in the 1960s and early 1970s, usually (though not always) as a duo – they appeared together on stage in Stop The World I Want to Get Off and on TV in shows like Emergency Ward 10 and The Persuaders. Katherine later married Bill Treacher, best known for his role in EastEnders.
The plot of All Fall Down revolves around a TV variety show hosted by the egotistical Larry (Barry Creyton), along with his long-suffering sidekick Amanda (Karen Kessey). Sarah (Katherine Kessey) wins a competition to appear on the show for a month, and winds up impressing the sponsor (Anthony Bazell) so much that she gets a permanent gig, resulting in Larry quitting. Michael Boddy was a regular performer on Crackerjack (1966-67), a Friday afternoon children’s variety show with Reg Livermore (a clip of him and Livermore is here), and presumably he drew on that experience for his script here.
The male actors in All Fall Down are all required for some reason to put their hands on the Kessey twins a lot. The considerable talents of Barry Creyton, a big star at the time due to his work on The Mavis Bramston Show, is curiously wasted in his stock villain part. Robert McDarra, an excellent actor best remembered for his role in the feature film 27A (1974), and famed for the real-life alcoholism that led to his early death, seems miscast as Ray, the producer with a crush on Amanda.
I wasn’t quite sure exactly what All Fall Down was meant to be – on one hand, it’s a light musical comedy about the adventures of the two girls, but there’s also all this heavy drama focus on Larry disliking Ray which doesn’t seem to concern the girls at all (is Larry keen on Amanda? Ray?). I wonder if that was the original focus of the piece, only for it to be rewritten to accommodate the Kessey twins. I could be wrong about that.
Still, All Fall Down gets points for novelty – as a thirty-minute backstage musical drama starring twins, Barry Creyton and Robert McDarra as a stage juvenile, with three song and dance numbers, there wasn’t much else like it made at the time....
Boddy kept busy in television over the next few years, then his attention drifted (or was forced to drift) more towards theatre and journalism. He had a varied, lively career, which included being a nude model for his artist wife’s 1973 Archibald Prize-winning portrait. As mentioned, his TV plays were only one chapter in a storied life, but they are worth remembering.
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