Australian TV Plays: GMH - Shadow of a Pale Horse (17 Sept 1960)

GMH - Shadow of a Pale Horse (17 Sept 1960)

A television play written by Bruce Stewart which was produced for British, US, Canadian and Australian TV.

Premise

Set in the 19th century in the New South Wales town of Cobar, a young man is found battered to death. A man called Jem is found next to him, drunk, and is accused of the crime. Jem is arrested but floods prevent him from being transported for trial. All Jem remembers is seeing the shadow of a horse.

Rigger, the dead man's father, wants to lynch Jem but is stopped by Kirk, the dead man's employer (a farmer".

Condringer, an old German prospector, suggests the town hold its own trial. Rigger is given the job of defending Jem. Kirk is given the job of prosecuting him.

Rigger comes to believe in Jem's innocent but Kirk becomes convinced of his guilt.

Jem is lynched. Then it is discovered that Jem was innocent.

Cast

Brian James as Kirk
Leonard Teale as Jack Rigger
Kurt Ludescher as Condringer
Ben Gabriel
Thelma Scott
Lynne Murphy as Rigger's wife
John Gray
Henry Gilbert
Stuart Finch
Peter McCredie

Background

Bruce Stewart was a New Zealand playwright who moved to London to work as a writer and actor. Shadow of a Pale Horse won him a Silver Dagger Award of the Mystery Writers of America. His obituary from The Guardian is here. Another piece is here.

Radio Play (June 1959)

The play was performed on the BBC in June 1959 see here.

Original London TV Play (Aug 1959)

The play was first presented on English TV in August 1959 for ITV as part of its Play of the Week series.

The production starred Patrick McGoohan. Silvia Nazarrino directed.

Bruce Stewart had arrived in England three years previously to work as an actor. The play was very well received. Reviews are here.

Daily Telegraph called it a "brilliant production".

Canadian TV Production (Jan 1960)

The play was later Broadcast on Canadian TV in January 1960. It was meant to be on in December 1959 for General Motor Presents see here. Patrick Macnee starred, Paul Almond directed. This was a 60 minute production.

An article about it is here and here. It was meant to be sponsored by General Motors but the pulled out saying "We don't think this play is consistent with kind of entertainment that has been presented to date on this series and the kind which we would like to have presented... the drama has a hanging scene that to put it mildly is just too realistic for the kind of program we want to sponsor."

Another piece is here. It prompted an editorial in the Ottowa Citizen here.

Critics called it a "good production" and "magnificent" and "stimulating". Apparently 80% of phone calls were favourable see here.

US TV Production (20 July 1960)

It was filmed in the US as part of the Steel Hour in 1960 with Dan Duryea.

In Oct 1959 it was announced Jack Palmer was hired to adapt the script to the American west. However this account here says it was in Australia.

It was called "above average TV" see here.

Stage play

It was turned into a stage play which had a run in 1964. See here.

I also think it was adapted into a film that was not made. A copy of the script is for sale here.

Radio

According to the NAA there was a radio play with the ABC see here.

Production

The play was produced for Australian TV by Sydney station ATN-7, it was also shown in Melbourne on station GTV-9.

The production was shot in Sydney at ATN's studios. Cul Cullen, art director, researched details at Sydney libraries.

Kurt Ledescher was a European actor who had only just arrived in Australia. The production aired a few weeks after the American version had been made.

Brian Wright, who appeared in the show, had written the radio serial Hop Harrigan which had starred Bruce Stewart a number of years earlier.It was an early TV role for Leonard Teale.

Gwen Plumb wrote in her memoirs that a brown horse was used and the crew covered it in Johnson's Baby Powder to make it look ghostly. "It really looked ghostly," she wrote. But the powder made the horse sneeze and shake himself "and a white cloud enshrouded the studio." They tried it two much times, then gave up. Plumb says someone then had the idea of whitewashing the horse. "And they did! That poor beast."

In one six minute scene only one camera was used. David Cahill (who directed) told this to Graham Shirley for an NFSA interview.

Leonard Teale recalled in an interview:

After that I did a number of one-off plays. I remember one called ‘Shadow Of A Pale Horse’, which was the story of a murder in a country town. It looks like the culprit is going to be hung, and a wise old man suggests that the father who wants this boy hung should defend him, and the person who was going to defend him should be the prosecutor - a reversal of the roles, and so the whole town begins to change; it was a brilliant idea and beautifully done.

In the early days of television it was still a medium for not only information, but also for what you might call ‘cultural pursuits’ - as there were plays especially written for radio, so too plays were especially written for television. The BBC still do this, but we followed not the BBC so much as the American pattern. To me, it’s interesting the change that came about when American television shifted from the east coast to the west coast; most marked, the difference in quality. As soon as it got to Hollywood the quality plummeted - absolutely plummeted. All the really good shows came out of New York, and amongst them some tremendous one hour plays, and we did exactly the same thing here - the one hour play was a feature of radio on a Sunday night, the BBC did it on television, the Americans did it, and so we did it too.

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald said "in almost every respect" the show "was a success."

The Age called it "a little disappointing" attributing this to it being 60 minutes saying the British version was 90.

The show won Best Drama at the 1961 Logie Awards.

It was repeated in Melbourne on 21 October 1961 and in Sydney on 12 October 1960 and 28 October 1961.

I think a copy of the recording is at the NFSA see here. The script seems to be there see here.

Radio

The play was performed on Australian radio in 1965. Again in 1966 and 1974.

SMH

The Age 5 Jan 1960

The Age 6 Aug 1959

NAA Articles

Bruce Stewart, by Paul Featherstone

I am very grateful to Paul Featherstone, who lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, for this article. Especially, as when I went to some of the databases I keep here, it was apparent that Stewart had written a substantial number of plays over a period of more than 35 years, and also acted in some of them. – R.B.

Paul writes:

This New Zealand-born actor and dramatist domiciled in England died last October, aged 80. For Australasians, it was his role as Major Gregory Keen of MI5 in a series of Lindsay Hardy suspense serials which lingers in the memory. Dossier on Dumetrius (1949), the first of these, had Keen tracking around London a gang of Nazi sympathisers who trade in forged passports and make a fortune to finance their cause. Its popularity in New Zealand alone can be measured by the fact that Members of Parliament rose early to be able to hear the final episode. He continued to play this part in two sequels to the Sydney-produced Grace Gibson series - Deadly Nightshade (1950) where Keen is in Sydney trying to trace an atomic scientist who has vanished, and 26 Hours (1952). Stewart was a soldier during World War Two, then freelanced throughout the later 1940s, acting and announcing for radio in Auckland, also appearing with Pacific Forces concert parties and in clubs as a singer, pianist and storyteller. He was Walter's father in the quarter-hour New Zealand Broadcasting Service comedy series Walter - The Boy Wonder (1948).

In 1947, he had settled in Sydney where he was better able to maintain a professional career, accepting Australian Broadcasting Company engagements and roles in commercial serials. For Grace Gibson Productions there, he was also in Night Beat and Doctor Paul (as Sam Greer) and oddly, portrayed William Brodie without the appropriate Scottish brogue in the studio's adaptation of The Strange Life of Deacon Brodie. Morris West's Australasian Radio Productions cast Stewart as Lieutenant Frank Crane in Headquarters Man and Fanshawe in The Great Escape, and he replaced Rod Taylor as Douglas Bader in A.R.P's Reach For The Sky (1954). A further high-profile role was one he had in 1955 in the Artransa children's adventure series Hop Harrigan. In commercial stations in Sydney, he was also heard in Mildred Pierce, Kitty Foyle and Saratoga Trunk as well as the plays Crisis (in 'Caltex Theatre') and The Truth About Blayds (in 'Lion Theatre'). He wrote the serial Peter & Paula.

By 1955, Stewart had left Australia for England where he would remain for the rest of his life, and where as colonial heritage and religious spirituality. For the BBC, he wrote The Devil Is Driving By (1956 - see list following this article), the African Interlude series (1957), Against The Wind and a serialisation of Fergus Hume’s classic Victorian novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (Light Programme, 6 parts as from 2.11.1958). Shadow of a Pale Horse (which was also given an NZBS production in1960) was awarded the Silver Dagger prize by The Mystery Writers of America in 1962, and in the same year his Hot & Copper Sky, which delineated episodes in the career of Australian bushranger Ben Hall, was produced by the NZBC.

In all, he wrote over 200 plays and scripts. Among these were Moonfall (NZBS production in 1961), Blood On The Coral Sea, The Day Of The Galah (6-part serial, Light programme as from 30.7.1962), Omegapoint (1975), Hector’s Fixed Idea (1977), The Tor Sands Experience (a science fiction drama for Hi-Fi Theatre in 1979), A Mind To Murder, There’ll Almost Be An England (Radio New Zealand production in 1983), The Isidore Projection and The Culper Tapes. Another play The Gallows In My Garden (given a Radio New Zealand production in 1983) was an account of the relationship between four famous men of the literary world of the 1920s -Wells, Chesterton, Belloc and Shaw. Stewart’s last play - for BBC Radio 4, Soeur Sourire - was about ‘The Singing Nun’ and it questioned the church’s position on suicide.

He gave a Children’s Hour talk in 1960, The Life of St. Vincent de Paul, read Henry Lawson’s short story The Loaded Dog and was cast in Nevil Shute’s play A Town Like Alice (Saturday Night Theatre, 1.6.1963). His output as a TV writer in Britain ranged from scripts for the series The Sullavan Brothers, This Man Craig, The Onedin Line, The Secret Army and Timeslip to his own plays for the medium - The Sin Sifter, Pictures Don’t Lie In Search of St. Paul and A Laugh At The Dark Question. While visiting Australia in 1984, he was back on TV himself in the mini-series The Last Bastion and Bodyline and in an episode of the children’s serial Five Mile Creek.

Stewart was a founder of Sydney’s Genesian Theatre and appeared on stage in that city during the 1950s in The Lady’s Not For Burning, The Cocktail Party and A Phoenix Too Frequent. As a Director at the time, he prepared stagings of Cockpit and Shadow of a Gunman. His stage play The Hallelujah Boy -which had a West End Season - focused on worker priests in France.

Stewart was a taxi driver’s son from Mount Albert in Auckland, educated at Mount Albert Grammar and Mt. St. Mary’s seminary, Napier1, where for 3 years he trained for the priesthood. Ultimately, though, he realised that this was not for him. His other early obsession had been the theatre, which was further encouraged by tutoring from J.W. Bailey and New Zealand Broadcasting Services staff member, Alec McDowell. He shared his life in England with his wife Helen in Chipstead, Surrey in a house which once belonged to Hugh Walpole. They raised 6 children.

Reproduced by permission of VRPCC, in whose newsletter this piece originally appeared. N.D.

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(1) Correction sent by Eliz. Charlton, province Archivist, Society of Mary in New Zealand, who writes as follows (Jan 2017)...”I would appreciate it if you could correct the name of the seminary where he completed studies for the priesthood.

It should be “Mt St Mary’s Seminary” not St Augustine’s. St Augustine’s was the name of a secondary school founded and staffed by the Society of Mary (Marist Fathers and Brothers) in Wanganui.”