SP#7 - Ruth (5 Sept 1959)

 Version of TV play by John Glennon. Later filmed by BBC in 1962. And US TV in 1960.

Plot

Cal returns to the house next door to where he used to live, looking for Ruth. The resident informs him that Ruth is away sick. 

Cal remembers when he was a lonely man living with his widowed mother who wants him to be educated. Cal just wants to play the guitar.

Cal befriends his neighbour Ruth, a housewife who refuses to sweep floors and dreams of playing Cleopatra. Ruth encourages his dreams to play the guitar.

Neighbours accuse Cal and Ruth of having an affair. Cal's mother asks Ruth to no longer speak to her son. Ruth rejects Cal.

Cal becomes a success. He returns to find Ruth dying in hospital. 

Cast

• Lyndall Barbour as Ruth
• John Glennon as Cal
• Edward Howell as Ruth's husband
  
• Jeannie James
• Barbara Brandon
• Agnes Dobson
• Lorna Stirling
• Murielle Hearne
• Betty Randall
• Wyn McAlpin
• Wyn Pullman

Production

John Glennon was an American writer and director who worked in England. He was only 27.

I'm not sure this was the world debut of the play. Its advertising said it had already been shown in the US and England. But from my research it didn't play on BBC until 1962 and the earliest American review I found is 1960 - the play was called The Dirtiest Word in the English Language.  A 1960 piece here said Glennon left the US for England in 1956 because he was unable to sell his scripts in the US but found success in England. 

In March 1959 he did a play for British TV called The Bird, The Bear And The Actress see here. This March 1959 profile said his first play was sold to CBC while he was appearing on Broadway in St Joan see here. That play may have been called The Movie Star. A review of that from 1957 is here.

It was in the US.

Glennon  arrived in Melbourne on 8 August 1959 to present two plays for GTV-9, starting with Ruth. He was also to help coach Australian writers and producers on US drama techniques. 

Glennon says told the TV Times there was a real Ruth "a young woman who figured once in my life very strongly." Describing the story he said before the male character meetings the woman "he is weak and indecisive, a shallow character, Ruth is wide awake, joy filled woman who makes the boy into a purposeful, energetic young man with stature and decency."

The producers wanted Lydall Barbour to play the lead. She returned to Australia after twelve months away (she appeared in The Exiles in the UK). She was tracked down to a hotel room in Paris and John Glennon travelled from London to persuade her to accept the part. 

"Ruth is a big and heavy role, but a wonderful part," says Barbour. "And it was wonerful to work with John Glennon - he's not only a clever playwright at 27 but a brilliant actor as well." It was one of her first television performances. "I was terrified of it before I went away and would have nothing to do with it." In London she'd appeared in the BBC series The Exiles and an episode of The Flying Doctor.

The play was produced in Melbourne at the GTV 9 studios.

While rehearsing it Glennon said he was working on a play about Australians in London. Not sure what happened to that.

Glennon later made Rope.

In September 1959 Glennon said said there were plays of his he wanted to do in Australia: The Duchess Treatment (was this The Movie Star?) and The Bird, The Bear and the Actress.

Reception

The TV critic from the Sydney Morning Herald called it "a highly original and diverting play" where Glennon's writing was "in an attractively inventive and individual way that sometimes shades into the eccentric". He said "the play's great fault is that its ingredients are too rich for comfortable compression into an hour. It needs more time and space to develop ideas ana incidents too arbitrarily imposed in this production... John Glennon himself... acted very well indeed, with all the variety and range (and not excluding the occasional mannerisms) which The Method can supply."

The Age TV critic wrote that those viewers "who got the message" would have found the play "very interesting. For those who didn't it could have been a bit of a bore... Some sort of tribute must be paid to Rod Kinnear... for tackling what must appear to many as being a very unrewarding play. A complicated autobiographical play can be very hard to 'get across' to viewers. An experience vivid in the mind of the writer is often more difficult to portray through the drama medium than is a story drawn from the writer's imagination... Mr Glennon is now a little too sophisticated for this rather difficult role. Miss Barbour had some highly dramatic moments but, for the one hour, John Glennon gave the more faithful and consistent acting performance." 

Frnak Thring of TV Week praised the acting of Barbour.

Listener In called it "a startlingly different essay in television dramatics... an obscure plot and incomprehensible punchline... falls into a new category of entertainment best described as Beatnik Bellowdrama. Any virtue it had lay in the performances."

 Other versions

It was filmed in the US as the Dirtiest Word in the English Language in 1960. Uta Hagen played the woman.  review is here. A Variety review is here.

Another version aired as a BBC Sunday-Night Play in 1962, starring Constance Cummings, again written by John Glennon, and this time directed by Henry Kaplan.  This report says it was done on US and Australian TV first.

It's rare Australian TV did a play first before the BBC.

SMH 14 Sept 1959

The Age 4 Sept 1959

The Age 10 Sept 1959

SMH 19 Sept 1959

SMH 14 Sept 1959

The Age 27 Aug 1959

The Age 3 S ept 1959

The Age 6      Aug 1959

SMH 13 Sept 1959

The Age 3 Sept 1959

SMH 21 Sept 1959

The Age 10 Sept 1959

LA Times 3 Oct 1960

The Stage 5 March 1959

TV Times 21 Aug 1959

 

TV Times Vic 28 Aug 1959 p 11

 

 

TV Times Vic 18 Sept 1958

Listener In 12 Sept 1950

 

Spotlight on Scriptwriters John Glennon WILLIAM KOTCHEFF once described John Glennon to me as a sensi-ive and imaginative writer. He is also a fairly new one. His first script was sold to CBC and produced by Henry Kaplan, while he was on... E Broadway with Siobahn MacKcnna in "Saint Joan." in 1957. "I felt," he says, "That writing save me more independence than acting." E But before he gave up acting. he had done a great E deal of it on TV in New York, and had got to know the medium well. Was this the reason that he has chosen to write par- ticularly for TV. Not entirely. Simply put: the medium is right for his talents. Elabor- E ating that. I'll use his own words. No Plots E "I he tact ot a plot isvery limiting to me. I can- E not write a fast-moving E plot, and do not want to. In E fact, I never start out with E a plot. If I try to, I don't E succeed. Once, I was asked to do E a film. I was given a situa- tion, which was the most important thing in the film E I could not do it. E It follows that I like to E write about character. In the E small amount of TV time say the half-hour. I find I can only say a limited number of things successfully, so it is better for my characters E to be in an environment E where not too many dramatic things happen to them. If the time is longer 60 or E 90 minutes I can introduce E more characters, or develop E Hum a little more, or have E more locales. But I think I E can express character within the half-hour play." It is true that 50°o of tele-ision time undermines the E average level of intelligence, so viewers are constantly heinu offered less, instead of more, than they can pos sibly understand. Disagrees I personally have been told many times, You're too good for TV write for the stage.' 

This I heartily disagree with. I think that TV warrants the best of my self, because it is such a powerful medium. If you can say one thing to several million people, H is more important than saying it in a theatre, where it can only reach a few thousand.' I think that TV is the product of the dicentralisa tion of man. If only for security reasons, this is bound to come. The indi vidual will have the enter tainment medium in his house, and will he the complete master of it. also think that TV requires a Griffiths or a Chaplin to come along and e lift it out of its present E mediocrity all the technical equipment is already there. 'Lift TV' Writers should write for technical advantages and the medium, learning all its E disadvantages, and not do E adaptations. TV should be E lifted to a distinct form of art just as the cinema was lifted out of the nickelodeon." What else has Glennon written Two adaptations E for Granada I've got to E eat and two original plays which they have bought. He wrote these in the south of France, where he went for peace and quiet Then back to the States for three months this winter, to act in TV soap opera. While there, he negotiated to write E some scripts for Rapallo's production of Rendez- E vous." He has done three or four scripts for them. This Sunday, his play. The Bird, the Bear and the Actress.'' will be directed by r William Kotcheff for ABC, with Barry Jones (see this e page) in the lead.

ABC Weekly 16 Sept 1959