Australian TV Plays: The Runner (24 Oct 1962) (one off play ATN-7)

A one off TV play from Alan Seymour.

Premise

It dealt with a young runner’s ambitions to break every possible record and how his obsession led to the loss of his fiancee and the friendship of his trainer and mentor. The theme of the play was about the challenge of working hard to achieve success in sport but keeping a balance in life.

It ends with the runner's life almost entirely in ruin as his trainer takes on another runner.

Cast

Lew Luton as the runner
Reg Lye as the runner's father
Brian Anderson as the ex-trainer

Production

The script was commissioned from ATN 7.

Done when Ray Menmuir at Shell Presents in 1959.

According to the biography of Seymour on his agent's website " The theme of the play was about the challenge of working hard to achieve success in sport but keeping a balance in life. Channel 7’s lawyers thought the most prominent athlete of that time, Herb Elliott, might take exception to the “message” of the play and sent him the script. Herb wrote back that he thoroughly approved of what the script was saying and thought it needed to be said. "

In January 1961 it was announced the play had been filmed. But it does not appear to have aired until October 1962.

The SMH review said Brett Porter "produced it". That could mean directing or producing. I think it is directing.

A copy of it is at the NFSA apparently. See here.

Brett Porter in the Vincent Committee talked about the TV plays he made. He said he made them for Shell and General Motors and said there was one without a sponsor. Maybe this?

In his oral history with Graham Shirley, David Cahill said Brett Porter did this "on his own". So I think he directed it. Cahill also said there were some filmed sequences, which he said was

Porter spoke in the Vincent Committee:

Mr. Osborne.—You told us that many Australian writers who are overseas would be prepared to come home and work for much less than they could earn overseas simply because they desire to work in Australia. Is that correct?—I had the unpleasant experience of producing play by an Australian writer at ATN and when production was finished and we were having a drink, he asked me, “When do you want the next play?” I think privacy probably should prevent me from telling the Committee fee for which this man had written the first play. If necessary, I would pass this on privately; but the fee was low that his suggestion that he write a second play amounted almost to charity. I had to tell him that we didn’t want another one, This was Allan Seymour, one of our best writers, who has now gone overseas.

Reception

It aired on Wednesday 24 October 1962 at 8 pm as part of a series of programs called By Special Request. It was the first in that series.

The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that the play "exemplified his [Seymour's] gift for finding subjects of universal potential combined with a central relevance to Australian occupations..."The Runner" promised well by taking as its central character a young Australian athlete rigorously trained to achieve fame far outdistancing his personal readiness for it." It said the production "was neither stingingly enjoyable nor a pathetic character study of any depth" in which the dialogue "sounded well below the standards of naturalistic invention that Seymour might bring to it if he rewrote it now."

The Bulletin, Frank Roberts, called it "interesting". An Australian script he actually liked! He said "Now I know how it feels to be given a fairly solid meal unexpectedly after months on a diet of mush. The experience occurred last week, when I saw two tolerable local television plays on the one night. If I praise them too much, it is because their virtues were such a pleasure. The first was “The Runner”, by Alan Seymour, produced by Brett Porter, with Lew Luton, and it was a one-hour glance at the career of a distance runner whose coach had a garbled conception of the Percy Cerutty method. Anyone who used to watch a horror show called “Penthouse” would know that Lew Luton, once its male ingenue, had what then seemed vain hopes of becoming an actor. He has succeeded. In “The Runner”, allowing for brief experience, Luton seemed the most exciting prospect we have for dramatic roles on television. The play investigated the possible harm of mixing sport and sport-philosophy in the mind of a not particularly bright athlete, with predictable results . . . the head swelled, the outlook hardened, the importance of other people diminished, winning became living, and the traditional break with the coach occurred. I don’t know whether this was what Alan Seymour intended. Some reviewers suggested that he had attacked another “sacred cow”, and they implied satirical intent. I saw the play as an interesting drama with sufficient conflict to hold me for the hour. "