Australian TV Plays: A Dead Secret (21 May 1959)

Shot in Melbourne.

The ABC clearly liked the play - they filmed it again in 1963.

Premise

Insurance agent Frederick Dyson owns a house in London with his wife. Among the lodgers is a misery elderly woman, Miss Lummus, who hoards her money in the house. When she is murdered, Dyson is charged with the crime.

Cast

Bruce Archer as Alfie, Miss Lummus' adoptive son
Kenneth Goodlett as Frederick Dyson
Elizabeth Wing as Mrs Dyson
Moira Carlicion as Miss Lummus
Bettina Kauffman
Edward Howell
Campbell Copelin
Lewis Tegart
Carol Armstrong

Original play

It was based on a play by Rodney Ackland. This was based on the Seddon Murder Trial where a man murdered his lodger with arsenic. He was hung in 1912.

The play premiered in 1957 with Paul Scofield in the lead.

The play was put on by the Genesian Theatre in Sydney in 1959 shortly after the TV play went to air.

Other adaptations

The play was adapted for British TV (for ITV) in 1959. THe BBC adapted it for radio in 1961.

The play was adapted for Australian radio in 1963.

Production

The program was shot in Melbourne under the direction of Will Sterling. There were a lot of articles about Sterling in The Age.

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald said

“A Dead Secret On ABN-2

The potential dramatic richness of “A Dead Secret,” a study of miserliness and murder in a claustrophobic Edwardian household, was not fully exploited in a Melbourne-produced television pay on ABN Channel 2 last night.

British playwright Rodney Ackland took the notorious Seddon murder case as the starting point for a play to be not only a carefully carpentered mage thriller, but also a period piece, a study of the attitudes, business morals and manners of the time.

ABN’s producer, William Sterling. had little time—or space—to create the atmosphere which can come much more easily to a stage director; and to some extent, John Peter’s admirably accurate se twas therefore wasted.

Mr Sterling and his cast, in fact, had time for little else but a straight-forward farralive of this story about a self-made man going, blindly and obstinately to self-destruction; and when “atmosphere” was attempted, the lighting and the intricate interplay the set and the players sometimes obscured dramatic clarity.

But it was, without any startling virtues, nevertheless a satisfactory piece of domestic entertainment.

‘As the —profit-obsessed middle-class businessman, Kenneth Goodlett acted with an admirably consistent accent and intention; Moire Carleton, the rich woman who dies in his house, was briefly but reflectively wine-soaked and miserly.

Bettine Kauffman (on whom suspicion for the murder should fall equally with the man of the house) was neatly eccentric and waspish ‘os a Maidservant.

Others in the cast were Elizabeth Wing, Carol Armstrong, Lewis Tegart, Campbell Copelin and Edward Howell. —J.M.