Bodgie (12 Aug 1959)

 An Australian story! Rather an Australian adaptation of a British story from an Australian writer.

Premise

Kenney is a "bodgie" who lives in Kings Cross with his ex-convict father (Douglas Kelly). Kenny has a girlfriend (Lola Brooks) and is forced into blackmail of a politician (Nigel Lovell). He tries to protect a woman (Thelma Scott) and murder results. 

Cast

• John Ewart as Kenney
• Lola Brooks as Mavis
• Douglas Kelly as Kenney's father Charlie
  
• Nigel Lovell as Robert Manning, MP
  
• Thelma Scott as Caroline
• Louis Wishart as barman
• Nellie Lamport as landlady
• Don Crosby as police inspector
• Gerry Duggan as Sgt Scott
• Del Furze as Felicity
  

 Original play

The story was originally written by Rex Rienits and previously filmed in Britain as the film Wide Boy (1952). 

Rienits wrote the story for star Sidney Tafler, who had been in Assassin for Hire written by Rienits.

The film was made in 1952. It was the directorial debut of Ken Hughes.  My thoughts on the film. Sidney Talfer's casting in the lead gives the piece integrity - not a pretty boy, he does seem to be a spiv. Susan Shaw is too good looking to be his girlfriend really but she's a good actor, and very easy on the eye.This is stripped back, quick, atmospheric. It was Ken Hughes' first credit as director and he does well. There's not an ounce of fat on it. It was probably too much of a coincidence that the girl blackmailed went to Shaw's hairdressing salon. It only clocks in at an hour - and thus ideal for TV adaptation.

Rienits was an Australian who had success writing for TV in the UK. “A lot depends not on your  ability, but on whom you  know,” he said around the time of Bodgie. “I don’t mean that in any nasty sense it’s just that studios prefer to deal  with  people  they  know,  or of whom they’ve heard, rather  than with unknowns.’’ He had a lot of that success writing about Australia.

Other adaptations

Rienits also adapted this story as a radio play and as a short story. This wasn't uncommon at the time.

The radio play was meant to be broadcast on the BBC in early 1952 but this was delayed due to concerns by the BBC about its subject matter.

It was adapted for Australian radio in 1953. The cast included Ray Barrett and Alistair Duncan.

There were later productions in 1956. 

Rienits also adapted the story as a short story which was published along with the novel of Assassin for Hire.

Production

May 1959 Rienits was on the boat to Australia. He wrote to Hutchison "I am delighted to know you are contemplating Wide Boy as a TV play and think it should adapt well. At the time I wrote it for radio I also thought of revamping it for TV but didn't ever get around to it for one reason and another. I would very much like to do the adaptation myself but of course this may not be possible in the time. From what I remember of it the dialogue would need a considerable amount of sharpening and condensing. However I'm sure you've someone on hand who'll take care of all that."

Rienits' script was adapted for Australian TV by Alan Seymour, who relocated it to Australia. 

It starred John Ewart and was produced by Ray Menmuir, who had previously collaborated for the ABC in Murder Story. Rienits said "I think the adapter has done a remarkably good job putting it in Sydney settings."

While mainly a live drama, it also featured exterior scenes shot in King's Cross, Darlinghurst and North Sydney. These included McElhoe Steps in the Cross, for the scene where Ewart shoots Lovell. According to TV Tmes it featured 15 minutes of location footage, then a record for an Australian drama.

A number of police worked as extras; Ray Menmuir had to get permission for this to be done. Lola Brooks had her dark hair dyed blonde to make her more believable as a "widgie".

In 1959 Rienits was back in Australia as the drama editor at the ABC. He said he had looked at 100 scripts by Australian writers of which only two were promising. 

"It's largely a matter of technique. There are good Australian novelists and radio writers; why not TV writers? 1 think the reason not many have appeared  yet is simply  that so far few Australian writers have seen much live TV drama, and appreciated the need for new  techniques.” 

He also said in this interview:

I believe in Australia. I believe in its artistic future. I think that in another 20 years, Australia will be as important culturally and artistically as America is today. It’s a young and growing country, and the writers and artists will grow with it. It’s a terribly exciting thing to be in. In fact, maybe that’s the reason I came home—to be in it.

Reception

The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that:

The thoroughly professional qualities of Rex Rienits' writing in his play Bodgie were fairly satisfactorily matched in production and acting... Mr Rienits has said very little that is new in his neatly tailored but conventional plot about the eroding effects of crime and its spurious glamour on a weak character, or about the relative moral positions of the blackmailer and his victims - around whom the play revolves. But then his aim, justifiably, is not sociological comment but entertainment. Not that social comment was entirely missing. John Ewart as the "bodgie" at least showed how the mind of a lay about turned involuntary murderer, works, although the part gave him little opportunity to reveal why it gets that way. This was a well-observed performance in which Ewart gave a convincing air to the egg-shell thin toughness covering a profound insecurity, and the desperate hysterical bravado used as a cloak for cowardice. This may not have been the picture of a typical "bodgie" but it was a good portrait of a scared, lonely, weak - and as a result of this, criminal - young man. With its use of filmed Sydney backgrounds, and some carefully designed studio sets, Ray Menmuir's production added some refreshing authenticity to the tensions generated by the author's clever writing and Alan Seymour's adaptation... support cast acted adequately, but without much imagination.^[

Valda Marshall, the TV critic from the Sun Herald called it "a neat and imaginative little drama of the more seamy side of King's Cross life" with "sympathetic acting from" Ewart, Kelly and Brooks but "not quite so convincing in secondary roles were " Lovell and Scott. She felt the play "suffered slightly from rather obvious differences in quality between the prefilmed exterior scenes and those done live from the studio. But all in all it was a worthwhile effort." 

A TV Times review of Close to the Roof called it "a poor effort" (see below). 

Listener In called it "the only truly Australian made drama with an Australian setting produced in this country in three years that could rate in its own right with overseas films... Memuir wisely chose to swell on the thriller content. Deep shadows and angled lighting accentuated an atmosphere of underworld. Although abrupt camera switches sometimes jolted the narration they heightened its tension. An experienced cast also helped to clock the plays superficiality... not great television drama but it was the first hopeful evidence that Australia has the potentiality to produce great television drama sometimes."

The Sunday Mirror called it "well written well acted and well produced" but added "it had nothing for me, nor do I think it had much for 90 out of 100 viewers. The theme was nothing new. We've seen the same essential plot so often... nothing to add except that it was set in Kings Cross. . Rienits as an author reveals no more talent than quite a number of Australian writers."

Neil Hutchison called it "pretty fragile stuff but Ray made a wonderful job of it. Twenty five percent of it was film and the rest from the studio. The integration was perfect."

The Age Supplement 27 August 1959 p 3

The Age 27 Aug 1959 p 18

SMH 13 Aug 1959 p 10

SMH 16 Aug 1959 p 45

ABC Weekly 26 August 1959 p 7

The Age Supplement 27 August 1959 p 3

SMH 8 Aug 1959 p 19

SMH 10 Aug 1959 p 13

SMH 12 Aug 1959 p 17

SMH 10 Aug 1959  p 14

TV Times Vic 28 Aug 1959 p 14

TV Times Victoria 28 Aug 1958

Vic TV Times

TV Listener In 12 Sept 1959 p 4

TV Listener In

 ABC weeklyVol. 21 No. 34 (26 August 1959)
  Rex RIENITS STUDIO PORTRAIT *7 came back to Australia because / was homesick ” said the big man behind the desk. “7 came to get back to the sunshine , and the people who were my friends , but chiefly because I was just plain homesick ” r PHE man was Rex Rienits, former newspaper execu tive, now the A.B.C.’s TV drama editor in Syckiey. and one of Australia’s most suc cessful playwrights. One of his most recent plays, “Bodgie,” was telecast from Sydney’s Channel 2 on August 12. He has been home in the wintry sunshine for the last six weeks, after more than 10 years as a highly successful freelance writer in Britain. 

Rienits is a big. bluff man in his fifties, with a pleasantly relaxed manner, and an un mistakable aura of content and success; not at all the type, you might think, ever to fall prey to homesickness. But there was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice, as he told me how glad he was to be back. “At :!ie time 1 left England, 1 was doing better than I ever had before,” he said. “But, putting it bluntly, freelance writing there gets to be a bit of a rat-race. The competition is fierce and ruthless. HE REMAINS AUSTRALIAN “1 had some very good stretches there, but some very bad ones as well. You never knew what would happen from year to year.” OIENITS became a ** playwright almost by accident. He was trained as a journalist, and spent most of his early working life on newspapers. Twelve years ago, he was near the top of the tree as editor of the fea ture page of a big Sydney daily, when a disagreement with its ownei led him abruptly to resign. “I’d already done a little radio writing,” he says, “so then 1 decided to turn to it for a living. 1 did; but 1 soon got involved in the tremendous churning-out process that goes on all the time in radio, and 1 thought Ed better get out before it killed me.” So in 1949 he went to Eng land, and started freelancing for radio there. “Things were terribly tough in the beginning,” he says ruefully. “Nobody wanted to know me. “But then 1 got a chance to write a 60-minute play for the 8.8. C.. then a serial version of ‘Robbery Under Arms,’ and another on Bligh and I was fairly launched.” 

Since then. Rienits has writ ten many plays, serials and film scripts (including “Smiley Gets a Gun,” and the 8.8.C.s remarkably popular Flying Doctor (TV serial); but he has always remembered the tough days. , “A lot depends not on your ability, but on whom you know,” he says. “I don’t mean that in any nasty sense it’s just that studios prefer to deal with people they know, or of whom they’ve heard, rather than with unknowns.’’ 

Rienits believes that one of the things that helped him to success in England was his concentration on writing Australian themes. “1 was greatly impressed by what I thought to be a lack of vitality in English writing today,” he says. “It had a really extraordinary effect on me. In a kind of unconscious protest, I sup pose, I found myself not want ing to write anything but Australian stuff, and then I found there was quite a market for it in Britain.” 

Rienits came back to Australia in 1954 for what was meant to be a holiday, but he got mixed up with another writing job, and then got engaged, so that in the end he was here for 12 months be fore returning to England. “1 realised then, when I got back to England, how much vitality there was in Australia, and how lucking it was there,” he says. “I think that was one of the reasons why the “Doll” was so successful in Britain it was crude, brash and vital. “1 think it didn’t do so well in America because there it had to compete with plays by Americans which had those qualities anyway, and were perhaps really better shows.” 

Now, back in Sydney as TV Drama Editor for the A.8.C., Rienits is busy looking for good Australian TV plays. So far he hasn’t had much success (of 100 scripts he has so far seen, only two show much promise) but he is still enthusiastic about the job. “TT’S largely a * matter of technique,” he says. “There are good Australian novelists and radio writers; why not TV writers? 1 think the reason not many have appeared yet is simply that so far few Australian writers have seen much live TV drama, and appreci ated the need for new tech niques.” 

Apart from this, Rienits is still doing some work for the 8.8. C. (the third series of his Flying Doctor serial begins in England next January), and is working on a series of.books on early Australian art and painters; the first, on convict artist Thomas Watling. is to be published next year. He is now definitely com mitted for a series of three books on as many pioneer artists; the research on each one will take him 12 months of his spare time, even though his wife, Thea, eases the burden by helping him with much of the research. (He is also an eager collector of early Australian art, and managed to add consider ably to his collection in Eng land many early paintings and drawings were taken back by returning officials and visitors.) 

Altogther, Rienits gives the impression of a man who is international in experience and outlook, but who has remained fiercely Australian, and proud of it. “I believe in Australia,” he says. “I believe in its artistic future. I think that in another 20 years, Australia will be as important culturally and artis tically as America is today. “It’s a young and growing country, and the writers and artists will grow with it. It’s a terribly exciting thing to be in. “In fact, maybe that’s the reason I came home—to be in it.”  

NAA Neil Hutchison

NAA Neil Hutchison

NAA Neil Hutchison

NAA Leslie Rees