Australian TV Plays: Dangerous Corner (9 June 1965)

A bit of a throwback - adaptation of a JB Priestley play.

Premise

A suicide and an empty cigarette case spark an emotional powder keg in a family.

Cast

Dorothy Bradley as Olwen
Maxwell Jackson as Robert
Amanda Fox as Freda
Judith Arthy as Betty
David Mitchell as Gordon
Charles Stanton as Keith
Sheila Florance as Miss Mockridge
Keith Lee

Original play

The play was first performed in 1932. It's a very good play. A complete copy is here.

The ABC really had no business filming this though.

Other productions

The play was popular in Australia. It was performed for ABC radio in 1955 the same year a production was on in Melbourne on stage.

There was a 1940 radio version for Lux, 1951 radio version for Caltex Theatre with Patricia Kennedy. A review is here.

It was done by BBC TV in 1946, 1949 and 1957.

Production

It was shot in Melbourne. John Warwick did the adaptation. Patrick Barton directed.

Amanda Fox was an English actress who was born when her father was appearing in the original stage production of Dangerous Corner.

The ending aired opposite the Mavis Bramston Show. See a reference to that here.

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that "After 30 years or so the play still has its internal fascination as an ingenious piece of stagecraft, but the present cast was totally unable to recapture the quietly sinister implications of the original production and substituted shouting and overacting."

Frank Doherty thought it was a mistake of Pat Barton to update the visuals to 1965 and disliked how the cast did not use their hands. He said it was "little more than a semi-animated reading of the play".

The Canberra Times called it "a visual delight front the Saul Bass-inspired opening titles to the equally attractive closing credits. Unfortunately the whole effect was ruined by a lot of dated and wearisome rubbish by J. B. Priestley. This early play is not Mr Priestley’s best. It follows that it is a very bad one. Much of the play’s point, to use the word somewhat loosely, depends upon such conventions of Protestant Anglo-Saxon pseudo-morality as that a woman married to a homo sexual must lose all respect for having had an extra-marital affair, or that a successful businessman who allows a dead man’s reputation to suffer ihc guilt for a stolen cheque will find Retribution In The End...the Melbourne cast gave it better treatment than it deserved."