Australian TV Plays: Ending It (19 June 1957)

Australian TV play based on a script that had been filmed for British TV in 1939.

William Sterling directed and it went for a half an hour.

It showed in Melbourne on 19 July 1957.

Premise

A love story between a couple at a restaurant, Guy and Barbara (Guy and Carol in the original story). Barbara wants to end the relationship. Guy reveals he has poisoned Barbara and that people will think it's suicide. Barbara tells Guy she swapped their drinks around so they are both poisoned. They wait to die.

Cast

* Bruce Beeby as Guy Martinsell

* Madi Hedd as Barbara Lethbridge

* Keith Buckley a waiter

Original story

Val Gielgud was a writer who worked for the BBC. He regularly wrote short stories - "Ending It" was one. The full story, from a 1935 American newspaper, is below.

Thoughts on the story - I've read it and it's quite good. Simple. Couple at dinner. Breaking up. He's revealed he's poisoned her. She reveals she swapped their drinks around so they're both poisoned. Some chipper 30s dialogue.

Radio play

Hugh Stewart adapted the story for radio in 1938. The Guardian called it "spare and neat and worked quietly up to a dramatic climax."

Other adaptations

Filmed by the BBC in 1939 when TV was in its early stages. Gielgud himself produced it and it appears to have gone for 30 minutes. This was just before TV was put on hiatus due to the war.

Gielgud later wrote about his experiences in this 1947 memoir Years of the Locust:

It may be-I suggest it only with the diffidence of inexperience-that the solution lies in the realisation that in Television the camera may not be the most essential cog in the machinery :an important cog, a vital cog, but for all that only one cog among others.I am inclined to believe that the Television producer of the future will have,above all else, to be a first-rate chef. He will use camera and micro-phone, “ live “ scenes and filmed scenes, studio -sets and “ actuality “shots, in sequences and mixtures most cunningly contrived.I do no timagine that I was the only producer to experiment with “ library “film -sequences to link scenes played in the studio.I made use of this mixture, crudely and imperfectly needless to say, when handling a play of my own, Ending It, at Alexandra Palace in the summer of1939.I found immediately that it enabled me to get the play,as it were, out of leading strings ; to give it a smoothness of flow, a mobility such as had been added to the radio play when multiple -studio technique was applied for the first time.

This quote is also to be found in his book British Radio Drama 1922-1956.

Gielgud would be head of TV drama at the BBC from 1949-1952. Maybe the ABC filmed it to suck up to the BBC.

The BBC did it for radio in 1946.

Production

It was shot in Sydney. Thelma Afford did the design. An Australian Woman's Weekly piece mentions it:

Mrs. Afford told me that when she was dressing “End- ing It” for the A.B.C. she de- cided to put the heroine into an evening dress of rich dark grey. She saw a deep corn- flower-blue material which she thought would be perfect. Tests showed that it photo- graphed badly. To get the effect she and the producer wanted, she eventually made the dress in navy blue organza over peacock blue taffeta. To get contrasts, avoid monotony, and also help identify characters in plays, Mrs. Afford finds it necessary to use both spotted and striped materials. These are dynamite to deal with. Dark blue and pale blue stripes give the effect of black and white, but you get the same effect, too, with pale pink and dark green. Pattern pitfalls Talking of the pitfalls of patterned materials, she pointed out that a clear pink cotton with a scarlet, yellow, and pale blue check pattern would simply appear as TV white.

Stars Bruce Beeby and Madi Hed were married. They were Australians who had just returned from England and made this.

The NAA have a copy of the script here. Not on line.