Australian TV Plays: Fair Passenger (17 July 1957)

The first one hour drama shot in Melbourne. It was based on a 1950 play by Aimee Stuart (1886-1981).

The director was Bill Eldridge who did a little drama.

Plot

The setting is a Longon falt. Erica Tranmore is middle aged, vain and dissatisfied, despite being married to a man in Ireland. She carries on an affair with Clive Rousclares, an infatuated Irish younger man. Clive is contemplating turning down a business opportunity in New Zealand so he can be with Erica.

Erica travels from Ireland to London on the pretext of visiting an old school friend, Meg Craig, who is secretary to a film director, Frank Clayton, a bluff northener. She imagines she can continue her little affairs of old in this "brave new world". Clive follows her.

Erica meets Rosemary, a young film star, at Meg's flat and sets out to captivate Meg's boss with a screen test.

Rosemary falls in love with Clive.

The director and secretary give Erica some home truths - that she is middle aged and that youth should follow youth. Erica rejects Clive, who has good prospects overseas.

Erica has an unsuccessful screen test and returns home with a new set of values.

Cast

Philip Stainton as Frank Clayton
Nicolette Bernard as Meggie Craig
Beverley Dunn
Marcia Hart as Erica Tramore
Walter Brown as Clive
Margaret Wolfit

Original Play

It was based on a play by Aimee Stuart who wrote the play Clara Gibbings which was filmed in Australia in 1934. She also provided additional dialogue for the film The Wicked Lady which is cool.

Stuart said in a 1946 she had just finished writing it. She called it "a comedy with a serious theme."

The play debuted in 1950. A review is here. Sally Ann Howes played the starlet. An extract:

The fair passenger is an attractive, but aging, woman who, coming out ot Ireland to post-war London, still imagines she can keep her young admirers on a string, and continue her little affairs as of old, in this brave new world.” Her disillusionment is the crux of the story. Visiting her former schoolgirl friend, who, widowed, has become the secretary of a film director, one of her young men follows her, only to become attracted by the rising young starlet of the film company. With all the charm and allure left at her disposal she tries to retain him. He wavers in his allegiances, and disaster threatens. Only after the director, a bluff Northerner, and the worldly wise secretary-friend have each given her a number of home truths does she decide to renounce the boy, who has prospects of a good post over seas. At long last she makes the renunciation, and the curtain falls, allowing one to assume that the starlet, who has earlier expressed her preference for domestic happiness rather than dramatic headlines, will subsequently join him. Tbc play is somewhat awkwardly divided into two acts, and is first and foremost a woman’s play. The author presents in the three women characters an insight, understanding, and intuition which borders on the uncanny. The dialogue amongst the women is excellent it is only the male characters who become some what broadly painted in. One soon realises that Aimee Stuart knows all the foibles and re actions of womanhood are but gam bits in the game of life that she knows by heart. The resultant effect is that all the principal dra matic scenes are dominated by the women. When the starlet is led to believe that the young man is philandering with her, when again -.he confronts him with the bleak question as to which of them he j loves, and in the scene when the secretary forces upon the fair passenger that she is middle-aged and should allow youth to answer the call of youth, all these scenes have real dramatic power. Again, but for its inordinate length, the ultimate renunciation is strongly emotional.

A review of a 1955 performance is here.

Other adaptations

The play was adapted for Australian radio several times. In 1951 on 3AR and 1954 on 2GB.

Neil Hutchison produced a radio version in Newcastle in 1952 see here.

Presumably that's why they made it. 1957 saw a lot of random British plays filmed in Australia.

It was adapted for British TV in 1955 as part of anthology series London Playhouse. This was an ITV show not a British one.

The BBC adapted it for radio in 1955 and 1965.

Production

The ABC had a site in the Melbourne suburb of Rippon Lea and most of its shows came from there.

However it did not have normal TV studio facilities yet so the production was filmed at a temporary studio at Coppin Hall in Richmond. (The studio was used for a six-month period from 1 July while the Rippon Lea studios were being built. Among the shows made there were variety shows, musicals and the Village Glee Club.)

Nicolette Bernard and Phil Stainton were from oversas. Wolfit was the daughter of Donald Wolfit.

The O.B. Unit was used to broadcast the production from Coppin Hall.

It was the first hour-long television drama broadcast in Melbourne. Marcia Hart, who was in the cast, had previously appeared in the first hour long television drama broadcast in Chicago (a production of Gaslight)

It aired in Sydney on 15 November 1957.

NAA has a script. Not online. Possibly radio. See here.

Reception

Beverly Dunn later said this was not her most satisfactory performance.