Australian TV Plays: Little South of Heaven (19 April 1961)

An Australian play. The only credit to my knowledge to Ruth Park and D'arcy Niland - this was based on a radio play.

Premise

Set in Sydney. An Italian widow who has moved to Australia plans a marriage for her son Primo to an Italian, Serena, despite his affections for an Australian, Ruby.

However he sends Serena the photo of Primo's more handsome cousin Franki.

Cast

Lyndall Barbour as Mama Chiapetta
Owen Weingott as Primo
Henry Gilbert as Father Felix
Delore Whiteman as Ruby
Ben Gabriel as Eddy, Ruby's brother
Anthony Wickert as Franki
Victoria Anoux as Serena
Alma Butterfield as Mrs Stringer, the housekeeper

Original radio play

It was based on a radio play by Ruth Park and D'Darcy Niland that had been performed in Australia in 1958. This version starred John Meillon and June Salter, then married. The Age praised its "clever dialogue and well judged dramatic situations".

In 1958 the play was entered in the Italia Prize, an international radio and TV competition. The ABC entered it along with another radio play, Harney's War. It was the first time Australia entered in this competition. Seventeen national broadcasting companies were part of this.

Other adaptations

In February 1959 Neil Hutchinson announced the play had been sold to the BBC. A version aired on the BBC in 1960.

The play aired again in Australia on radio in 1963.

Park and Niland were major figures in Australian literature.

Production

The show was shot in Sydney. Alan Burke directed. It was the first TV appearance for Victoria Anoux, and the first straight role for Dolore Whiteman.

A copy of the script is at the National Archives of Australia.

Alan Burke told Graham Shirley in 2004 that he was:

Again looking like mad for an Australian play to follow The Slaughter of St Theresa’s Day. This was a radio play and I liked the feel of it very much. It was the old story. They knew what they wanted. It was Tristan and Isolde. It was the photograph that wasn’t the real man being sent to the girl in Italy, prospective bride and she comes and she is confronted by the reality and there’s terrible ructions. Nice play, very sweet and Lyndall [Barbour] playing an Italian ‘momma’ which she did very well... She wasn’t used to television but it was standard stuff for her in... Marvellous lady... I’d heard her on radio and was bewitched absolutely... Wonderful, versatile lady. Not used to television and was desperately nervous about it. In fact I remember she fainted one day at rehearsals, she was just frightened. Anyway a good, good lady. And she did the odd thing for me after that.

Desmonde Dowling did the sets, of which there were three main ones: Eddy's flat, Father Felix's study, and Momma's hom.

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald TV critic called it "rather stale fare" as the plot and characters were too predictable, adding that thematically the play "a warm-blooded extension of an Immigration Department pamphlet; bur its mainspring was a device as old as comedy and diplomacy... A neat, visually fluent, but also stodgily predictable, 60 minutes of viewing."

Val Marshall of the same paper thought it was almost as good as The Big Day, "a play that has remained pretty much par for the course for Australian TV drama ever since". She felt "in spite of some miscasting and an occasional spot where action bogged down in words... [it] came off remarkably well."

No Decision

It was commissioned by Australia's ATN-7 in 1959. It was a play about two boxers, both of whom claim to have won a marathon prize fight in 1918, although the referee gave it as 'no decision'.

ATN-7 decided not to produce it. The writers then won in a writing competition in England.

It was filmed for British TV in 1962 with a cast including Leo McKern and John Meillon.

In July 1961 it was announced Park and Niland had earned 1,000 pounds for writing a TV play. This was No Decision. It was rejected by Australian TV programmers. Despite complaints about Australian writing it won the British Associated Television Play Competition.

Alan Burke would later direct Park's Harp in the South for British TV in 1964.

Many fine Australian writers were not exploited by the early Australian TV industry - Jon Cleary, Morris West. Park and Niland would be among them.