Outpost (18 Nov 1959)

 The first Australian play to be broadcast in the USA.

An original for TV by John Osborne. And an Australian story. The first original Australian TV play produced by the ABC? Need to check.

Plot

In September 1943, during World War Two, four Australian soldiers are stranded in an isolated army outpost in New Guinea, waiting for an attack on Buna. The soldiers include Sergeant 'Happy' Adams, Signaler 'Tiger' Lyons and Corporal 'Mitch' Mitchell. Tension happens when McCudden, an arrogant NCO from the airforce, arrives to help hem build an airstrip, bringing mail for Happy.

McCudden is murdered and the soldiers fear he may have been killed by the locals or by a Japanese patrol. They worry the Japanese will attack. Mitch discovers the radio has been sabotaged.

Eventually Mitch figures out that it is unlikely McCudden was killed by the Japanese or the locals - he was murdered by one of the group.

Mitch reads in a newspaper that Happy's wife has died in Brisbane. Happy reveals his wife had been having an affair with another man back and when relatives found out and threatened to write to Happy, she committed suicide.  Happy says when McCudden showed photographs of his girlfriends, they included Happy's wife. The sergeant confronted McCudden about it - McCudden drew a bayonet on him so Happy killed the man, then sabotaged he radio why he thought about how to handle it.

The men report than McCudden was killed by a Japanese patrol. However Happy insists on confessing to the crime.

Cast

• Dennis Miller as Corporal "Mitch" Mitchell
• Sydney Conabere as Signaller "Tiger" Lyons
• John Morgan as Signaller "Baron" Peterswald
• Keith Eden as Sergeant 'Happy' Adams
• Paul Karo as Flight Sgt. Steve McCudden

Production

John Cameron had been a sergeant in the Australian Army Signal Corps during World War Two. He served in New Guinea at Wanagila, where a secret airstrip was being made in preparation for an attack on Japanese-held Buna, 40 miles away.

Cameron was working as a supervisor of facilities at the ABC in Melbourne at the ABC. He had been involved with theatre since his days at university and said he had the story in mind for many years but was prompted to write it when he heard about the shortage of TV scripts and decided to write his own. 

It took him eight weekends over June and July and he submitted it under a pen name, "John Alexander". The identity of the writer surprised the ABC. (Cameron later moved to Sydney to become the ABC's  Director Drama (TV).  He left that position around 1979 and went to head the Arts Council. Eventually he returned to Melbourne and spent his retirement there and died in 2016.) 

He later wrote in his memoirs:

In early Australian television, such single plays as were produced were either adaptations of stage plays or scripts written for overseas television stations. There was concern at the total absence of original Australian writing. To meet this need, Neil Hutchison, the ABC’s Director of Drama established a stable of writers to study the medium and meet its needs. There was an immediate outcry from writers who were not members of the stable, that this was jobs for the boys.

As television expanded, I found that I was living on an island of constantly diminishing dimensions; one after another my sections grew to be independent departments, and were hived off for a life of their own. To some extent this was a welcome easing of responsibility, and I found myself with a bit more time on my hands. In 1959 I decided to have a go at writing for the medium. I chose to write a “who dunnit” based on my war service. My play, called “Outpost”, was set in an isolated location in New Guinea, where a death, initially attributed to enemy action, came to be seen as murder. The sergeant in charge of the outpost had to investigate the circumstances, and, of course, it turned out in the end that he was the murderer.

To spare myself and everyone else embarrassment, I adopted the pseudonym of John Alexander, and sent the script off to the ABC drama department. To my amazed delight, it was accepted and I awaited developments. Some days later I was horrified to read in the press a letter from Neil Hutchison defending his writers’ stable, saying that the only script bought since the creation of the stable was from a totally unknown writer with no connections to the ABC. I had no alternative but to ring Neil an explain that, as he had just bought my play, the unknown writer in question had to be myself. He took it very well, and that is how I came to be the writer of the first original Australian television play. It was produced by Chris Muir and was generally well received. One review was headlined “HOORAY WE’VE HIT THE JACKPOT”, and went on “Last Wednesday was possibly the most significant night in Australian television since television began three years ago. It gave us our first completely successful, completely local drama.” By chance, CBS in America decided to run a world television drama series as a prime time summer replacement and they bought our recording of “Outpost” as the Australian contribution. All in all, it was a spectacular first effort, and I never lived up to it. 

The production was performed "live" in a Melbourne studio, with the exception of a jungle sequence, which was pre-recorded. 

It was the first TV performance for Dennis Miller.  He was from Tasmania and went on to become a leading actor in Melbourne.

The director was Chris Muir. Muir said he liked the play's "economy of dialogue and mounting tension."

Kunai grass was imported for use in the show. Bananas were bought especially from Queensland^.

 The Australian Army provided firearms including Owen guns, Tommy guns and rifles.

Crew

Technical supervisor - Gavan Thomson.  Designer - Cas Van Puffelen. Producer - Christoper Muir.

Broadcast

It showed live in Melbourne on 8 November 1959.

It was taped and shown in Sydney on 9 December 1959 and Brisbane on 15 December 1959.

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald said:

The author makes no better than commonplace use of the clever idea... playwright and play could have been helped by clevered hints of the general heat malaise, crawling fear and edginess of jungle fighting from producer Christopher Muir, whose imagination never rose above neat routine. The cast performed creditably, powerful or rich playing being excluded for the most part by flat, everyday commonplace of the dialogue... Paul Karo's portrait... was much too overdone to be convincing, but there was much conviction in the performance of young and intense Denis Miller and sufficient conviction in the work of his more experienced co players.

TV Times wrote a piece on it calling "Hooray! We've hit the jackpot" describing it as "our first completely successful, completely local drama". 

Listener In thought it "lost dramatic grip" in the second half.

Cameron went on to write the television plays The Teeth of the Wind (1962), Otherwise Engaged (1965), and The Quiet Season (1965). He became head of drama at the ABC.

Jonathan Bollen did an academic article which included discussion of the play. It said:

At the time that Outpost was broadcast in December 1959, the ABC had been producing television plays for just on three years. In doing so, it drew to a large extent upon the genres and skills of local theatrical production. It is indicative of the derivation of Outpost from theatrical genres of playwriting that the plot is entirely set in New Guinea - for playwrights of the time readily observed the classical unities of time, place and action.

(Reference Remembering masculinities in the theatre of war Bollen, Jonathan. Australasian Drama Studies; St. Lucia Iss. 46,  (Apr 2005): 3-0_3. )

Ratings

It got a 14% share in Sydney.

US Screenings

The play was bought for screening in the US by CBS in 1961 along with another Australian play, The Scent of Fear.  (At least that's what reports said but I think I was The Astronauts).

The two dramas screened on June 18, 1961 in several key markets including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago and St Louis. 

The New York Times wrote that "unfortunately Mr Cameron telegraphed his resolution early in the drama and also greviously overtaxed the element of coincidence. But the settings and direction were first rate."

A 1966 article said the ABC had success selling its operas and documentaries but not so much its dramas except for Outpost and The Stranger.

The Age 12 Nov 1959 p 35

SMH 7 Dec 1959 p 7

The Age 1 June 1961 p 12

The Age Supplement 10 Sept 1959 p 5

The Age Supplement 22 Oct 1959 p 5

The Age Supplement 12 Nov 1959 p 1

The Age 18 Nov 1959 p 5

SMH 17 Dec 1959 p 14

SMH 10 Dec 1959 p 17

New York Times 26 June 1961 p 51

SMH 11 June 1961 p 69

Los Angeles Citizen News 24 June 1961 p 12

Philadelphia Inquirer 2 July 1961 p 129

Marking Masculinites Book

TV Times Qld 10 Dec 1959 p 10

Dennis Miller

Auntie's Jubilee

The Age 1 Dec 1966

TV Times 27 Nov 1959

 

 

Audio interview with John Cameron which discusses Outpost 29 April 1981:

With the gradual familiarization with televisions problems over a period of time and a gradual solution of their all standard problems, I began to find myself with rather more free time than would otherwise be the case. And when they were complaining as they quite frequently were that there were no scripts for television. It seemed to me that I might have a go at writing well, no good drama scripts, and I thought I might try my hand at it. So I settled down I wrote her a play television play, which I submitted to the ABC and I thought I better use a pseudonym because I didn't seem to me that I want to be using my position in any way and I thought the fact that I was on the house in the staff might be an embarrassment in one way or another. So I submitted the played for the ABC drama department in Sydney under the pseudonym of John Alexander two of my Christian names. And, to my surprise and delight, it struck oil it was accepted. And I was quite tickled with this.

And problem came up a little while later, the ABC about this time, it also been grappling with the problem of the absence of television scripts. And they decided to establish a sort of a little studio, a little group of writers who they're going to train and encouraged to write for television. And this had got a fair bit of criticism in the press from writers who were not in the group.

And Neil Hutchison, who was then the controller of Tilak, Director of television drama, wrote to the papers, pointing out that they shouldn't take this attitude at all, that it didn't mean that other people couldn't get plays accepted. And indeed, the only play that had been accepted, since the scheme of introduced was somebody totally outside the outside the scheme and you know, quite unknown.

And I saw this in the press that Oh, my God, this is embarrassing. So I, I wrote to Neil, and said, Look, I'm embarrassed about this, but I saw your letter in the paper. And I think I want to tell you that if you've only bought one place, since you bought out the you bought mine, because I submitted under John Alexander and you did enough. Anyway, Neil was delighted. He said, No, not at all delighted about that. So it was duly announced, the play was went on, it became John Cameron's play, and it was produced. And with a passage, I didn't realize it at the time. But since then, historians have written it was in fact, the first original Australian play, written for television they had done other Australian plays, Barbara, Vernon's plays, and so on. But these are all been adaptations of stage plays. And this was so the first apparently the first Australian play written for Australian television exclusively, was, in fact mine. It was called outpost. And it also had the other distinction of when the actual Telly recording was sold to CBS and America for inclusion in their a world television series. They had a summer replacement, I think it was, but nonetheless, it went out on American network television. And I wish I could claim that my subsequent efforts at writing and being so successful, but not only to be number one, but to be accepted the first time up and to, to get an American network exposure was in fact, extraordinarily lucky first. I found it was also very salutary experience, watching the actual recording, process, the sitting in on the process and see how it was recorded and watching how our producers, in fact, handle

17:45
playwrights material taught me a lot about writing for television. And the bad what producers do to the player, the writers work, it's very difficult.

And I suppose if you had to summarize it very simply, the problem is that in the early stages, the producer is so concerned with, with broad matters of getting the thing into shape, but he’s not really interested in the finer points that the, the writer may be hoping to realize. And when it gets to the stage where the thing gets to the studio, and it’s more or less at a stage where you can actually see the thing coming together, you raise a question early in the piece, the director, will the producer say no, no, don’t worry about it. I don’t want you do not sing. And I’m going to deal with cameras, it’ll be difficult, quite different sound quite different. Don’t worry, don’t worry. So you sort of go back into your box.

And then you finally wait until you actually get in the studio and you see it come up on the screen. And it’s not at all what you want it and you say you go to the director say, Look, that’s not what they wanted to talk to me. Now, tubers are good camera troubles and the traffic problems and so on. So really, the writer, you write your script, and I think it’s on, it’s on the obligation is on the writer to make damn certain that if he wants to make a point, he makes it very clearly and is not really looking for too much fancy camera work or, you know, subtle nuances. He really needs to write fairly broad and clear. And otherwise, you’ll find these to be pretty disenchanted with the result.

Anyway, I wrote, some I’ve forgotten I think I wrote some four or five plays, I think, for the ABC. And they had they were moderately successful, I suppose they weren’t in fact, any literary masterpieces, I would have no claims to be a great writer. But I was trying to write reasonable entertaining, entertaining material with a little bit of meat in it. Anyway, that that particular activity of mine had quite a significant impact on my career with the ABC. I think up until I’d started writing I was generally seen and accepted as being primarily a servicing administrative type. And this I think, although I hadn’t really meant it to indicate that was some kind of token of my interest in program material and programs as such, encouraged by that little bit later on when the irritations or sense of frustration because the at the same time as I was I was getting on top of things, television was organizing itself on the Empire which I control was being divided up and various aspects of it were being made independent or put into other areas.

https://www.filmink.com.au/forgotten-australian-tv-plays-outpost/

Forgotten Australian TV Plays: Outpost
by Stephen Vagg
April 16, 2021
Stephen Vagg’s series on forgotten Australian TV plays takes us to 1959, and the wartime drama Outpost – the first Australian play to be shown on US network television.

The most common complaint about early Australian TV was “well, there are no good Australian writers”. This lament/whinge was heard pretty much from the start of, well, television in this country. It was used by the commercial networks to justify why they didn’t make Australian shows. By ABC execs to explain why they preferred foreign scripts. By critics to explain why they were such snobs. During early Australian TV, local writing was the number one whipping boy of the industry, with daylight second.

Looking back at hundreds of contemporary articles, reviews, and official reports to Parliament, the constant, relentless criticism was a sight to behold. It could be patronising (“aw they did their best the poor widdle things”), vicious (“the ABC should refund my licence for showing that”), idiotically unrealistic (“we shouldn’t show any until they are classics”), prudish (“they talked about sex”), Australia-phobic and Anglophilic (“Rex Rienits needs to take lessons from Leslie Thomas”), lazy (Frank Roberts of The Bulletin would frequently review shows of which he’d only seen part) and show astonishingly little insight into the nature of the industry, or how writing worked, or what people wanted to see.

There were an eerie number of parallels to the arguments against diversity that dominated the scene prior to the late 2010s (“well, of course we’d love to put some on but the fact is none are good enough…”, “to put on something not ready would be patronising”). The prejudice against Australian writing ranged from unconscious discrimination to outright hostility, and it didn’t really let up until the late 1960s, when the success of shows like Homicide, The Mavis Bramston Show and Bellbird made the industry realise that no matter what bigots thought, Australian audiences actually really liked seeing their culture reflected on screen.

Until then, to put on Australian drama took a genuine act of will. Which is why it took the ABC almost four years to broadcast an original Australian TV play.

This was Outpost.

It wasn’t the first Australian script – there had been several adaptations of local plays (The Sub Editor’s Room, The Passionate Pianist, The Multi Coloured Umbrella, an Australian-set adaptation of Enemy of the People), and scripts set overseas written by foreign writers who happened to be temporarily in the country (Chance of a Ghost, the Killer in Close Up series) – but this was the first written expressly for the screen.

It came about because the ABC were beginning to feel awkward about having such a low proportion of local scripts (that feeling of awkwardness would ebb and flow over the first decade of Australian TV) and put out a call for some originals. The one they liked best was Outpost, a tale of murder on an isolated Australian army base in World War Two New Guinea, written by someone called John Alexander.

The ABC were delighted. Here was a fresh script by an unknown writer – someone not part of the ABC gang. “John Alexander” then had to admit he was actually John Cameron, a manager of facilities at the ABC studios in Ripponlea Melbourne. Cameron wasn’t a writer, but he loved theatre and had some experience as an actor (he was friends with Sumner Locke Eliot), so he decided to write a script based on his war experiences and submitted it under a pseudonym. The ABC took his deception with (relative) good humour and decided to produce it under the direction of Chris Muir.

‘Outpost is set in 1943. The plot takes place over two days and concerns four Australian soldiers who are guarding a top-secret base deep in the New Guinea jungle which is to be used in an upcoming attack on Buna. They are visited by an air force sergeant who manages to offend every one of the group within the space of an hour… then winds up murdered. The survivors have to figure out who did it – a local tribesman? some Japanese? one of their own? – while at the same time fearing a Japanese attack.

It’s a taut, simple script, based on Cameron’s experience at a secret base near Tufi, on the north coast of New Guinea (His memoirs are available here.) The acting is excellent – the cast is comprised of Dennis Miller (who you will recognise from millions of cop shows… it’s a jolt to see him as a shirtless young man), Syd Conabere, John Morgan, Keith Eden and Paul Karo. They all play distinct types: Miller a young, Shakespeare-reading radio operator; Morgan a slightly pompous, older cultured German Australian; Karo a lecherous, cocky, “Errol Flynn” Air Force type; Eden a sweaty, tormented sergeant; Conabere an easy-going old timer who is roused to anger when someone sleeps in his self-made bed.

It’s very obviously filmed in a studio, but Chris Muir’s handling is generally very good, and the whole production benefits from tremendous verisimilitude: the slang, the attitudes of the characters, the constant sarcasm and banter, the furniture, the way soldiers hold their cigarettes and shake hands after a shouting match, the sledges about Melbourne and Sydney, the radio, even the imported bananas; it all feels so real. I am guessing it was real – Cameron was a veteran, and he wouldn’t have been the only one on the production, not in 1959, and they presumably kept things honest.

As an Australian, it is wonderful to hear references to Blamey, MacArthur, Chermside in Brisbane, and Melbourne, and Sydney and slang. Less pleasant are the racial slurs, however accurate to the time and the place: the word “b**ng” is constantly used to describe the unseen locals – like, fourteen times – and the Japanese are described as “N**s”. (The script does make the point that the four main soldiers are more respectful of the locals than the visiting Air Force sergeant who wants to turn them into servants… but they all like using that “b” word.)

Outpost was broadcast live in Melbourne on 18 November 1959, recorded, then shown in other cities at a later date. Reviews were generally positive, though there were inevitable whines. The Sydney Morning Herald TV critic could not resist taking a swipe at the script saying “the author makes no better than commonplace use of the clever idea” which simply was not true.

The American TV network CBS decided to run a world television drama series and they bought Outpost from the ABC (along with another Melbourne shot-play, The Astronauts). It was shown in 1961, making it, I believe, the first Australian drama broadcast on US network television. The New York Times saying the writer “telegraphed his resolution early in the drama and also grievously overtaxed the element of coincidence. But the settings and direction were first rate.”

The success of Outpost did not lead to a deluge of Australian product but there was a mini boom of local stories during the years of 1959-61: adaptations of stage plays like Ned Kelly and The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day, original works like Pardon Miss Westcott and Reflections in Dark Glasses. The hatred of Australian writing proved too strong for it to last and there was a sharp fall off during 1962-64… but then came Homicide, Bramston and another revival, and quotas led to the seventies Aussie drama boom.

Cameron later wrote in his memoirs that Outpost was a spectacular first effort, and I never lived up to it.” He tried…. his later writing credits included Teeth of the Wind (about an African nation achieving independence), The Quiet Season (a domestic drama) and Otherwise Engaged (a comedy about a man who basically kidnaps his family and forces them to live on a tropical island). He never gave up his day job, however, which may have been the right move in the long run, both for him and Australia; he became a director of drama at the ABC, during a golden period for drama on that network. Still, it’s a shame Cameron didn’t write more (or that his writing wasn’t produced more): there were many periods in his life that cried out for on screen dramatisation (eg post war Sydney theatre at the Independent, war service in Borneo and Milne Bay).

At least he did Outpost, the first original Australian TV play, the first Australian drama to screen on US television, a rare TV glimpse of the Australian war in New Guinea. It’s a fine play, an important play, a play that should be better known.

NAA Neil Hutchison

NAA Neil Hutchison

NAA Neil Hutchison

NAA Neil Hutch

NAA Neil Hutch

NAA Neil Hutch