Australian TV Plays: Sixty Point Bold (16 July 1958)

The second 90 minute play made by the ABC. I think the first was The Importance of Being Earnest. It was written and directed by Royston Morley.

It deals with the power of the press.

Was this written in Australia?

Premise

The action takes place in a fictional South American country. Newspaper magnate Andre Charvet clashes with the president of the nation, whose democratic government has replaced a dictatorship.

Charvet brings a foreign correspondent called David back to the country to campaign against the President.

Charvet's daughter Maria has a lover, Paul Crevel, who works with revolutionaries.

Cast

Kevin Brennan as Andre Charvet
James Condon as President Ortega de Riverda
Dinah Shearing as Maria Charvet
Bruce Beeby as Paul Crevel, Maria's lover
Harp McGuire as David, a foreign correspondent
Charles Tasman
John Alden.

Production

It was shot in Sydney and aired in Melbourne on 24 September.

It was the third in a series of plays by Royston Morley dealing with a man in political power. (I presume these were plays he had written, not made in Australia - they had included Point of Return and Chance of a Ghost which sounded light.) I haven't been able to discover reference to another production.

I think they were going to show a play by Morley's called The Whip which had screened on the BBC in 1952 starring Eric Portman. He played an MP torn between his conscience and his party. See here and here, It had to be vetted by BBC's head of television to check it was okay - after the fuss of Party Manners see here.

In 1953 he wrote The Guilty Party for British TV about an Attorney General. They may have been th first two plays by Morley. Sixty Point Bold was the third.

Advertising called it "the story of political intrigue, violence and romance in a Latin America state".

In a 2004 interview with Graham Shirley, Alan Burke said

I’m trying to remember the first Australian play I saw on ABC. Well Royston Morley had written quite a lot and he did one of his own plays I remember, so that would be technically an Australian play.
GS He wrote on an Australian subject did he?
AB No it was I think just a universal subject but it was written as far as I know here and therefore would qualify as Australian writing.

The TV Week review though it was a version of the Montessa Affair in Italty.

The NAA have photos. Not online but info is here.

Reception

TV Week called it "almost brilliant but it didn't quite make it... one of the most complex scripts I've ever seen on TV."