Australian TV Plays: The Emperor Jones (15 June 1960)

The classic Eugene O'Neill play. I assume this was done to give Joe Jenkins a starring role. It was the first lead performance from a POC actor in Australian TV.

Plot

Jones runs an "empire" on an island in the West Indies. The action begins when Smithers, a trader, arrives on the island to discover Jones' subjects have revolted and Jones has to escape.

Jones is terrified of the pursuing natives. He has nightmares where he meets Jeff, the man he killed in a razor fight, and another man he killed with a shovel. The nightmare then becomes a medium of regression. Jones goes beyond his own past until he finds himself on the first slave ship from Africa.

Cast

Joe Jenkins as the Emperor Jones/the witchdoctor/porter
Moray Powell as Smithers
Nellie Small
Albert le Guerre

Original play

A classic. First produced in 1920 and was a big hit, establishing O'Neill as a popular playwright. Charles Gilpin played the role.

The full text is here.

Other adaptations

The play was filmed in 1933 with Paul Robeson.

It was a rare showy role for a black actor. For a long time it and Othello were the two accepted classics that black actors could be in, in the Western world.

Here's a 1945 American radio version.

It was adapted a number of times for British TV. Once in 1938 with Robert Adams, once in 1953 with Gordon Heath, once in 1958 directed by Ted Kotcheff. I feel the ABC would have been influenced by that 1958 version.

It was done for BBC radio in 1937, 1944 and 1952.

Ossie Davis starred in a 1953 American TV version.

The play was also adapted for Australian radio on the ABC in 1960.

Production

Joe Jenkins was a rare black actor who played lead roles in Australia at the time; he had also appeared in The Square Ring, Cafe Continental, and The BP Super Show, and would go on to appear in The Two Headed Eagle and The End Begins on Australian TV.

The production was filmed in Sydney at the ABC's studios at Gore Hill. It was directed by Alan Burke, who also adapted Eugene O'Neil's play. Rights cost 200 pounds.

Burke later recalled in an interview with Graham Shirley in 2004.Burke first used Jones in the TV production of the opera Rita.

A tiny little opera, three singers and a mute, the mute was a servant,.. The Catherine Dunham (sp?) Dancers had been in Australia and as had the Alywn Ayley (sp?) Companies, two black companies, but the Dunham’s had left behind Joe Jenkin, a big lovely dancer about 6 foot 3 and built like a truck. I’d met him somehow and when the time came to cast this mute I wondered if Joe would be a good idea. Well luckily he was because he was musical, he danced and knew this and that and he virtually mimed to the music when he was on camera.

On the play itself he told Graham that:

GS How could you apply standards of excellence and ideas that you were getting, especially from English TV productions to what you were doing?
AB You just took a deep breath and said ‘nothing’s impossible’. I was given The Emperor Jones to do, my God what do you do with The Emperor Jones? We had a totally non realistic set which was just sort of little stakes and for all the ghosties and beasties we had a dozen extras in black face who stood behind these things. We canted the camera, there’s a shipboard scene, and we just rolled the camera left and right, it had never been done. I didn’t see why it shouldn’t be but you know, the marvellous innocence of not having a long time in the business...

When asked by Graham about the play Burke said

I’d spoken to Joe Jenkins, a wonderful black dancer and Paul O’Loughlin (sp?) who was still then Head of Drama Acting, said ‘what about you and your black friend. Why don’t you do an Emperor Jones? And I thought ‘oh God I don’t know whether he can act’. So I called him in and we had a bit of a read together and he acted brilliantly. So I thought ‘okay’. And we look a deep breath and we did Emperor Jones. I did the adaptation and I cut it down to about 45 minutes. It probably would have sustained longer but I was a bit scared of it, I wasn’t quite sure that it would hold and again talking of non realistic, there are all sorts of flights of fancy that he goes through. And there’s a scene on a boat I can’t remember where it comes in the sequence and he speaks of the white crocodile who is his nemesis, like Moby Dick and so we used a few devices in the thing. For the ship we used the canted cameras except that we canted on vision this time. We had a crowd of extras who did nothing except they were in black face and they loomed and made sort of malevolent noises behind what would have been trees in a naturalistic design, but they were just strips of timber splashed with black and white paint. And for the white crocodile, got some film from a marvellous man who ran the reptile park ...[Eric Worrel] some close up material of a crocodile and had it printed in reverse.
GS So in other words you ran the negative as negative, flipped it over which you can do on television anyway.
AB Yes. Well that’s what we used and Joe was very good. I was very pleased with him and I don’t know whether it made a great impact. I didn’t ever hear much back in the way of reaction to it but it was certainly worth doing.
GS You said you did the canted camera on vision.
AB Yes. And the other times I’ve used it has been you take a shot with the camera canted. This one we did it in vision, going back and forth canting left canting right, it gave us the motion of the ship.
GS So you were able to do this as an optical effect within the TV system itself as opposed to tilting the camera.
AB Oh yes. You can tilt the lens apparently. I know nothing of that. I was inclined not to get involved in technicalities. I would say ‘what I would like is this, can you give it to me’ and they would, almost without exception. It’s like driving a car. I wouldn’t know how to fix an engine if I tried and that has nothing to do with driving a car. Anyway right that’s Emperor Jones.

Except for the opening scene between Jones and Smithers, and some scenes at the end involving some natives, the action was carried by Jones alone.

Jenkins told TV Times that, "This is a role that really gets you and you live every moment of the terror of the man and the jungle. Some of those jungle films were filmed on the coldest nights we experienced but I wasn't cold, the intensity of the acting calls for such concentration."

Joe Jenkins doubles in a number of scenes. He plays a witch doctor opposite himself which Burke achieved by filming the roles separately and later joining the film.

Reception

The TV critic for the Sydney Morning Herald thought "loyalty to stage play conventions, in a medium where they do not belong, restrained the director from seeking the filmic fluency asked for in the quick succession of sketched scenes" in which Jenkins gave a "fine performance."

TV Week called it a "tough one", admiring Jones but thought the production was hurt by the "overacting" of Moray Powell and that Burke's production "seemed undecided between the realistic and the symbolic. The soundtrack, too, was bad."

A viewer wrote in to TV Times saying it played without sound for a minute and called the sound abysmal. The viewer claimed the acting was good but felt the play unsuitable for television.