Australian TV Plays: The Hobby Horse (16 May 1962)

The Hobby Horse (16 May 1962)

One of the series of six Australian TV plays made by the ABC in 1962. Based on a script by Robert Wales who wrote The Cell - Wales adapted his own stage play.

Premise

Billy Brocknell has arrived at a property in New England owned by a George Connolly to break horses. He is welcomed by people who know of Bill's reputation, including the station hands Scotty Brown, Johnno, Gripper and Curly, along with house girl Sally Simpson, an Aboriginal.

Young stockman Harry Simpson - Sally's younger brother - dreams of following in Billy's footsteps but Bill, now in his early thirties, suspects his days of rough riding are numbered. He agrees to help Harry train for the local rodeo even though he intends to ride in the event himself. He tries to dampen the enthusiasm of the youngster.

Bill finds that Margaret Connolly, wife of the 63 yeard property owner, is his ex-wife who he married 10 years ago before Margaret's rich parents had the marriage annulled (it seems to imply she might have miscarried(. Margaret married Connolly three years ago. Margaret and Billy sleep together. Billy instantly regrets it. Then Billy sleeps with Sally.

Billy takes part in the rodeo. He does badly, is injured, and Harry wins, but Harry thinks Billy lost deliberately. This is not true - Johnno reveals that Billy's form as a rough rider has declined in recent years.

Billy's injury gets worse. Margaret wants to leave with him but he refuses. tells Margaret to give all his pay to Harry. Then Billy dies of his injuries in Margaret's arms.

Cast

Wynn Roberts as Billy Brocknell, a champion roughrider and horsebreaker in his mid to late 30s
Lynn Flanagan as Margaret ("Maggie") Connolly, a grazier's wife in her early 30s, an ex-showring rider- her unseen husband is 63
Ken Goodlet as Johnny Carey, station hand in his mid forties
Douglas Kelly as Scotty Brown, general homestead roustabout, mid 50s - racist towards "coloureds"
Neil Curnow as Gripper McLean, a young station hand
Bill Bennett as Curley, Gripper's mate
Rose Du Clos as Mary Carey, Johnny's wife
Carole Potter as Ann O'Keefe, girl in her twenties staying with the Careys - a super small almost pointless role (put in for Potter?) - she sings some songs
David Mitchell as Harry Simpson, Aboriginal youth employed on bush work
Beris Sullivan as Sally Simpson, Harry's older sister
Ron Pinnell as Midnight (not an Aboriginal actor I don't think)

Robert Wales

It was written by Robert Wales, a Scotsman who grew up in towns until 1952. He moved to Australia and lived in the bush - since 1953 he worked his own property near Walcha in the New England district. He had some experience rough riding, cutting out his own half wild cattle in tough country.

He later wrote The Cell.

Wales ran a factory in Sydney. Moved to the country kind of on a whim, looking for adventure. It was also a time when wool prices were high. It was hard going.

He didn't have a writers background. What happened was one time he was listening to a radio play on the ABC with a friend. They'd had a few drinks. Wales said I can do better than that. His friend bet him ten pounds he couldn't. The friend later on told Wales about a writing competition held by the University of New England for poetry, a short play and a short story. Wales decided to enter the short atory and short play division. He wrote before breakfast and at night and got a lady in Walcha to type them up/ Wales wound up coming second place in the play competiton for his one act play White Bird Passing and third place in the short story competiton for his story The Searchers. He did it for the money. The prize money was a few quineas but he also got his ten pounds for a mate. (His background is also here.)

Wales started looking at other writing competitions. There were a few around at the time. He entered one in Far West Queensland - submitting his play Wings on the Morning - and came second, losing to Marian Dreyer. He also entered one in Coffs Harbour, held for the Centennary of the. town - this was The Hobby Horse. Wales won this one. Leslie Rees was one of the judges.

Wales then wrote a play The Grotto not for competition - ut was set in Wooloomooloo where Wales once ran a factory.

Reees wrote to Wales saying the ABC wanted to adapt The Hobby Horse and Wings on the Morning as radio plays. This income was helpful. Indeded, Wales suffered with a drop in wool prices and from the credit squeeze and decided to sell his farm and go into writing. They famil moved to Sydney. Wales kept writing but had to maintain a day job - being a labourer, then got a jog shifting scenery at the ABC, then a job making trailers for presenations. His daughter (this information is from Angela Wales' memoir) said Wales became a kind of bohemian and started to sleep around. He wrote TheCell and eventually met a woman at the ABC, Claire Richardson. They fell in love - Wales separated from his wife in 1968 and divorced in 1969. He and is wife left for London. His old wife was stuck at home in Sydney with the kids. He never saw two of his sons again. Angela did see her father in London in 1970 - he's had another kid.

Angela went to work the Trust, the Australian playwrights conference and the Australian writers guild. A first marriage produced a son. Her second marriage was to American screenwriter George Kirgo. She moved with him to LA and worked at the Writers Guild foundation. Angela's mother became CEO of st Margaret’s hospital.

Robert Wales died of lung cancer in 1994 in London, survived by wife Claire and their son Duncan. Angela thought the lung ailment may have been part of his poor health that prompted him to move to the country in the first place.

The Hobby Horse stage play

Hobby Horse was originally a stage play. Wales said he got the idea from two professional horsebreakers he met at a pub in Walcha.He said "they were professional horsebreakers and over many bears told me all about the game".

The play won first prize at the Grafton Festival awarded by the Playwrights Advisory Board. Also won the Coffs Harbour play competition (possibly same event).

There was a play reading of it at the Independent Theatre in Sydney in May 1962.

Production

The production was announced in March 1962. Wales adapted his own play. It was shot in Melbourne directed by Will Sterling.

Other productions

A radio adaptation aired on the ABC in August 1962. Richard Lane did it. Margot Lee and Owen Weingott starred. My thoughts on the radio script - I have read this - Harry and Sally are Aboriginal - is this in the TV production? It's a good solid drama. Quite adult - Billy sleeps with Sally and Margaret. It's a problem we never see Margaret's husband I feel. But it does deal with the sex life of the outback and Aboriginal prejudice. There's even a scene between just two Aboriginal characters, Sally and Harry - though they do talk abot Billy.

Wales did a 1979 BBC radio play Morning Story about horses - any relation?

Reception

The TV critic for The Bulletin, good old Frank Roberts, said:

The sets were a medium of horrible nostalgia to me. I could almost smell the harness and the earth around the water tank. But the cameras dulled the effect of all this, and in one supposedly tense scene between a horse- breaker and his former Mrs, now married to a station owner, the idea of shooting him close up and then taking in the entire set for her lines diminished things further. Unfortunately, too, it was drama with- out cause. The horsebreaker came to the station and found his former wife in residence. He had the alternative of leaving immediately, like any sensible man, or grabbing her back. Instead, he was given the task of appearing to want her and yet not want her, to be going to leave and yet not leaving. An hour of soul-searching by people who did not know their own minds for more than one mimite at a time. It could have been cabled, with apologies to Sidney Kingsley, “They Knew Not What They Wanted”.

Frank Thring in TV Week called it "a shallow piece of pseudo-symbolic outbackery" with a "nebulous plot" with "a collection of completely superfluous characters and a lot of sentimental mish mash about hobby horses" adding "ever since Chekov (Seagulls and Cherry Orchards), Williams (Glass Menageries and Streetcars) and particularly Lawler (Seventeen Dolls) every Australian writer seems obsessed by the erroneous idea that to make his play a success he has only to hang it on the peg of some vaguely romantic or nostalgic symbol, conveniently forgetting the fact the aforementioned authors primarily created a set of characters and a dramatic situation and allowed the symbols to fall where they may. Between the sogginess of the consrutction and the hesitancy of Mr William Sterling's production is is small wonder that the actors were completely at a loss as to who they were playing. Two in particularly, a sort of minstrel team called Sally and Harry, completely confounded me... Bernice Sullivan played Sally like a touring company Tondelayo whilst David Mitchell undertook to play Harry with a make up that suggeste Gielgud as Othello and an interpretation which left no doubt that he had just wandered in from a conveniently nearby production of Of Mice and Men... Poor Wynn Roberts gangled about looking suitably tortured... In the middle of this Marx Brothers assortment of dramaturgical oddities Miss Lynn Flanagan floated about like a displaced iceberg... So far in this high-minded attempt to encourage Australian drama there has not been one play presented that will ever see the light of day again. Why then is the Union Repertory Theatre playing to packed houses in Russell St with The Doll, The One Day of the Year and The Shifting Heart, in what is an unprecedented season for Australian Playwrights? Has the ABC commissioned Lawler, Seymour and Beynon to write plays for television? And if not, why not? Who chooses these mediocrities Wednesday by Wednesday? These questions have been asked before... will somebody please answer them?"

The Sydney Morning Herald called it a "sometimes powerful play". See here.