Australian TV Plays: The Music Upstairs (3 Oct 1962)

The Music Upstairs (3 Oct 1962)

Script from Michael Noonan, one of the most successful Australian writers of the 1960s. 45 mins.

Premise

Three doctors, Joe, Ruth and Tom, have just graduated medical school. When the play starts they park a car having just hit a pedestrian on the way to celebrate. Joe wants to go back but Tom insists they act normal and go to the pub to celebrate as planned.

They arrive at the Star and Garter, run by Charley Gorman, with Higgins another customer. While at the pub, the pedestrian is discovered by the police.

At the bed sit shared by Joe and Tom it is revealed that Joe drove the car.Joe, who comes from a poor background, wants to confess, but Tom, who is from a wealthy family, is indifferent. Ruth, Tom's girlfriend, supports Tom.

The house keeper KittyHall tells them a man has been hit by a car and needs help. Tom and Joe run down and inspect the man. A police officer arrives. Joe almost confesses but ultimately decides not to.

Ruth offers to confess to being the driver, saying she does not want to be a doctor. Ruth reveals she called the hospital and the pedestrian has died from his injuries.

Trevor, a fellow med student, wants to party. Higgins reveals himself to Tom and Joe and says he witnessed the accident. Tom decides to give himself up.

Cast

Felicity Young as Ruth Cummings
Edward Brayshaw as Tom Hartley
Jeffrey Hodgson as Joe Polson
Michael Duffield
Kenneth Goodlet
Barbara Brandon
Roland Redshaw
Madeleine Howell
Donald Crosby
Bill Bennett
Ron Grainger
William Lloyd

Production

Michael Noonan (1921-2000) was an Australian writer who had emigrated to the UK and was having a lot of success. A list of his papers is here. He recently had a lot of success with The Flying Doctors series and co-created Whiplash TV TV series.

The complete script is at the NAA - plus an extract for the script used in a 1962 producing seminar.

Noonan told Albert Moran in an oral history that it and his other Australian TV play were commissioned by Philip Mann.

My thoughts on the play. It's an inherently tense situation dragged out the wrong way. It needed another twist or two. The blackmail happens too late and is too easily revolved. Ruth needed to be bad.

It was shot in Melbourne, at Studio 31, at the ABC's facilities in Ripponlea. Rehearsal took place at Silas Church Hall in Albert St starting 19 September. They would do dress and camera rehearsal on 2 and 3 October.

Star Felicity Young was married to Australian test batsman George Thoms. He played one test and was a gynecologist.

William Sterling said "the play is a hard hitting with lots of emphasis on suspense... jazzy beat music provides background."

Reception

TV Times called it "a rather dreary, drawn out 45 minutes".

LITV called it a "slow, heavy melodrama".

The Bulletin TV critic, Frank Roberts, referred to a recent request in parliament by Bill Hayden to ensure legislative protection for Australian actors and writers. Roberts said "The lot engaged in The Music Upstairs deserve it, somewhere south of Macquarie Island, pulling sleds. I stood it for 30 minutes, creating some kind of endurance record, and then switched to The Untouchables."

This review prompted a letter of criticism from Ted Willis, the British writer responsible for Dixon of Dock Green among many others.

I think it's absolutely shocking Roberts was allowed to write a review after watching 30 minutes.

Roberts full piece is below:

The bulletin.Vol. 85 No. 4318 (17 Nov 1962)

OUT OF TUNE By FRANK ROBERTS

After 10 minutes of a television drama called “The Music Up stairs”, I wondered whether Mr Hayden, MHR for Oxley, Qld, had seen this one. Last week he was asking for legislation “to ensure Australian actors and writers more permanent work.” The lot engaged in ”The Music Upstairs” deserve it, somewhere south of Macquarie Island, pulling sleds. I stood it for 30 minutes, creating some kind of endurance record, and then switched to ”1 he Untouchables,” probably included in Mr Hayden’s blanket condemnation of “cheap, razzle dazzle entertainment from overseas.”

“The Music Upstairs,” script by Michael Noonan, produced by William Sterling in Melbourne for the ABC, con cerned three newly graduated doctors named Joe, Tom and Ruth, and the AMA should sue for defamation. These were shown standing around a car with a broken headlamp. They had hit a man and run. After some queasy debate on the rights or wrongs of their action they went into a pub, where they were going to hold a graduation party, and told one another their life stories, revealing some weird motivations for not reporting the accident, and a readiness to believe there had not been one. Then an old lady rushed in and said there was a man lying in a garden up the road. He needed a doctor. The scene shifted to an old gent lying groaning and writhing. A detective arrived, hotly pursued by a Melbourne ambulance with a par ticularly tinny bell. I’ve seen more realism at a Christmas panto.

It was trash, and without even the virtue of being sincere trash, as some new writers’ efforts are. Unfortunately this is what well-mean ing but misguided people like Mr Hayden would foist on viewers. Mr H. wants a greater proportion of programmes from Australian sources. Because imported films show sex, sadism and violence, young Australians are “undergoing a training in detrimental behaviour.”

If anyone believes that “pro grammes from Australian sources” would provide something very different, he never listened to radio in its heyday. Australian writers and actors should have had it made in radio. There were very few imported programmes, apart from BBC variety. Most of the “dramas” were written and acted by Australians, and with rare exceptions they were as Australian as the Bronx. The production companies ground out an endless chain of “series” with American heroes, because these were saleable commodities in New Zealand, Africa, Canada, the Orient and some times the U.S.A. They had the standard measure of violence and implied sex. They gave employment to a small number of writers with mass production talents, including Michael Noonan, and a small coterie of actors. But that was the only benefit any Australians had from them, and the collusive ban on American transcriptions prevented radio’s listeners hearing the best plays and variety shows. They had to accept third-rate work, and so will Australian viewers on present trends. Have you seen daytime television lately?

The sheer innocence of the propagandists is visible in the appointment of a Parliamentary committee to find “ways of encouraging Australian television production,” and its first action, a request for advice from the television producers. That is rather like asking a tiger the way to its stomach. We are left to wonder why some of the democrats in Parliament have no faith in the selective intelligence of the people. If they want to help Australian television production, they should see that it has strong competition from the best overseas scripts, film and tape, even if it means subsidising quality imports.

They should not seek to repeat the closed shop for drama and variety that existed during radio’s first 25 years. That did Australian talent much harm by leaving it in a mirror-lined vacuum where it sat convinced it was the best in the world.

In that 25 years radio produced no visibly talented writers, it got its best comedians from vaudeville, and its few competent actors were heard playing themselves ad nauseam. During the same period, with no suggestion that imports of books or stories should be stopped to give the locals full opportunity, the nation managed to produce several writers good enough to achieve world-wide publica tion. These are facts and they should speak for themselves. As a viewer, I seek protection from unrelieved mediocrity and the people who want to smother me with it in the name of sweet patriotism.

The response from Ted Willis:

OUT OF TUNE Sir, May I, as a visitor from London, make a few comments on the article by Frank Roberts in your issue of No vember 17.

I did net see Michael Noon an’s play “The Music Upstairs” and cannot therefore comment on its quality. But it did seem to me to be a little illogical and unfair that he should use his dislike of this play as a stick with which to attack those Australians who argue in favor of a firm “quota” of Australian material on TV.

So Frank Roberts didn’t like the play. Fair enough. But supposing he had liked it? What would have become of his argument? Would he then have argued for more? No, one play doesn’t make an answer or an argument. What I found really astonishing was his suggestion that Australian writers would provide a diet of “unrelieved mediocrity”.

From what I have seen, Australians seem to be able to do most things as well as any other people, and some things better. Why it should be different in the field of writing baffles me. There are a dozen or more Australian writers resident in the UK, who are among the top creative workers in TV and film. They went there because the opportunities to work in TV in their own country were too limited. Some of them, like Peter Yeldham, Bruce Stewart, yes, and Michael Noonan have proved that their talents are not simply geared to “mass production”, and have created much fine work for TV, film, and theatre.

I cannot believe that you don’t have the writers: but I do know that they don’t have the opportunities. Of course, Frank Roberts is absolutely right to oppose the idea of a closed shop for drama and variety; this would be disastrous. But the complaint, surely, is that Australian writers are hardly ever allowed in their own store and it seems to me to be pretty valid. You need more scenes like “Jonah’’, more plays like the “Music Upstairs” and not less. You won’t get winners every time. But unless you speculate, you won’t accumulate. TED WILLIS (Chairman, British Screenwriters’ Guild) Sydney.