Years before the Tom Cruise movie Valkerie Australian TV did a film about the 20 July plot to kill Hitler.
Premise
In World War Two, a group of officers, believing Germany to be losing the war, plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler so they can negotiate peace with the Allies.
Hofacker tells Albrecht he is worried Germany will lose the war; Albrecht thinks that will only happen through treachery. Hofacker ends a romantic relationship with Countess Else.
Hofacker becomes involved in a plot to kill Hitler along with von Stulpnagel and von Kluge. However the plot is unsuccessful.
Albrecht deduces Hofacker's involvement but
tells Else if she sleeps with him Hofacker will be freed. She agrees.
Hofacker turns himself over to Albrecht. He is taken off to be executed.
Cast
- Brian James as Colonel Caiser von Hofacker
- June Brunell as Countess Else von Dietlof, secretary to the Military Governor of France (fictitious character)
- Frank Gatliff as General Otto von Stülpnagel
- Frank Thring as General Karl Albrecht, chief of German Secret Police (composite character)
- Edward Howell as Field-Marshal Günther von Kluge
- Wynn Roberts as General Blumentritt
- Edward Brayshaw as Colonel Linstow
- Dennis Miller as orderly at Normandy Chateau
- John Godfrey, William Griffiths as sentries at Hotel Majestic, Paris
- Christine Calcutt as cleaning woman
- Max Bruch as black marketeer
- Mort Hall and John Frewen as gestapo soldiers
Original play
Saunders Lewis originally wrote the play in Welsh for performance in 1958. It was a commissioned work for the National Eisteddfod of 1958. The play was published before being performed. Apparently it was first performed by an amateur cast, the Arts Council Welsh Company. The title was "Brad".
It was translated into English by Elwyn Jones for the April 1959 British TV version which was on the BBC. In March 1959 the English version aired on radio with a cast including Richard Burton and Emlyn Williams. Sian Phillips was in the radio and TV version.
Saunders Lewis was accused of being a fascist and anti-Semite. See this article here which says, amongst other things, that the play is:
his extraordinary whitewashing of the Wehrmacht , a key ally of Hitler until some elements wanted to forge a separate peace with the ‘west’ as the Soviets pushed towards Berlin and itself up to its neck in the mass murder of the Jews on the Eastern Front though absurdly depicted by Lewis as epigones of ‘civilisation’ in the struggle against ‘Communist Asia’ : an amazing provocation in the home of Aneurin Bevan – he has his seedy proletarian Nazi Albrecht give an alternative analysis of the history of the Deluge. The great inflation in Weimar Germany is there, so is the Crash, the Great Depression, and the rise of Fascism. But Albrecht’s historical overview and self-justification manage to avoid mentioning the Jews at all, somewhat implausibly given he is meant to be the personification of the National Socialist critique and the Jews kind of dominated their world view. This is more than Hamlet without the prince.
My thoughts on the play
I read it in a collection of writings by Lewis called Presenting Saunders Lewis. It was very exciting. This story is hard to stuff up. It tells from the POV of Germany army officers in Paris waiting for the call that the assassination attempt has succeeded. It has fictionalized elements as Lewis admits in his introduction (below).
Other adaptations
George F. Kerr wrote a radio play on this topic which was broadcast on the ABC in 1958. It was about Count von Staffenberg.
It was adapted for British radio in 1959.
Production
In June 1959 Frank Rennie sent Rex Rienits "the television script I have done of Treason". A translation?
The play was produced live in the Melbourne studios of the A.B.C.
Director William Sterling called it "a study in mental conflict rather than a play of action and, therefore, particularly suited to TV close-up treatment."
According to ABC memos Sterling didn't want to make it - Hutchison had to cajole him.
Authentic German decorations for the play, as well as the Graf Spee's flag[, were lent by the Military Collectors' Club, Melbourne.
Scenes which take place in a luxury French hotel at the beginning and end were pre-filmed in a Melbourne hotel.
It was Frank Thring's Australian television play debut.
The NAA has a photo of the production (not online). See here. They call it Act of Treason.
Crew. Designer - John Peters. Technical supervision - Gavan Thomson. Wardrobe - Keith Clarke. Design research - Peter Cook. Producer - William Sterling.
Reception
The Age called it "one of the very few top line dramas yet presented on Australian TV."
The Sunday Sydney Morning Herald said Thring gives "an impressive performance" being "closely matched in honours by the sensitive work" of Howell.
The daily Sydney Morning Herald said the production:
A stylish and forceful account of Saunders Lewis play Treason.” concerning some of the top German officers who plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1944. was given from ABN Channel 2 last night by a mainly Melbourne cast under the impressive direction of William Sterling.
The distinguished performances from ithe four leading actors, all of them with the weight and presence to be expected of characters who conduct great affairs at atime lof destiny. revealed the quality lof the author's writing and dramatic sense in scene after \ccene. but could not conceal the worthlessness of his one | hig lapve into old-fashioned cloak -and-dagger, commonplace. This was the scene where. an Scarpia with — Tosca, the Gestano chief offered to spare the life of the German countess’s lover. in exchange for the customary — favours—an episode which might have seemed less meretricious if actress June Brunell had been able to speak the past at impressively as she looked it.
The four big male roles offered fascinating contrast in temperament and motives. There was Frank Gatliff as the General Stultnagel, possessed of the glowing dignity of the thought that to assassinate Hitler is ta use his beloved Fatherland. There was Brian James as the fanatically idealistic German, cloquent and urgent in rallying others to his vision of a Hitler-free world. There was Edward Howell as Marshal Von Kluge. never prepared ta run a risk of to ‘pive the faintest sign of defection until absolutely sure that ‘the assassination plot cannot misfire. And, finally, in his first television role in Australia, there was Frank Thring, as the atrogant and coolly — sarcastic Gestapo Chief, fanatically loyal as long as that pays off, and then busy with self-interest — when it is clear that loyalty to Hitler is worth nothing.-~
TV Times called it "a very successful effort".
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| SMH 14 Jan 1960 p 8 |
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| The Age Supplement 24 Dec 1959 p 3 |
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| SMH 17 Jan 1960 p 87 |
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| The Age 10 December 1959 p 13 |
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| The Age 10 December 1959 p 18 |
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| SMH 11 Jan 1960 p 12 |
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| SMH 11 Jan 1960 TV Guide p 1 |
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| Review of 1959 British production The Guardian 13 April 1959 p 5 |
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| Introduction by author to play p 2-3 |
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| Introduction of author to play p 1 |
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| TV Times Qld 14 Jan 1960 p 10 |
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| TV Times Qld 14 Jan 1960 p 11 |
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| TV Times 25 Dec 1959 |
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| TV Week |
Forgotten Australian TV Plays: Treason
by Stephen Vagg
December 14, 2021
Stephen Vagg’s series on forgotten Australian television plays looks at a dramatisation of the attempted assassination of Hitler: Treason (1959).
When people talk of the July 20 plot to kill Hitler, I’m guessing most non-history buffs think of the 2008 Tom Cruise film Valkyrie, the actor’s first collaboration with Chris McQuarrie. However, the story has been filmed a bunch of times, notably in the 1950s when the concept of “the Good German” came into vogue for war stories. The Germans themselves made movies like Canaris (1954), Jackboot Mutiny (1955), and The Plot to Assassinate Hitler (1955); Hollywood produced The Desert Fox (1953); and British TV did Treason, based on a play by Saunders Lewis.
Lewis was a Welsh nationalist, author, critic and playwright. He originally wrote Treason in Welsh as a stage play under the title Brad; it was a commissioned work for the 1958 National Eistedfodd at Ebbw Vale. The play was translated into English by Elwyn Jones for performing on BBC radio and television (Richard Burton was in the radio version). You can read an English version of the play via internet archive. I don’t know why Lewis picked such a German story for a Welsh festival, but I guess it was a time of cultural fluidity.
In that spirt, the ABC filmed Treason live in Melbourne on 16 December 1959. They had already broadcast a 1958 radio play (or “feature” rather) about Count von Stauffenberg (aka the guy Tom Cruise played) but that character isn’t seen in Treason. Rather, that version focuses on German officers in France who have organised the plot and are waiting for news about how it’s gone. At first, they hear Hitler has been killed and start high fiving – then it becomes apparent the former painter has survived and they all need to figure out what to do next. Spoilers: it does not end well.
The story is ideal for television dramatisation – there’s a lot of people standing around in rooms talking tensely, a ticking clock, great stakes, we know what happened (or, rather, didn’t) but not how. Lewis was roughly faithful to historical truth but added some fictitious characters, moved some events around and inserted a love story.
The cast includes Brian James (as Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, a leader of the plot), Edward Brayshaw (as Field-Marshal Günther von Kluge) and June Brunnel (the one female in the cast, a fictitious character, Hofacker’s secretary who is in love with him) plus other familiar faces like Wyn Roberts and Edward Brayshaw in blonde hair. The show is stolen by Frank Thring, who plays the Gestapo officer who tracks down the assassins (a composite character of real-life Gestapo officers) and engages in a bit of old school melodrama, telling Brunnell he’ll let Brian James escape if she sleeps with Thring. Cad! That plot is all made up, and feels like it.
This was Thring’s first dramatic performance for Australian television, but he was probably one of the most famous actors in the country at the time, thanks to his appearances in films like The Vikings and Ben Hur – though he only gets fourth billing in Treason. Despite Thring’s international success – which also included turns in El Cid and King of Kings – he would settle in Melbourne at the peak of his career, more of a home-town boy than one would assume, and became a local institution.
Thring is best remembered for his work in theatre, film and mini series, but he also appeared in a number of television plays, which were oddly not even mentioned in Peter Fitzpatrick’s otherwise excellent biography of Thing and his father. They included Light Me a Lucifer (1962) from a script by John (They’re a Weird Mob) O’Grady, with Thring as the devil visiting Sydney; Photo Finish (1965) from a play by Peter Ustinov; The Heat’s On (1967); and Salome (1968). Interestingly, the ABC filmed a number of plays staged at Thring’s Arrow Theatre in Melbourne in the 1950s, including Salome, Venus Observed, The Square Ring, A Phoenix Too Frequent, The Importance of Being Earnest, Othello, Volpone, and Rope (they also shot a number of plays that Thring had performed on stage elsewhere such as Black Chiffon and Moby Dick Rehearsed)… I think Thring was in tune with ABC taste.
Thring is everything you want in a Nazi villain in Treason – intense, shrewd, lecherous, smart. He doesn’t overplay, he adjusts for the camera, he has charisma. It’s very good work. Brian James is also excellent.
The ABC had a fondness for making TV plays about historical events: they dramatised murder trials (Killer in Close Up), the French Revolution (The Public Prosecutor), Henry VIII (Rose without a Thorn), Joan of Arc (The Lark), the expulsion of the Jesuits from South America (The Strong Are Lonely), and the 1956 Soviet Invasion of Hungary (Shadow of Heroes). Every now and then, they even did some Aussie history (Stormy Petrel). I would have preferred the ABC had spent the money on a local story, but Treason is an entertaining watch with a memorable performance from one of our acting legends.
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| NAA Neil Hutchison |
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