Australian TV Plays: Turning Point (24 Feb 1960)

Along with Eye of the Night this was the first in a series of ten plays by Australian writers broadcast by the ABC in 1960. 75 mins long. By Denys Burrows.

Premise

A murderer on the run, Chicka, stops in a remote South Australian town of Edenberrry. He kidnaps one of its women, Joan, when he thinks the town's policeman is going to arrest him.

He runs off with her, punctures his petrol tank, but returns to kill her children after she runs away while he sleeps.

The policeman arrives just in time to save the situation.

Cast

Rod Milgate as Chicka Miller
Benita Harvey as Joan Pringle
Ben Gabriel asSteve Pringle
Deryck Barnes as policeman, Tom Abbott
Jane Coghlan as Patty Brooks
Tom Farley as George
Reg Lye as Lucy

Production

It was the first of ten Australian television plays to be produced by the ABC in Sydney and Melbourne in 1960. They would alternate between the cities: Turning Point was broadcast in Sydney on the same night that Eye of the Night was shown in Melbourne.

(NB I've been unable to ascertain the exact list of the ten but they would seem to definitely include Dark Under the Sun, The Astronauts, Slaughter of St Teresa's Day). This was crucial - 1960 was the first year that the ABC did a big "Australian stories" push. I wonder what prompted it? Possibly Rex Rienits as drama editor.

The writer Denys Burrows was also an actor; it was his first produced TV play. Burrows did what jobbing writers did at the time - eps of Skippy, books, radio.

He based the settings and the character on a trip he made through central Australia.

"The township in the play and the dialogue is fictional, but the setting and characters are based on a town we passed through," said Burrows. "I remember the place well - it was 114 degrees in the shade when we arrived there. The people were most kind and I thought at the time what a story there would be in the way they had to live the struggle. I filed the idea away in my mind and it gradually matured."

Burows described the town as "six shacks, a pub a lot of bare earth and a railway line."

Rod Milgate had only been acting professionally for 12 months.

Benita Harvey said the role was a departure for her as "because of my dark features I'm usually chosen for cosmopolitan roles."

According to the TV Times, outdoor scenes were to have been filmed on location south of Sydney. However on the day the crew went to film them, the sun stayed behind the clouds all day. These scenes were finally shot against a mock up background in the studio under large lamps.

Cameraman - Frank Parnell.

Broadcast

4 February 1960 (live, Sydney). 9 March 1960 (taped, Melbourne). 5 April 1960 (Brisbane)

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald called it "an unsuccessful attempt to graft an unconvincing crime melodrama on to a documentary treatment of outback life... The author's observation is better than his plot-planning and when the life of the remote, heat-hammered cluster of shacks was allowed to move along its normal lines and at its own pace, there were moments of genuine interest and accomplishment—except that the pace of Raymond Menmuir's production... tended to be a bit slow. A competent cast... worked very effectively when they were allowed by the script to be real characters."

The TV Times said it "was, if not completely successful, then near enough."