Australian TV Plays: The Sub-editor's Room (18 Dec 1956)

The first Australian drama shot for television, I think... but little known.

It clocks in under 30 minutes and was written by Leslie Rees, a major Australian cultural critic and historian, as well as producer, broadcaster, etc... all that good renaissance stuff that seemed to be a feature of Australians at the ABC at the time.

Premise

Jevons, a sub-editor at a metropolitan newspaper, has an ethical dilemma when asked to keep two people's names out of court reports. One is a woman (who we never meet) whose father is connected with the paper's owner. At the same time he is approached by a shop owner, Mr Goudie, who asks Jevon if Goudie's name can be kept out of the paper for selling sub-standard milk. Jevons also corrects the copy of cadet reporter Charlie Riddle.

Jevons' editor insists that the woman's name be kept out of the newspaper. However this doesn't happen to Goudie. Goudie tries to commit suicide.

Cast

* Edward Howell as Mr Goudie, a shop owner

* Deryck Barnes as Tom Jevons, the sub-editor

* Gina Curtis as Erna Robson, a journalist

*Lewis Fiander as cadet reporter Charlie Riddle

*Moray Powell as the editor, Mr Taunton

Original play

This was based on a one act play. The play had been around a long time - it was published in a collection of Australian plays from 1937. It was the only play from that collection to be filmed (to my knowledge). The volume consisted of 21 plays - 5 for radio and 16 for theatre. That's by Australian writers. And only The Sub-Editor's Room made it to the small screen. I'm assuming it only did that because of Ree's involvement. (There's an article on the collection of plays at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article41431267)

The other writers included names like Louis Esson, Miles Franklin and Katherine Susannah Prichard. Writers not used in early Australian TV drama. I haven't read the plays but it seems such a waste their work wasn't filmed over, say, The Twelve Pound Note. But the ABC needed that BBC stamp of approval. (An aside: what would've happened had Rees gone to work in television?)

It was first performed in 1937.

It was played 11 times by the National Theatre League. A list of Australian productions at Ausstage is here.

In 1943 Rees talked about people who wanted to write for ABC radio. "Prospective writers frequently come in to ask what sort of,plays the Commission wants. I always tell them to go away and study intensively what the A.B.C. is presenting — there is an A.B.C. play of some sort on practically every night. The most useful length is from half an hour to one hour. Subjects? Well, please yourselves, but my own personal idea is that a good play is much more likely to come out of a careful and perceptive study of conditions and people known vividly to the author than out of events and characters borrowed indirectly from other people's plays and hooks."

Thoughts

I've read the TV script for The Sub-Editor's Room. (I have read the stage play too - it's faithful) It doesn't have a bad central idea - it's set in the office of a sub-editor of a newspaper who is faced with a moral dilemma when a person who has been convicted of an offence pleads for his name to be withdrawn from the paper.

It's quaint in this Murdoch heavy days to listen to a story of ethics. There is a sub-plot about another story which is to be reported on... one concerning a divorce of a woman (who the sub-editor calls "slut" in dialogue... which made it through to broadcast) who is related to a powerful figure. We meet the person who asks the sub-editor to pull back; we don't meet the woman. The other characters include a female reporter, a young male reporter whose work is amended by the sub-editor, and the editor who asks the sub editor to pull the story about the "slut"

It's kind of odd in a way that we see the story from the sub-editor's point of view. Normally the editor is the protagonist of these sort of stories- after all, isn't it their decision. But that does make it different. There is dialogue where the sub-editor explains his job and explains to the junior reporter how he needs to change his copy; at this point the play felt like an article or essay rather than a dramatised play. I felt that for the first ten pages or so. But as it went on the drama kicked in and it was quite watchable. If giving notes to Rees I would ask him to show the divorcee, and kick off the story earlier.

Still, this is an entirely decent attempt. It tells a story, the story is clear and about something. It explores an aspect of Australian society. It's not obviously Australian - you can imagine this being set in England or America - but it's refreshing that it is.

Production

Rees directed as well as adapting his own play. He talks about the experience in his memoirs. He had to do it in his spare time while working for ABC radio, editing and programming plays. Rees rehearsed in a temporary studio in Gore Hill which he described in his memoirs as twice as big as a garage. It would be filmed there, with only two cameras which Rees said were already old fashioned. "There was hardly room to swing a sound boom without knocking down one of the half dozen players and perhaps a camera assistant to boot" wrote Rees. One rehearsal on a Saturday they were locked out of the studio.

Rees says they would keep rehearsals "down to a frugal three".

I don't think this was adapted for radio as well, which seems odd.

Neil Hutchison, Head of Drama and Features, wrote in Nov 1956 that:

In the early days of our TV operation, our requirements will be comparatively modest. Having no proper drama production studio until the end of April, our activities will be limited to those simple productions which can adequately be handled in a small presentation studio, 20 feet by 30 feet. Elaborate hour plays, calling for several sets and much floor space, will clearly have to await the completion -of larger premises. Our first productions will be half hour plays consisting of no more than two sets and calling for no film sequences— which are commonlv used when the play’s action demands a number of out door scenes. Film inserts are shot on location well before the time of studio production and are interpolated in the live action for the first time when the show is rehearsed in the studio on the day of transmission. One of the big problems with which we are faced is the securing of TV drama scripts. Australian writers have not yet begun to think in terms of television and it may well be some time before they get the hang of what is required.

A copy of the script is available at the NAA. See here (you can't get it on line yet.)

Reception

Rees says "the show went on with reasonable success (for the times), despite my momentary fear, in the control room, that at any moment something would happen in the studio".

Rees does not seem to have enjoyed the experience and decided "to stick to the one sense medium (so far as producing went) before I became a psycho case."

Rees says "a remarkable new breed of young producers, directors, editors, cameramen and others were in course of time able to cope with most problems". He wrote most of the successes of early Australian TV were serials and series rather than the one off plays, and he thought it was sad that the one off plays "lost ground".

Turning point in Oz TV - Rees not being more involved in television.