Australian TV Plays: Vacancy in Vaughan Street (25 June 1963) (Brisbane)

Brisbane play. The second one the ABC did in Brisbane - the first in a studio.

Plot

Ernie Pettifer, a carpenter, arrives at a boarding house run by Mrs Jessup and her husband Arthur. Florence Medway is a school teacher. She doesn't want company but they end up sharing a table together. They become friends. Florence is a bit bossy about telling Ernie what's going on, making him feel dumb with her comments on music, Shakespeare, clothes, manners, etc. There's a bitchy comment or two from another boarder, Violet, who likes Ernie (dropping very unsubtle hints to be asked out which he doesn't seem to pick up) and dislikes Florence (who she called "the duchess").

He falls in love, and tells her that (while drunk). She thinks it's a gambit to get her into bed. She recoils. He quotes from Omar Khayyam. Violet makes another pass at Earnie, he says he's not interesting, Violet says Florence doesn't love him. Florence comes back to get her book. Earne says he loves her she says she loves him and they decided to get married.

Cast

Donald McTaggart as Ernie Pettifer
Gwen Wheeler as Mrs Jessup
Toby Harris as Arthur Jessup.
Judith Stephenson as Florence Medway, a boarder
Betty Ross as Violent Anderson, another boarder

Production

It was written by John Crane who also wrote the stage musical Flaming Youth. I used to think this was a stage name for George Landen Dann but no it appears Crane was a Sydney-sider. Worked in advertising for George Patterson. A 1963 profile said he had written over 1,000 quarter hour radio scripts as well as seven hours of TV drama see here.

Signed contract in May 1962 (63?)

Crane's other stage credits inc Flaming Youth, Is Australia Really Necessary? (1965), a revue with June Salter (1965).

Radio credits inc Torpedo Run (1961), Diane (1961), The Badlanders (1961).

The production was shot at the studios of the ABQ in Toowong Brisbane. Designer Bernard Hides and his assistant Bill Collyer designed the set, which took three weeks to construct. This meant that for two nights the ABC news in Brisbane was read from the boarding house dining room that featured in the play.

Bob Cubbage, ABC Supervisor of Drama and Features in Queensland, said they selected the play because it "has a simple plot and was chosen as a TV exercise for local actors and producers... We hope that this will be the first of a series of local TV productions in Brisbane."

Cubbage produced the play to rehearsal stage then director Wilf Buckler took over.

It was shot in May.

Don McTaggart was a Brisbane actor who mostly worked in radio. He had appeared in A Sleep of Prisoners. Judith Stephenson and Betty Ross were experienced Brisbane stage actors. Gwen Wheeler and Toby Harris were well known on ABC radio.

McTaggart called his character, Ernie, "somebody who is very ordinary and very unsure of himself". Stephenson called Florence "failr untained by the ways of the world".

My thoughts on script

I was interested to read this because of its Brisbane connection (I'm from Brisbane). It was shot at the ABC Studios in Toowong.

It's a simple tale - only 30 minutes - about two lonely people who find love at a boarding house. There was a vogue for such tales at the time: Marty, Separate Tables, etc. They are very ideal for television. (Another TV play was shot in Brisbane about a romance between lonely people in a boarding house - The Quiet Season.)

Crane writes with a great deal of empathy for his characters, even Violet. I wonder if more could have been made of the conflict - like, Earnie dates Violet for a bit after it ends with Florence. I didn't have much hope for their future happiness. But there's a fair few romances you can say that about.

It was simple and effective, a great vehicle for the right actors. There's two other characters, the couple who run the boarding house; they are sort of there as methods of exposition.

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald called it "pleasantly amusing at best but also containing inconsistencies and some feeble touches."

It aired in Melbourne on 14 August.

TV Week called it "a worthy effort and a triumph for all concerned" saying McTaggart "walked off with the acting honors but his supporting cast was a fine one... It makes you wonder why we have had to wait almost four years for this type of programme to emanate from our local studio. This Queensland production is to be seen interstate and our local team need hold no fears for its success."

Frank Roberts of the Bulletin said... do you even need to know what he said? This horrible anti Australian bigot said:

The old dilemma again. Should a first effort at television drama be gently criticised, or should the frosty truth be written about it? The answer seems to lie in a further question: Who benefits from sunny criticism? It enables weak shoots to survive, and they have been the Patterson’s Curse in our culture for too long. Few good artists of any kind wilt under criticism. Many accept it as part of the fight. It’s much worse to be ignored.

So I hope John Crane, dramatist, Bob Cribbage, producer, and Bernard Hines, designer, will all come out for round two despite any derogatory remarks about “Vacancy in Vaughan St.” from the ABC Television studios, Brisbane. It was a trite little 30-minute play about a lonely carpenter who came to board at Mrs Jessup’s charitable institution. At least that’s what Mrs J. seemed to be running. With only four boarders she could offer a menu. And TV, radio record player, piano, and lashings of good-looking furniture. By the scale of the boarders’ living room, she would have been lucky to clear her rates from the profits.

Anyway the carpenter had an immediate choice between a plump out going woman and a schoolmistress who had been studying under Greta Garbo. As presented, any bloke in his right mind would have been most willing to let her be alone, but our carpenter found her irresistible. This led the other woman to bare her soul to him, in a speech that might serve as a classic example of unlikely dialogue from any woman, anywhere, any time. “Ah, Vi,” said our hero, “we can be friends but nothin’ more.” Ernie the carpenter succeeded in breaking through the schoolmistress’ reserve. In a speech to boarder No. 4 he described her fanatic attempts to improve him, boss him, change him all of which naturally drove him to drink. Visibly, it also made her wear tight, slinky dresses. But one afternoon he ambled in, molo, and said what he thought, and they lived happily ever after.

Mr Crane has the right idea. He was after simplicity, and good dramas have been written on apparently threadbare plots. But simplicity is the hardest realism to achieve in drama. Mr Crane failed, partly because he forgot he was writing for television, in which the camera can often tell a better story through the actors, with little dialogue. The producer must also be blamed for not throwing out much of the talk and making the actors carry the story. The designer should have looked inside a suburban boarding-house.

There is a place for 30-minute drama, and it is good to see Brisbane coming into production. “Vacancy in Vaughan Street” was not an awful failure. Nor was it good enough to inflict on tele vision’s viewers.

Brisbane

Other shows shot in Brisbane would include Dark Brown, The Monkey Cage, The Quiet Season and Ring Out Wild Bells, The Absence of Mr Sugden Arabesque for Atoms and A Sleep of Prisoners.

It was repeated in Brisbane.