John Cameron on being ABC Director of Drama 1970

From here:

I  became Director of Television Drama early in 1970. When I had been servicing drama productions in my early career, I noticed that producers tended to select foreign scripts for production. In one way this made sense, as the producer could be sure that he was working on a proven product, but it limited the scope for local writers to deal with local themes. Moreover, we could buy productions of overseas scripts for a fraction of the cost of mounting our own production. I resolved that, from the moment I took over, any production mounted with our own money, would be by an Australian writer.

Thanks to David Goddard, who had preceeded me as Director of TV Drama, the ABC had the nucleus of a drama film unit, but some inescapable film problems and bad luck had resulted in cost overruns and there were strong moves to close it down and restrict TV drama to electronically taped shows with filmed inserts. Such productions were not subject to the vagaries of the weather, nor to the costs of routinely operating away from the studio base. If we wanted to retain the advantages of drama in actual locations and to avoid the limitations of live editing, we had to find ways of reducing the cost of filming to the ABC.

While increased efficiency might have a marginal effect, the only real solution was to find partners to bear some of the costs. The BBC was the obvious first choice as a source of funds for joint ventures, but the BBC rightly believed that it could do what it did better than anyone else, and, at that time, it too was starting to explore ways of raising money to keep its staff fully occupied.

While living in London, I got to know Ian Warren and Tom Donald, the co-directors of Global Television, who handled the ABC’s purchases and sales with European commercial organisations. As selling agents for our productions, it made sense for them to make their job easier by enhancing the product they were to sell.

Money for our productions could come in two ways. One way was for a purchaser to buy “off the plan”, getting a better deal than if he waited to buy the finished product. The other was to invest in the production and have a creative input in the production process. As the ABC was a substantial purchaser of productions from other television networks, Global had a useful lever to encourage reciprocal purchases of our productions. Global also had a production arm of their own in Portland Productions. Over the years we were to do a number of joint productions with Portland Productions. In these, as with the BBC, we had to surrender ultimate artistic control in the product.

Alan Burke 1988 Interview highlights

 Part three of this interview. Focuses on television. Part one and two more about his earlier life inc working at Trust and Canberra.

1.35 - 1.50 talks about definition of producer and director.

28 years at ABC including one year on leave at BBC making Ruth Park's Harp of the South. More than 60% of the cast were Australians living in London. Talks about his good friend Eric Tayler. (3.13)

3.43 Being able to select where the audience's eye would go. Something I knew nothing about technically. I had training course at the BBC. Something I found a great joy. Even though largely we were doing adaptations of stage plays the first years of Australian television and.

4.08 "The commercials were not at that stage doing any drama. They made a big thing of the fact they did when they did. It was very interesting, We were doing a play a month from Sydney and I think one a month from Melbourne for many years and when Channel Seven started a Sunday night live,  as it all was then, drama series it actually hit the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald which happened to be the appropriate paper for the station as television's first live drama... and a fellow director of mine at the ABC said when the next play went to air at the ABC a week later that he felt like saying on the graphics ABC's 35th live drama or whatever it was."

5.00 "It was a tremendously exciting time. We've  never in our selfish way replaced the extraordinary joy of gong to air live with a drama or an opera... the electricity is just beyond description."

5.52 "There were a few boo boos inevitably there had to be but you got used ot scenery falling down and that sort of thing... but it didn't last we got fairly expert in it."

Talks about simulcasts and how it was different.

6.21 "These early productions were plotted for studio". Moved from set to set. Compares to Z Cars. A lot of people didn't know that Z Cars as in fact going to air live.

7.35 Three weeks rehearsal for a 90 minute play, two weeks for a 60 minute play. It wasn't regular.

You worked around actor's radio schedule. 

7.55 (to around 8.20) "You were working around radio actors mainly. Most of our leading actors were making a living in radio. You worked around available bookings. People didn't give up things to be in a teleplay. They might like it, the novelty, but they were earning their bread and butter from radio and occasionally stage."

Radio people might be available during the day.

If wanted to use a top radio actor eg Neva Carr Glynn was difficult. 

10.30 Some television/radio actors didn't have stage experience so you had to be an instructor as well as a director.

Burke enjoyed non-naturalistic works eg Skin of Our Teeth, A Toast of Melba.

19.25 talks about doing Lola Montez for television "get back to what the book was about, why we'd written in certain numbers the management in their wisdom found to be wrong... got far better reception for the worK - restoration of Bavarian ballet, got the age right.

21.15 He talks about The Sentimental Bloke, Toast of Melba and operas.

22.40 talks about non naturalism of a toast of Melba... says it had gone out of fashion. Geoffrey Daniel was his boss.

25.05 - talks about achievements early days - a few of the operas plus Norman Lindsay Festival (which grew out of suggestion did Cousin from Fiji... John Cameron suggested they do a whole festival)

29.30 talks about the operas he did including Menotti

29.50 He did eight operas, four Shakespeares. (They would pick what was likely to be the school play that year). Macbeth, Tempest, Shrew, Ve

30.22-20.34 "Kids these days don't know they're alive in television. In one year you might do three operas, a Shakespeare, the news, and kids session once a wek. Really wonderful the days of live television".

Talks about where got actors eg Trust, John Alden Company. Lorenzo in Merchant was Barry Creyton.

When NIDA was formed the ABC was one of three key bodies involved in it (the others being UNSW and Elizabethan Theatre Trust). The ABC would train them in film and television. They had them for a fortnight in their second year (and later the third year) to teach them for television. Burke loved it. The second year it was training. The third year they made a one hour production over a fortnight. It never went to air. But it was played back to them.

Talks about film vs theatre acting.

47.26 moves into film last years of directing career... talks about Essington then in film again in 1982 when produced Kindred Spirits

Harp in the South (10 July 1964)

Adaptation of Ruth Park's classic novel. Done in England not Australia.

Cast

• Ed Devereaux as Hughie Darcy
• Brenda Dunrich as Mumma Darcy
• Bettina Dickson as Delie Stock
• Veronica Lang as Roie Darcy
• Andy Ho as Lick Jimmy
• Muguette De Braie as Rosa Siciliano
• George Roderick as Luigi Siciliano
• Colette Martin as Dolour Darcy
• Moya O'Sullivan as Miss Sheily
• Bill Levis as Johnny Sheily
• Kevin Brennan as Patrick Diamond
• Lew Luton as Tommy Mendel
  

Original novel

The novel was first published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1947. It was published in 1948. The sequel Poor Man's Orange came out in 1949. It's never been out of print.

Other adaptations

There was a play adaptation by Park and Leslie Rees that premiered in 1949. 

A 1972 article refers to Channel Seven wanting to make a mini series based on it. See here.

It was a mini series in 1986 and 1987. it was adapted for stage again in 2018.

Production

Alan Burke was at the ABC for 28 years (1958  to 1986). However he took a year off on leave without pay in 1964 and went to England (he'd trained at the BBC in 1954). While there he did a production of Harp of the South for BBC 2. "It could not have been a happier event" he said. More than 60% of the cast were Australians living in London. During this time he met Eric Tayler who later worked for the BBC. 

Burke had written a musical version of the play which had not been professionally performed. 

Bruce Stewart adapted it. Eric Tayler produced.

It went for 75 mins. 

Burke talked about it to Graham Shirley in 2004:

I went to the BBC where I had trained previously and just sort of scouted around asking if there was anything I could do and I was introduced to a couple of Executive Producers... the second of them was Eric Tayler, a New Zealander who had like myself, gone into CRTS Training at the end of the War. And he’d in fact gone in to Drama School where I’d gone to University and anyway he’d worked his way to the BBC as an Executive Producer and was most amenable and lovely to talk to... He said ‘well, I’ve got this Australian thing, I don’t know whether you’d be interested in it’ and it turned out to be an adaptation of The Harp in the South. And I said ‘well, not only would I be interested but you’d be happy to know that for the last two years I’ve been working on a musical adaptation of it with Peter Benjamin and Peter Stanndard... he gave me the script... But what they had done was taken the book in some detail and stopped at whatever point they’d reached the air time that the proposed production. In other words it left the shape of the book about half way, in fact it ended on a note of great depression which the book does not do. So I said ‘well, I’d like to fiddle with it’ so I took it away and fiddled with it and I don’t think the adaptor was very pleased but Eric approved in which I took us from that and in a couple of very swift sentences, we hit the optimistic ending that the book has and that worked...

So I directed it and used a tremendous number of Australian actors as you can imagine including Ed Devereaux who played Huey brilliantly and Brenda Dunrich whose name I had known from Australian radio but had never met played Mumma. Both gave lovely performances. Ed was that gratifying sort of actor who in an early rehearsal would play his last sad scene and cry which I found very winning. You know, he’d mop his eyes and then later when you’d been rehearsing for a couple of weeks, he’d do it again and he’d look up and laugh as he mopped his eyes saying ‘oh that always gets me’ or something like that...It was a series of adapted novels, something Story. Anyway Eric had done this but they were all adaptations from novels and this particular one happened to be sort of in the bin for some time.

It was interesting, cast a lot of Australians, I think we had a cast of about forty including extras and if I remember correctly it was some extraordinary number like 15 or 16 were Australian which was nice. Big studio, six cameras, the first time I think I’d worked with six cameras. Lovely design by a lady called Sally Hulke who’d done a lot of research into ‘the look’ and got it very nicely. Ed Deveraux and Brenda Dunrich (sp?) as Hughie and Mumma were wonderful. Betty Dixon played Delie Stock (sp?). Kevin Brennan played Mr Diamond. It was like that, all the local Australian borns who were fairly established in London so it was lovely to be able to use them, you didn’t have to make any compromise, they were fine actors but the fact that they had Australian accents in the back pocket ready for when you needed them, was wonderful. Moya O’Sullivan oh a couple of other people, can’t remember the rest but they were all there...

Tthe demands of the novel, of course a bit picturesque, I mean it’s about the district, it’s not just about one house and consequently the adaptation... called for a lot of interiors obviously of the family but street stuff and public places and things like. I wasn’t quite sure how to cope with it for a studio, didn’t want to go out and film more than we had to. We filmed a bonfire which is central and we couldn’t do that in the studio. However the set, very nicely Sally caught, I had asked for some buttresses on the outside the back of the set as it were, as if the houses were falling down and had the support. And under these buttresses it was very handy to use as a twosome for Rowie and Tommy, one of the romantic scenes and I tried my old singing cameras lurk which is you know starting with the crane and musically working into a close up from a wide shot, the swoops and lifts and what have you. They had a little difficulty understanding me about that. I had done it with several operas and it was sort of ingrained in my manner and my style but it turned out to be sort of oh, you go forward there and then you turn left then you drop, and it wasn’t singing at all you know, it wasn’t that legato sort of thing I wanted. However that aside, it was very satisfactory to do .
 

The format was 75 minutes and he’d adapted the book until he had 75 minutes of air time and then stopped if you see what I mean. Didn’t take the shape of the book and reproduce it and the shape of the book of course, takes a big dip in the middle, unpleasantness and sadness and tragedy and then it rises again to the optimism at the end of the book, which I think it vitally important. Because it cut out at 75 minutes we were left in the depths of the depression. Like the second act curtain of a three act play. I said to Eric ‘oh that won’t do, forgive me, I’m going to fiddle with it’ and by adding one little scene and sort of encapsulating virtually what happened after the depression moment and a little optimistic speech from Hughie and Momma at their front gate and we ended on that. It worked very well and I must say dear Ed Devereaux cried at every rehearsal which is a great compliment... He is a dear man and he’s very soft man for all his business acumen and oh yes, he was immensely touching, very good. I had at that stage not heard of Ed, I didn’t know him at all and Eric recommended that I see him, he’d worked for Eric a lot. And I just fell in love the minute I met him, he was wonderful. So that was very happy and of course I saw a lot Ed afterwards when he came back, not a lot but a fair bit and I was very pleased to have made a good friend of him. So that’s really Harp in the South.

Reception

It showed on Story Parade on BBC2.

The Stage said it "just didn't come off". 

The Stage 16 July 1964

The Stage 9 July 1964

Daily Tele 11 July 1964

Director vs Producer

 Alan Burke in a 1988 interview explained why they called directors "producers". He said he queried it. He said he was told directors were considered heads of department, so he was considered a producer.

David Twiby Interview

 Link is here

Dramas

This was a very experimental period for television. Once a month there was a live drama. Sydney one month, Melbourne the next.

Behind each drama was a mini drama being played out in the studio. “Hamlet” was directed by Royston Morley, who had previously produced a version in England in 1936. Three days studio rehearsal was allocated, but this proved inadequate. When we stopped rehearsing a few hours before on air we had only got half way through the play. The result was not the disaster it might have been, but it seemed to go on forever. Half way through there was an intermission and a young pianist played for about 15 minutes in studio 23.

Being ‘live’ created a lot of logistical problems. For instance in “Wuthering Heights” the opening scene was in winter and featured snow around the outside of the house. Later in the production they went back to the same exterior and it was summer. During the intervening time we had to remove all the ‘snow’. Not an easy task as the ‘snow’ was actually small pieces of foam and in a studio with ‘live’ microphones we could not use a vacuum cleaner so a dust pan and broom were the order of the day. Despite all our efforts, when the action returned to the outside of the house in the middle of summer I noticed a pile of ‘ snow’ around the window frame that had gone unnoticed.

One of the major dramas of 1959 was Richard II. Produced by Raymond Menmuir it involved both major studios. Months in preparation and large by any standard, nonetheless, the day following its transmission, Ray and I found ourselves rostered to do “Kindergarten Playtime”.

In a rare premonition, minutes before we went to air ‘live’ with the drama “Venus Observed”, I wondered what would happen if the gun did not fire. I looked around the studio, saw a broom in the corner, gave it to a studio hand and told him when the time came for the gun to go off to hold the handle of the broom about a foot off the ground with his foot halfway down the handle and if the gun did not go off, to let go of the handle and push down as hard as he could with his foot. The gun did not go off, the broom made a loud bang and the heroine died. Sad to say when I heard the replay, the off mike sound of a broom hitting the floor sounded more a clatter than a gun.

Smoke Machines

In “Swamp Creatures”, the opening scene was a tracking shot through a swamp. The studio set looked convincing, but mist and creepy sound effects were needed to complete the picture. At rehearsal, producer Raymond Menmuir was not happy with either. The gram op went off for better sound effects and staging asked channel 7 to help out with a more effective smoke machine. This duly arrived, but too late for rehearsals. The basic idea was to heat the machine up with boiling water and then at the appointed time drop in dry ice. The resulting steam was then fed along a hose, under grass mats, to a studio hand, also hidden under grass mats, who lay in the middle of the set spraying the steam around. He used his hand to partially block the mouth of the hose, thus forcing the steam out at a faster rate and it consequently went further. The result looked great. This then was the opening shot, a steamy swamp with eerie noises. In the control room the producer congratulated the sound op for the frightening sounds. In fact the screams were coming from the ‘swamp’ where the studio hand had been forced by the heat of the steam to drop the hose and was now breathing in the carbon dioxide as he lay hidden under the mats. The camera started moving forward, and suddenly, just behind the camera, the grass parted and the figure of the studio hand rose to his full height, let out one last almighty scream, and fell flat on his face. In the control room the producer who could not see what was happening was very impressed with the frightening noises. While high up on scaffolding, waiting to make her dramatic entrance down a flight of stairs, leading lady Jacqueline Kott saw the whole thing and was convinced the studio hand was dead. The studio hand was quickly carried from the studio and an ambulance called. Meanwhile a shaken Jacqueline made her entrance and carried on as if nothing had happened. Except she was playing to a nearly empty studio. The cameramen, the sound man and myself as prompt were the only people in the studio. Everyone else was helping the stricken studio hand. Eventually he was taken to hospital and the remaining crew returned to the studio. On air the play continued faultlessly, the viewers unaware of the drama taking place behind the cameras. The studio hand made a full recovery, but left shortly after to take up a career in literature.

Smoke machines featured in another memorable occasion, but this one not so dramatic. “Make Ours Music” was a pleasant compilation of evergreen melodies. It was noteworthy for its imaginative use of sets and cameras. The sound was all prerecorded and the artists mimed on the night. On this occasion a male singer was on a bridge as the mist slowly rose (from under the bridge). Once again the producer, in this instance James Upshaw, was not happy with the volume of ‘mist’ so a more effective smoke machine was called for. This turned out to be the new super compact model. It was based on oil, not dry ice. Once again the machine was heated up and on cue I started pumping away on the handle and the smoke trickled out. But not in sufficient volumes for the producers liking. I pumped harder. And harder. Eventually the Floor Manager crawled under the bridge, grabbed the machine and started to pump even harder. Success. The smoke fairly billowed out. Meanwhile up above, on the bridge, the singer was launching into a particular melodic part of the song. Slowly the mist grew thicker. And thicker. Soon he looked as though he was singing, not on a bridge over a stream, but more a bridge over a stalled steam train. The mist had turned to smoke. Thick, black, oily, smoke. As the cameras slowly moved in for a close-up the acrid smelling smoke started to have its effect on the singer’s lungs. He started to cough. And he coughed. In glorious close-up the viewers watched as the singer doubled up in coughing fits as all the while the song continued, not faltering for a second.

Colour

In 1959 an energetic young designer from England joined us. His name was Doug Smith. He questioned our way of doing things and opened our eyes to a whole new approach to television production. He started with “Woman’s World”. This was the era of black and white television. So the studio sets were all painted in shades of grey. Doug changed all this. He felt people work better in colourful surroundings. Besides certain colours made you relax, talk better etc. Doug did his research and came up with colourful sets that were a joy to work in. The presenters were happier and the guests more outgoing.