Marie Donaldson, Author at ABC: Both sides of the camera | Transdiffusion presentation

Youth and music

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

▲Modern music has always been an integral part of The Sunday Break. The current season of the programme featured the Sunday Break Songsters, a choral group formed by ABC from teenagers in the Midlands.

Janice Willett is one of the young directors who have worked on this programme.

Bob Fuest designed the set and also the riverboat below.

▼ In Light Entertainment, the Summer 1960 season ended with Steamboat Shuffle, a light-hearted musical programme for young people, networked across the country from a specially constructed riverboat moored on the Thames beside ABC’s London studios at Teddington Lock.

The director was Ben Churchill, who was also the first director of The Sunday Break

Heroes…

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

ABC’s Drama Department found an infallible idea for contemporary children’s entertainment in Target Luna, whose intrepid young explorer circled the moon in a rocket, and its successor Pathfinders in Space, whose Moon explorers are all set to investigate other planets.

Written by Malcolm Hulke and Eric Paice with the guidance of Mary Field, OBE, international expert in children’s programmes, with Guy Verney as director, this science fiction series is the subject of much careful research to combine information with the thrills of space exploration

…of the wide open spaces

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Even in the space age, the Western maintains its grip on audiences of all ages.

Some TV Westerns have broken new ground with writing that delves as deeply into character and situation as does legitimate drama, and the hour-long series lend themselves particularly to this treatment.

Among these are Maverick, starring James Garner and Jack Kelly as the brothers Bret and Bart, and Cheyenne, with Clint Walker. One of the best of the half-hour Westerns is Law Man, whose John Russell is a popular figure on the ABC Network

Children and animals

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Filmed entirely in the East African hinterland, Jungle Boy presents young viewers with a modern Mowgli, whose adventures are told against an authentic background of wild life.

Michael Carr Hartley, a local boy who grew up in this environment, plays the title role and is seen here very much at home with three ‘friends’

Dream world on strings

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Torchy the Battery Boy has opened up for small children a whole new world of delightful characters created by the sympathetic imagination of Roberta Leigh.

Made specially for ABC Television by Associated-British Pathé, Torchy has become a friend as real as Peter Pan to millions of British children

What’s New? Foo Foo!

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

John Halas makes a drawing for Foo Foo, the original and entertaining new cartoon character introduced by ABC this season.

These children’s films were specially commissioned from the brilliant cartoon team of Halas and Batchelor, who are also working on further series for ABC Television

Accent on age

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Although in ABC Television’s activities the accent has always been on youth, the elderly are not forgotten, and three Armchair Theatre playwrights last season reminded viewers that the root of the problem of dealing with the aged usually lies in ourselves

Alun Owen’s second play, After the Funeral, directed by William Kotcheff, centred round a fine old Welshman, Charles Carson and his grandson, Hugh David left, who wanted the old man to provide a genuine Welsh background for his home

Stanley Mann’s Fifth Floor People, directed by John Moxey, showed an old couple, Elizabeth Begley and J. G. Devlin, whose miserable existence in a dingy attic hung like a cloud over the future of their young neighbour downstairs, Billie Whitelaw

One of the most important playwrights of 1960 has been Clive Exton, whose first play under an ABC contract was Where I Live.

William Kotcheff directed this moving story of a housewife, Ruth Dunning, whose jealousy of her brother and sister-in-law, Lloyd Lamble and Madge Ryan, led her to destroy her own self-respect when she forced them to take their turn at housing her old father, Paul Curran

Regional drama

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

A parent-child relationship was also the theme of A Shilling for the Evil Day, an Ulster story by Joseph Tomelty which was one of several plays with a strong regional flavour presented by Armchair Theatre.

J. G. Devlin and Elizabeth Begley, both distinguished Ulster players, came together again in this drama of a fishing village on All Souls’ Night.

Charles Jarrott, an Englishman who had made his name in Canada, came home to join ABC as a director, and this play showed the combination of warmth, sensitivity and technical brilliance that has earned him much praise throughout the year.

George Haslam designed the sets

Local politics

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Still in a provincial setting, Armchair Theatre presented Girl in the Market Square, a strong story by ABC contract writers Malcolm Hulke and Eric Paice.

John Moxey gave the direction an authentic flavour of regional vitality, helped by the designs of Peter Mullins and a rousing performance by Leo MacKern as the watch committee chairman and newspaper proprietor who ran over a girl driving home from a civic dinner and tried to cover up for the sake of his family and employees.

Rupert Davies Played the police chief and Andrew Ray the son who unmasked his father

Local affairs

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Subjects of controversy in provincial areas are the basis of two separate regional documentary programmes, ABC of the Midlands directed by Marjory Ruse and ABC of the North directed by Reginald Collin, in which local Arts, Business and Current affairs are reviewed each week on the ABC Network

▲ Councillor Denis Thomas, Chairman of Birmingham’s Public Works Committee, explains the Corporation’s plan to carry the main Coventry Road on stilts to the City boundary, a plan which has stirred up strong feelings among residents along the road, one of whom is seen with the Councillor and interviewer Marie Sheringham

Host David Mahlowe introduces ABC of the North at the Company’s Manchester studios

Should York’s ancient Guildhall have been rebuilt, or should the City Council have provided something more in keeping with present needs?

The Lord Mayor of York right discusses the question with local journalist Stacey Brewer and architect David Leckenby