Armchair Theatre Archives - Page 2 of 3 - ABC: Both sides of the camera

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

Glamorous blonde

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Diana Dors has shown herself to be a talented dramatic actress in a number of films, but except for one production eight years ago she had never appeared in a TV play until she starred for Armchair Theatre in The Innocent, a murder mystery by Bob Kesten.

A visitor to the set was Miss Dors’ husband, Dickie Dawson. With them standing, right is director Charles Jarrott.

Kynaston Reeves is the legal gentleman caught during rehearsal in an attitude no one is ever likely to see a real-life judge adopting

Glamorous brunette

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

In Roman Gesture, a romantic drama by Ira Avery, Charles Jarrott again showed his gift for investing a TV play with the gloss and glamour of a good Hollywood film.

With his wife Katharine Blake in the lead, Jarrott and designer George Haslam presented Armchair Theatre audiences with the story of a famous star returning home to Italy to make a film with the director who discovered her.

Miss Blake, an English actress who was three times awarded the Canadian TV ‘Oscar’, was acclaimed for her performance as Carla Mellini, and Arthur Hill flew from New York to play the American publicity man who falls in love with her

Clifford Evans also made a memorable impression in Roman Gesture as the Italian director who discovered, loved and lost Mellini, and now must reassert his authority over her before they can get down to work on their new film.

Here he rejects her rendering of a scene, shows her how he wants it done, and gets a fiery reaction from his star

T-T goes ‘straight’

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

A form of magic that goes badly wrong provokes Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, when on of London’s eligible bachelors is led into a disasterous series of experiments with explosive devices after a palmist tells him he is destined to commit murder.

Terry-Thomas made his debut as a straight actor on ITV in ABC’s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde story for Armchair Theatre, and Robert Coote, recently released from several years’ service as Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady, made his British TV debut as Lord Arthur’s manservant.

The palmist was Arthur Lowe.

The director was Alan Cooke, and Englishman home on leave after nine years in Hollywood, and George Haslam designed the magnificently Gothic sets

The military mind

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Sir Donald Wolfit was another famous player who created a period role for Armchair Theatre.

Philip Saville directed him in The Last of the Brave, Stanley Mann’s powerful story of a retired French colonel, obsessed with the ideal of discipline, who drives his son to the 1914 War and later shoots the wounded boy when he reveals himself as a coward.

Paul Massie played the son and Rosemary Scott the mother.

Assheton Gorton designed the sets

Two views of the military man

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Another old-guard soldier, but this time of a more human kind, was created by Clive Exton in his comedy Some Talk of Alexander.

Harry Andrews had waited eight years to find a TV play to his liking before making his ITV debut as the former Guards nco who readjusts himself to civiliian life in the greengrocer’s shop kept by Ingeborg Wells and her son James Culliford.

Alan Cooke, who has a gifted hand with comedy, directed the play.

A very different Clive Exton story about a military man was Hold My Hand, Soldier, illustrated right with a scene from each of its deeply moving acts. Victor Maddern, Gordon Jackson and Ronald Fraser were the only three players in this modern parable of a private soldier’s journey to Calvary, presented by Armchair Theatre on Easter Sunday.

John Moxey did some of his finest work as a director of this play, while James Goddard, a new name among ABC’s young designers, created the sets for both Exton productions

Fighting men

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

An American view of soldiers in action was shown in Rod Serling’s Korean War play Come In Razor Red, directed by Alvin Rakoff with designs by Timothy O’Brien.

The Commander, US Navel Forces Europe lent fifteen nco’s and men of his Headquarters Marine Guard to guide the British extras in the trench warfare scenes; they were later ‘decorated’ by ABC for their ‘gallantry’ in applying themselves to the cause of theatrical duty

American visitors

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Among the US stars who came to Britain for Armchair Theatre in 1960 were John Ireland and Ed Degley.

Ireland is seen above with Peter Dyneley and Constance Cummings in The Last Tycoon, a play from the Scott Fitzgerald story directed by William Kotcheff with designs by Timothy O’Brien; Ed Begley was directed in A Phone Call for Matthew Quade by David Greene, an Englishman who has become one of Hollywood’s top TV directors

End of term

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Another type of ABC extravaganza was On the Spot, in which adapter Clive Exton and director Philip Saville took the mickey out of Edgar Wallace’s famous comedy thriller play of Chicago in the Roaring Twenties to close the Armchair Theatre season.

The picture above, like an old movie still, shows David McCallum putting a rival gangster on the spot, whilst Ted and Julie Allen left brought Toni Perelli and Minn Lee to life again.

Yvonne Romain as Maria guys the giddy flapper below in Voytek’s baroque set

Summer at the seaside

20221960 by Marie Donaldson

Summer time at ABC means Holiday Town Parade. This popular annual show takes David Southwood and his Outside Broadcast team every summer round the seaside resorts on the East and West coasts of the North and Midlands, building up a fund of local goodwill through the interest aroused by its contests for the TV Bathing Beauty Queen, the TV Fashion Queen and the TV Adonis of Great Britain.

Errol Flynn, Boris Karloff and John Gregson have helped to crown the Beauty Queen, while Pierre Balmain and Norman Hartnell are among those who have bestowed the Fashion accolade.

McDonald Hobley is the programme’s host, and Joe Loss and his Orchestra were a popular backbone of the show until they were claimed by the Hammersmith Palais

▼ Summer for ABC’s Drama Department meant Armchair Mystery Theatre, whose resident host was one of Britain’s busiest actors, Donal Pleasence, taking time off to make his introduction and to star in one of the plays, Machinal, between performances of Harold Pinter’s stage success, The Caretaker

Diana Wynyard gave a remarkable performance as a paralysed woman, using only her eyes and recorded thoughts, in the opening play, Eye Witness, specially written by Leslie Sands and directed by Charles Jarrott

John Gregson was another star visitor to the series, mocking the traditional Secret Service man in Flight from Treason, a spy thriller by schoolmaster James Mitchell, directed by Dennis Vance