AustLit
Lorna Bingham was a radio actor, scriptwriter, and producer born in 1912. She was born into the theatre with both her mother and her father working in the theatre when they met. She was born while her parents were on tour working for J. C. Williamson, an American actor and theatrical manager. Her parents took over Dan Barry's company when she was a child, and she was offered many young child roles in productions.
When theatre began to struggle during the Depression, Lorna's mother, Loris Bingham moved to radio. After an unsuccessful approach to other careers (i.e., usherette, salesgirls etc.) Lorna followed. She was introduced to George Edwards by her mother. What followed was a long business relationship and the basis of the Bingham family's successful radio career.
In 1940, after years of freelance writing and working on her projects, Lorna Bingham became a lead writer and recurring actor for one of Australia's most well-known radio serials, Dad and Dave from Snake Gully.
When radio was replaced with television, Lorna struggled to maintain her career. She ended her own life on 10 July 1970.
Click here to see the full Austlit page for Lorna Bingham.
The Sun, 6 Mar. 1953, p. 10
Dad and Dave from Snake Gully was a radio serial that held many records for its time. The story followed Dad and Dave, and their friends and family as they navigate their lives in rural Australia. It was aired in May 1937 on Radio 2GB and produced by George Edwards Production Company (the owner of which, George Edwards, played fifteen recurring characters).
It was the longest running serial in Australia. In the 17 years that it was on the air, there were 2,276 episodes. They also were "the oldest national programme under one sponsorship, one agency, one network of radio stations and one production unit." (The Age, 1).
The Mercury, 31 May 1937, p. 2
The Search for the Golden Boomerang began as a radio serial produced by George Edwards Production. It followed the adventures of Tuckonie and Peggy. The serial was first aired in 1940 and ran for eleven years. Over those eleven years, 1,444 episodes were released, and the novel was published to accompany it. Although it is now considered problematic from its use of racially insensitive terms such as "witch doctor" and lack of representation from voice actors, it was progressive for its time, featuring an Indigenous protagonist. The representation that was lacking in the radio serial was amended in the novel, with illustrations by Hartmuth Lahm.
The novel was published by WINN & Co., Printers in 1941. There is a foreword at the beginning of the novel from George Edwards. In this note, he talks about the research that went into the book. He says, "My staff and I have had a great deal of pleasure in searching through libraries and old records, gathering information about the Aboriginal Legends and Customs" (1941). The intended purpose was to educated young Australians about the history and the people of Australia.
The Mercury, 1 Dec. 1943, p. 13
Joan Kinmont was born in Port Lincoln, South Australia in 1908. From a young age, she enjoyed the theatre and was supported by her family to follow her passion. Although she established a career as a teacher, throughout her life she wrote shorts play, radio dramas, short stories, and poetry.
Her writing career started in 1933 when she wrote a play called Rising Mist. It was entered into a one-act play competition hosted by the Adelaide Repertory Theatre. She won this competition in September 1933 and the play was performed there in April the next year.
Her most notable published piece was This, My Son, a poem she wrote about a mother's love during war. After this, she wrote two other published books of poetry. One of which, Two Little Girls, was her final published piece.
Joan Kinmont died on 17 August 1985 from cancer.
Click here to see the full Austlit page for Joan Kinmont.
The Mercury, 9 Feb. 1946, p. 12
This, My Son is a poem about a mother's love for her son at war. The poem recounts the son's childhood, enlistment in the war, and his death through the mother's eyes. Originally intended as a play in verse, J. Walch printed the poem in 1943. As it was published during World War II, it's popularity was record-breaking. Within the first five months, over 17,000 copies had been sold. According to the 24 November 1943 edition of The Mercury, "no other book has ever been published in Tasmania that has had sales approaching this figure." Due to its popularity, it was reprinted several times and published by Frederick Muller to be released in England in 1945.
This edition had a preface from John Curtain, the Australian Prime Minister from 1941-1945.
The Mercury, 14 Jul. 1943, p. 5
Two Little Girls was published in 1946 by Oldham, Beddome and Meredith in Tasmania. It is a book filled with lively poetry and photographs about two young girls who observe the beauty life has to offer. Kinmont enjoyed photography and took all the photographs that accompany the poems in the book.
Because the book was aimed at a family audience, all the royalties for the first edition were donated to TasCare Society for Children, which provides support for children and young people with disabilities, and their families.
The Mercury, 15 Feb. 1945. p. 7
Kay Keavney, also known as Kay Keane, was born in Sydney. She was the youngest person and first female to be hired as a scriptwriter by the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC). With the ABC she wrote many popular radio plays including The Layton Story and the Nurse White series which included a sequel.
Keavney was apart of a writing team in that wrote short radio thrillers. The stories were contained in their half hour but were part of larger series (e.g. Caltex Theatre and Thirty Minutes to Go).
Due to her success in radio, Keavney also had the opportunity to write for many popular television series, including Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and The Adventures of Long John Silver. After writing for television for a while, she turned to journalism.
Click here to see the full Austlit page for Kay Keavney.
The Australian Women's Weekly, 11 Aug. 1954, p. 10
Nurse White is the story about a woman who must leave her baby in the care of another family to work as a nurse. Many critics claimed that Keavney captures human emotion through the main character.
The serial was a soap opera and was advertised in many Queensland newspapers alongside Su-Tall Soap, a company that made laundry soap flakes. The brand adapted the Nurse White character into comics that would promote the product. At the bottom of the comics would be the advertisement for the show, including when it was on and what channel it was on.
Following the success of Nurse White, Keavney wrote a sequel series called The Mystery of Nurse Lorimer. Nurse White was featured in this serial as Matron White. Keavney wrote the sequel during her year abroad.
The Sun, 12 Dec. 1948, p. 31
The Adventures of Long John Silver was an adaptation of Robert Louis Stephenson's novel Treasure Island. The novel also has many other film and television adaptations including the 1950 Disney film, Treasure Island, and the 1954 film, Long John Silver, produced and filmed in Sydney, Australia. Both adaptations starred the Robert Newton in the lead role, which he then continued to play in the television series.
The show aired on Australian television in 1958, despite having already been on the air in America and Britain for a few years. Many of the cast and crew working on the television series were Australian, including writer Kay Keavney. She was on the writing team for seven episode in 1957.
The Argus, 14 Sep. 1956, p. 17
"The Adventures Of Long John Silver" - opening credits (1955), 4 May 2009 [YouTube]
Joan Harvey was born in India in 1884 but spent most of her childhood in Tasmania, where her parents were both originally from, and where her extended family lived. Harvey's father served in the Indian Army for almost 40 years before returning to Australia. Harvey started writing at an early age, taking down her memories living in Tasmania while her parents were away. These recounts would later become her memoir, which she wrote with the help of her son, J. Y. Harvey, who is also a writer.
Her schooling took place in England and Switzerland when she was a teenager. When she returned to Australia, she pursued her writing career. She wrote many plays, for radio and stage, that won competitions allowing them to be produced, two of which were produced by ABC Radio National.
Click here to see the full Austlit page for Joan Harvey.
The Herald, 21 Nov. 1934, p. 7
Harvey used the "typical Australian setting" in most of her writing, the same can be said for her first radio play, Light Breaking Through, which placed 3rd in the ABC One-Act Play Competition in 1934. It centres around three characters, a husband, a wife, and a stranger, living "among the tea-tree on the Mornington Peninsula" (The Herald, 14) in Southern Victoria. Light Breaking Through was produced for radio in January 1935 under the direction of Frank D. Clewlow.
The one-act play revolves around the husband and wife trying to decide whether the husband should accept a job offer. To do so they leave the pressures of the big city and are met by the stranger. A copy of the manuscript is available at the University of New England.
The Labor Daily, 3 Jan. 1935, p. 10
The Hidden Valley was one of two plays chosen to mark the opening of the new Brisbane studio in Queen Street on Thursday 26 January 1939. The other play was The Jeweller's Shop by Henrietta Drake-Brockman. Both Harvey's play and Drake-Brockman's play were produced in the Brisbane studio by Dion Wheeler, a well-known radio producer of the time.
Before making it's way on to radio, The Hidden Valley placed in the One-Act Play competition hosted by the Australian Broadcasting Commission and the Dramatists' Club. The play, along with five others, was read aloud at the Little Theatre in South Yarra on Saturday 12 October 1935. It was commemorated for the way it truthfully presented the people and landscape in the Australian outback.
The North Western Courier, 19 Jan. 1939, p. 7
Catherine Shepherd was born in 1902. For over 20 years, she lived with relatives in Yorkshire, England. She completed her education at many esteemed institutions throughout the UK, including Howell's School in Denbigh, Wales, and University College in London.
In the mid-1920s, Shepherd returned to Australia with her mother. Almost a decade later, after writing for the stage, travelling through Europe, and teaching in New South Wales, she began writing scripts for ABC Radio National.
Click here to see the full Austlit page for Catherine Shepherd.
The Mercury, 20 Jul. 1938, p. 3
Shepherd's adaptation was the first adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's five-act play, Peer Gynt, in Australia. Ibsen's play was known as one of the longest plays ever written in its time. Shepherd managed to edit it down for radio "to two hours with an interval." (Sunday Mail, 28)
Shepherd has also made many other adaptations from Ibsen's works, including The Wild Duck and Ghosts.
There was a lot of money to be made in adaptation as there was a need to change location and Americanisms if it was needed. Shepherd has also adapted many other notable authors' and playwrights' works for the radio, such as Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Dickens.
The Gosford Times and Wyong District Advocate, 4 Dec. 1953, p. 4
Catherine Shepherd wrote Jane, My Love for the stage. Critics praised it for its research and accuracy. The play was based on the true story of Sir John and Lady Franklin, who lived in Hobart.
A year later, Shepherd wrote a radio drama called The Franklins of Hobart Town, which was an abridged adaptation of Jane, My Love.
The radio drama was produced by Eric John and aired on Monday 2 June 1952.
The Mercury, 26 Sep. 1951, p. 17
Kathleen Carroll was a writer for Australian radio from the 1940s to the 1970s. Before this, she worked as a journalist and copywriter, and during the war worked in a munition factory.
Throughout her 20s, she wrote and directed plays for the Chelsea Dramatic Club, one of her most notable plays featured an all-woman cast. In her late 20s, she began writing for radio and attached herself to Grace Gibson productions, which she did most of her writing for, even when she was freelancing. She helped Gibson adapted Dr Paul for an Australian audience and continued to work on it serial until 1977.
Carroll had no interest in writing for television, so she decided to leave her life as a writer. In the 1980s she did a few interviews where she shared her experience as a scriptwriter for radio.
Kathleen Carroll died in 1999.
Click here to see the full Austlit page for Kathleen Carroll.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 Apr. 1940, p. 4
Like Kay Keavney's serial, Nurse White, Kathleen Carroll's series, Famous Fortunes was advertising household products that were directed at women. Famous Fortunes was advertised with Southern Electric appliances, such as refrigerators, washing machines, and radios. The surrounding advertising, on the same page, was also directed at women, including advertising for fashion and beauty products.
The serial, itself, was based on true accounts of famous "men and women who amassed the world's major wealth" (Crittenden, 2). Each episode was a complete story and looked into the lives of people such as Andrew Carnegie, King Gillette, and Sir Thomas Lipton. It was produced by well-known female radio producer, Grace Gibson, and contributing writers included Michael Noonan and Ross Napier.
South Coast Times and Wollongong Argus, 9 Mar. 1953, p. 6
Office Interlude was Carroll's first play. It was written for the stage in 1940 and performed that year in both Sydney and Brisbane.
The play was popular during its time as it had an all-female cast, "a characteristic which endears any piece to producers in wartime." (DWL, 17) Due to the outbreak of war, the Chelsea Players Group, who Carroll wrote for, was lacking male cast mates. It followed the lives of the female employees in a corporate office.
The dialogue and drama were highly reviewed, capturing the real issues of working women at the time.
The Mercury, 11 Oct. 1944, p. 14
Aura Jackson, nee Zalacostas, was born in Greece in the late 1910s. Her family came to Australian when her father, an engineer, came to Australia to change the telephone from manual to automatic (Smith's Weekly, 13).
She had been writing since that age of 13 and had her first story published when she was 15 years old. Throughout her teens, she wrote for the Jewel Casket in the comics and children's section and The Sun's "Sunbeams" section.
After she married, she wrote many short stories under the name Aura Z. Jackson. When her husband died in 1943, she started writing professionally to provide for her two sons.
Her first radio play was accepted in 1933. She had a strong female voice in her pieces, something she acquired growing up with four sisters.
Due to her strong work ethic and spending time with her children, she never had time to listen to her serials.
Click here to see the full Auslit page for Aura Z. Jackson.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 Dec. 1953, p. 11
Aura Jackson focused a lot of her radio plays around the lives and dramas for women. All of her radio plays fell under the soap opera or 'drip drama' category and were played during the day. As this genre was focused on women, it was no surprise that her radio played surrounded female protagonists.
Susan Lee revolves around a hospital, with character, Susan Lee, as a patient. It focuses on the relationships Susan makes along the way. The serial was sponsored by Kolynos Dental Cream, who eventually merged with Colgate-Palmolive in the mid-1990s.
Some of her other radio plays that focused on women, included, My Husband's Love and Final Year.
Sunday Times, 9 Apr. 1944, p. 3
Taffy Was An Orchid was one of the many short stories written by Aura Jackson for publication. Most of her short stories were published in The Sun, The Australian Women's Weekly, and The Daily Telegraph.
Taffy Was an Orchid is about the love-hate relationship between Jane Marsh and Taffy, an air-force tender at Duntroon Rd. Taffy was considered a bachelor who falls for Jane, but he must work for her affection.
The political climate influenced a lot of Aura Jackson's works at the time, often including a soldier character or espionage theme. She also often based a few of her stories on Greek folktales.
The Australian Women's Weekly, 12 Sep. 1942, p. 6
At the age of 25, having just graduated with a Bachelor of Art from the University of Sydney, Gwen Meredith began her writing career. She started with scripts written for stages, producing them through the Chelsea Theatre Group. Her first full-length play was staged in all Australian capital cities in 1944.
In 1940, her radio play The Opportunist won Listener's Choice award in the ABC Play Competition. This opened Meredith's radio career; she wrote many serials and dramas for all ages. One of her most well-known is The Lawsons. Critics commented on her natural dialogue and loveable characters.
In the late 1950s, her script writing was picked up for television where she wrote for Autumn Affair.
Click here to see the full Austlit page for Gwen Meredith.
Brisbane Telegraph, 11 Feb. 1949, p. 18
The Lawsons was most well-known radio serials in Australia. It was originally intended to urge farmers to grow food for war. Meredith was hired due to her rural background, believing she would be able to connect with farmers through her writing. When the show aired, it became popular with the intended audience but also in every household around Australia.
In 1948, Gwen Meredith adapted the serial in a book. And in 1950, she had adapted it for the stage. After 1299 episodes, in 1949, The Lawsons came to an end. Later that same year, Meredith began writing on another serial, the prequel to The Lawsons, Blue Hills.
Blue Hills remained on the air for almost 30 years, in that time Gwen Meredith also adapted it into a book series published by Angus and Robertson.
The Sun, 19 Jan. 1949, p. 2
Autumn Affair started in 1958 as a series on Channel 7's morning show. The series was Australia's first ever televised soap opera, and most of the actors and writers were well-known in the radio industry, including Queenie Ashton.
The series ran for 156 episodes and starred Muriel Steinbeck as Julia, the protagonist of the story. The story followed the love-triangle of Julia Parrish and the lives of her friends and family.
The 15-minute episodes aired on ATN 7 (Channel 7 in Sydney), and GTV 9 (Channel 9 in Melbourne).
The Australian Women's Weekly, 5 Nov. 1958, p. 66