Hey, Dorian Gray, today is the first day of our last days
The good news is that I slept almost nine hours. The bad news is that I have felt terrible since waking up, which seems unfair since one of the last things I saw before bed, courtesy of ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rushthatspeaks, was the plausible rediscovery of silphium. I had peculiar dreams suggesting the science fiction of M. John Harrison adapted with the budget of the BBC Quarry. I feel like every time I look at the news some actor or writer or otherwise artistically interesting person has died and here we are stuck with all manner of justices and politicians the earth would be lighter without. In less grievous annoyances, I have just found a six-minute excerpt of a fifty-year-old television play I have been hunting for more than a decade without success—I became re-obsessed with it in the spring after discovering the original stage cast and tracking down a script—which means there is at least one copy out there that doesn't require visiting the BFI Mediatheque and it wasn't worth uploading in full?
What the hell: the play is John Mortimer's Bermondsey (1970). Originally produced as part of a quartet of one-acts collectively titled Come As You Are, the stage version starred Joss Ackland, Denholm Elliott, Glynis Johns, and Pauline Collins, and I want a time machine like burning because when it was adapted by Mortimer for an episode of Thirty-Minute Theatre in 1972, absolutely none of these people who were not exactly unknown to film and television transferred to the screen. Nonetheless, I have wanted to see it ever since it got on my radar in 2009 as part of a memorial series for Mortimer, because it turns out to be important queer TV.
I can't speak to any differences that may have been enacted for television, but the play in its published text is a jewel. It concerns a long-term, class-crossing, poly and bisexual relationship and it is not at all a tragedy; it is a sweet, wry, affirming snapshot of a thirty-eight-year-old publican and his boyfriend of the last eighteen years and his wife of the last twelve and his midlife crisis that sees him in danger of throwing both of them over for a barmaid half his age and serves as the catalyst for bringing this three-cornered marriage out in the open where the question isn't what the wife and the boyfriend think of one another, it's what the man they both love is going to decide to do about his life and their own. It doesn't read like radical drama. It reads like people's lives. Beyond the ending which makes use of one of my two favorite Christmas carols, since it is of course a solstitial story, I love best the alliance that establishes itself between Iris and Pip, who are not jealous of one another and never have been, but need to have the conversation to find it out. "Look," she says finally, trying to reassure the godfather of her children that he's not about to be sent packing for Christmas, "it's quite natural to me. It's the people that don't fancy him I can't understand."
In any case, if you too would like to see the six minutes from the television version that unsensationally introduce Bob and Pip as lovers, they are currently on YouTube. It's not actually the first same-sex kiss in the history of British TV because as far as I can tell that happened in a 1970 BBC Edward II with Ian McKellen, but it's a quite good kiss and I had only seen a production still of it previously. The scene around it is beautifully acted. I just wish the rest of the play were available with it.
It is not impossible to bake honeycakes in a toaster oven, it's just silly, and yet here we are.
rushthatspeaks, was the plausible rediscovery of silphium. I had peculiar dreams suggesting the science fiction of M. John Harrison adapted with the budget of the BBC Quarry. I feel like every time I look at the news some actor or writer or otherwise artistically interesting person has died and here we are stuck with all manner of justices and politicians the earth would be lighter without. In less grievous annoyances, I have just found a six-minute excerpt of a fifty-year-old television play I have been hunting for more than a decade without success—I became re-obsessed with it in the spring after discovering the original stage cast and tracking down a script—which means there is at least one copy out there that doesn't require visiting the BFI Mediatheque and it wasn't worth uploading in full?What the hell: the play is John Mortimer's Bermondsey (1970). Originally produced as part of a quartet of one-acts collectively titled Come As You Are, the stage version starred Joss Ackland, Denholm Elliott, Glynis Johns, and Pauline Collins, and I want a time machine like burning because when it was adapted by Mortimer for an episode of Thirty-Minute Theatre in 1972, absolutely none of these people who were not exactly unknown to film and television transferred to the screen. Nonetheless, I have wanted to see it ever since it got on my radar in 2009 as part of a memorial series for Mortimer, because it turns out to be important queer TV.
I can't speak to any differences that may have been enacted for television, but the play in its published text is a jewel. It concerns a long-term, class-crossing, poly and bisexual relationship and it is not at all a tragedy; it is a sweet, wry, affirming snapshot of a thirty-eight-year-old publican and his boyfriend of the last eighteen years and his wife of the last twelve and his midlife crisis that sees him in danger of throwing both of them over for a barmaid half his age and serves as the catalyst for bringing this three-cornered marriage out in the open where the question isn't what the wife and the boyfriend think of one another, it's what the man they both love is going to decide to do about his life and their own. It doesn't read like radical drama. It reads like people's lives. Beyond the ending which makes use of one of my two favorite Christmas carols, since it is of course a solstitial story, I love best the alliance that establishes itself between Iris and Pip, who are not jealous of one another and never have been, but need to have the conversation to find it out. "Look," she says finally, trying to reassure the godfather of her children that he's not about to be sent packing for Christmas, "it's quite natural to me. It's the people that don't fancy him I can't understand."
In any case, if you too would like to see the six minutes from the television version that unsensationally introduce Bob and Pip as lovers, they are currently on YouTube. It's not actually the first same-sex kiss in the history of British TV because as far as I can tell that happened in a 1970 BBC Edward II with Ian McKellen, but it's a quite good kiss and I had only seen a production still of it previously. The scene around it is beautifully acted. I just wish the rest of the play were available with it.
It is not impossible to bake honeycakes in a toaster oven, it's just silly, and yet here we are.
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Forgive me if I'm retreading paths you've already exhausted, but did you contact the quaintly shady channel owner at robertsvideos.com ?
If you haven't, I can. robertsvideos.com lists a -- I am sure wholly legitimate -- DVD priced at $9.95, to be sent from Saskatchewan: http://robertsvideos.com/product.php3?invid=73639&ref=/browse.php3
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It's a really lovely play. I pursued it for years as a curiosity and then having read it, turned out to love it. I became actively surprised I had never heard of a local production—a queer poly play that hasn't dated since 1970? If I could direct, I'd probably be trying to. For the brief shining moment earlier this year before "Mick's 'Nostalgia' Channel" was pulled from YouTube, I crossed my fingers it would be among the television plays uploaded from the owner's personal archive, but it was not.
Forgive me if I'm retreading paths you've already exhausted, but did you contact the quaintly shady channel owner at robertsvideos.com ?
No forgiveness necessary—I have not, first because it didn't occur to me to look once I had established that the rest of the play was not in the channel, then because while I am cheerful to watch any number of things that fall off the back of the internet, I feel weird about paying for them. But I appreciate the information and the offer which I will think about. Ordering a DVD from Saskatchewan would undoubtedly prompt the BFI to come out with a John Mortimer box set.
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I love that while everyone involved is being sensibly cautious about whether it really is silphium or just an intriguingly close relative, it does seem to taste incredible.
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Do you remember anything about the actors or the adaptation or the music? (I feel like there must be someone on my friendlist who could identify it.)
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Aw, finding clips and things is very exciting! And also, wow, yes, that is indeed a cast they should have kept, but I suppose simultaneously a cast it would have been very easy to lose to other things.
It's not actually the first same-sex kiss in the history of British TV because as far as I can tell that happened in a 1970 BBC Edward II with Ian McKellen,
The whole first same sex kiss thing is deeply complicated because it depends what you count and there are about four first m/m same sex kisses on British TV, and at least two f/f. However, the first known m/m kiss on British television was in fact a decade earlier when Sean Connery had to kiss Richard Pasco just to find out why he was so sexy
(The f/f one is even odder actually, because all internet sources cite Girl from 1974, but there is, however discreetly shot, an f/f kiss in the 1968 Dracula, between Susan George and Suzanne Neve, and the thing is, no contemporary review has any comment to make on this - Mariocki and I conclude that there must be other examples like this, where it is either ambiguously shot or Because Literary/Vampires/French etc. and that's why it's hard to identify. But it does depend what you count. If you don't count because it's French or Literary Vampires, you do need to visit the 1970s.)
Nevertheless, the fact that Sean Connery deeply needed to kiss Richard Pasco one time should never go unmentioned in the category, I think. XD
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Thank you! This has been a very long stretch for me to be unremittingly not all right and I am tired of it in all senses.
And also, wow, yes, that is indeed a cast they should have kept, but I suppose simultaneously a cast it would have been very easy to lose to other things.
It was a half-hour! They could have made the time!
. . . Should you ever run across photographic evidence of the original stage production, please let me know.
However, the first known m/m kiss on British television was in fact a decade earlier when Sean Connery had to kiss Richard Pasco just to find out why he was so sexy
That's so bonkers, I am deeply disappointed it was not mentioned in every obituary when Connery died.
(I am, however, actually reassured, because 1970 seemed so late that I couldn't believe there hadn't been even a platonic or no-homo comedy smooch in some earlier decade, even a burninated one.)
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LOL. So inconsiderate!
This reminds me that Thirty Minute Theatre also (according to the TV Times write up) made a play they described as 30 mins of a "palm sweating customs examination." (Later on that night that was a programme on how to drive on roundabouts. TV was very exciting back then!)
. . . Should you ever run across photographic evidence of the original stage production, please let me know.
If I do and I remember anything about this conversation, I will, I promise! /o\
That's so bonkers, I am deeply disappointed it was not mentioned in every obituary when Connery died.
I found out because I was puzzled by the fact that there was a same sex kiss in The Shadow of the Tower (1972, m/m) and Dracula (1968; because same sex kisses happen when Mr Maxwell is around somehow??? He's not in them, though) and yet went without note despite the internet trying to tell me the first ones were in 1989 or 1994 or something, so I had to Google harder, and found that. Having just been watching Richard Pasco in the BBC Shakespeare Julius Caesar and As You Like It I was very amused! XD
It should definitely be mentioned more often. I think one site might actually have the clip?? I might be imagining things (but the best way to find it is to google Sean Connery Richard Pasco same sex kiss and not first same sex kiss, because you have to try harder.)
I'm still very intrigued by the Dracula one, because it is the earliest f/f either Mariocki or I have ever found, but we must assume it can't be the first because of there being no contemporary notice taken of it! (It's not even a tiny bit ambiguous, either; both in dialogue and execution.)
(It's longer than this but the next bit is hard to gif.)
(I've seen six Draculas now; this one remains the most queer by a very long mile so far.)
ETA: Anyway, the point is, there is totally good reason to imagine any number of quite discreet/filmed from the back same sex kisses in 60s TV that people had Serious Literature/Historial Excuses for. :-)
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I mean, depending on who was in it . . .
because same sex kisses happen when Mr Maxwell is around somehow??? He's not in them, though
A notorious oversight!
and yet went without note despite the internet trying to tell me the first ones were in 1989 or 1994 or something, so I had to Google harder, and found that.
I had never given it much thought until I saw someone on Tumblr claim that Bermondsey was the first m/m etc., of which I was frankly skeptical, but then what I found was multiple citations for the 1970 Edward II. Books might be out of date, but I expect better fact-checking from last month at the BBC Archive.
It should definitely be mentioned more often.
BFI Screenonline didn't seem to find it worth mentioning in their writeup on Colombe. (Their writeups are not infallible. The biographical information in the one for Borderline (1930) is actively incorrect.)
(I've seen six Draculas now; this one remains the most queer by a very long mile so far.)
That remains attractive.
Anyway, the point is, there is totally good reason to imagine any number of quite discreet/filmed from the back same sex kisses in 60s TV that people had Serious Literature/Historial Excuses for. :-)
I hope more of them come to light!
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To be fair, as I said, it depends what criteria you use to define the first kiss, and the 1960 would be discounted on a lot of grounds. The 1970 was the first one where there wasn't any other 'excuse' for it (as far as we know, but it seems likely enough). But if you're less strict than the BBC, there is the 1960 one as well!
A notorious oversight!
XD No. of random passing same sex kisses in all the old tv things I have watched for other people and reasons in 11 years = 0. JM = 2.
BUt not an oversight! JM doesn't kiss people; he just makes love to their hands. So, he could have providing pioneering same sex hand-holding, but anything more is a lot less likely. :-)
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It is discovered to be the case over the course of the story and I love it.
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Oh wow oh goodness.
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I really love this play!
(It isn't even jealousy, really, that Iris feels about Rosemary, the much younger barmaid, it's something more like danger: "She's nothing to do with Bob. She's not part of him. She's all in his mind, like the girls he gets on the brewery calendars, unzipping their jeans on black leather sofas. It's all a great big dream.")
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Thank you. I don't understand its obscurity. And a visit to the BFI feels increasingly remote.
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I'm guessing there's no hope of something equivalent to an interlibrary loan?
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I think the BFI Mediatheque is like the Paley Center in that there's a lot you can watch if you visit, but I don't know if you have any access to it if you don't. I suppose I could contact them. Bermondsey isn't even on BFI Player (which I can't watch from this country, but would mean that a legally streaming copy at least existed).
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I hope more sleep will produce more salubrious outcomes.
And I secretly love the idea of toaster-oven honeycakes. I hope they are lovely.
P.
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It reads very well! And from those six minutes, it plays even better.
(The rest of the quartet are comedies—two are rather slight sketches, the third is a pretty nice farce—and then there's just this treasure.)
I hope more sleep will produce more salubrious outcomes.
Thank you.
And I secretly love the idea of toaster-oven honeycakes. I hope they are lovely.
They were! There is not much left of the one we had after dinner. It went beautifully with almond whipped cream.
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Damn. I need a disc of this.
And obviously I approve of the dream.
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Everyone does! Lean on the BFI!
And obviously I approve of the dream.
Hee. Thank you.
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You're welcome!
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I mean, we might need to travel a bit into the future when there is a sustainable population to harvest from!
(Claudius' Etruscan dictionary, you're next.)