If you lie on the ground in somebody's arms, you'll probably swallow some of their history
I feel I must not have known there was a 1950 television broadcast of nearly the composite original cast of The Lady's Not for Burning or I would have complained vociferously about the BBC's failure to preserve it for posterity, specifically me.
I discovered its existence through its ringer of an Alizon, who appears in a 1973 production of Richard Hughes' Danger (1924), which despite loving two of its author's novels I had never heard of before tonight. It seems not actually to have been the first radio play commissioned and produced by the BBC, although canonized as such and influential. I am fascinated by the diegetic justification of the blacked-out mine for the audio-only presentation, like the epistolary frame of a weird tale—like the conceit of hearing only what comes over the telephone wires of Lucille Fletcher's Sorry, Wrong Number (1943). It is clever for the climax to depend on something which the audience has to be told about to understand has happened.
I came back from clearing the snow and frozen crust and slept on my mother's couch as if stunned. I hear from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch that Hestia has been imitating the action of a kaiju while he watches Godzilla films. It is reassuring to be able to do something extensively physical, but I would like to be doing something that involves thinking. Everything still feels dislocated, me included.
I discovered its existence through its ringer of an Alizon, who appears in a 1973 production of Richard Hughes' Danger (1924), which despite loving two of its author's novels I had never heard of before tonight. It seems not actually to have been the first radio play commissioned and produced by the BBC, although canonized as such and influential. I am fascinated by the diegetic justification of the blacked-out mine for the audio-only presentation, like the epistolary frame of a weird tale—like the conceit of hearing only what comes over the telephone wires of Lucille Fletcher's Sorry, Wrong Number (1943). It is clever for the climax to depend on something which the audience has to be told about to understand has happened.
I came back from clearing the snow and frozen crust and slept on my mother's couch as if stunned. I hear from
spatch that Hestia has been imitating the action of a kaiju while he watches Godzilla films. It is reassuring to be able to do something extensively physical, but I would like to be doing something that involves thinking. Everything still feels dislocated, me included.
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I had to look up kaiju, but I am not surprised that Hestia is imitating one, since she is redoubtable.
P.
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Gielgud there's at least some record of, in the portraits by Angus McBean and the Decca recording of the New York transfer cast in 1950, but Alec Clunes originated Thomas Mendip in its two-week workshop run at the Arts Theatre in 1948 and that photograph in the Radio Times is the first trace I've seen of him in the part!
I had to look up kaiju, but I am not surprised that Hestia is imitating one, since she is redoubtable.
Her brother was not the only one in the family to collect names: she is Cannonball Linsky when she needs to open a door.
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(And I hadn't realised that they had actually got some of the full RT magazines up there!)
It is reassuring to be able to do something extensively physical, but I would like to be doing something that involves thinking. Everything still feels dislocated, me included.
I hope that today was better balanced, or, idk, at least included another absorbing rabbit hole. ♥
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A friend of mine elsenet linked the New Vic article—it's the background to a new play inspired by the commissioning of Danger, although the description of a comedy-caper doesn't sound like one should worry too much about the relationship of inspiration to reality—and I started immediately trying to find out as much as I could about Danger, because I have loved A High Wind in Jamaica (1929) and In Hazard (1938) for years and never heard of their author as a radio pioneer, which you would think a prestigious series of reprints would mention. I wasn't able to find a recording of the original broadcast, partly because it looks as though a complete one doesn't survive, but that's how I ran across the 1973 anniversary production. I recognized Christopher Good from Danger UXB (1949) and Casting the Runes (1979) and recognized Carol Marsh by name but without remembering what from, so I looked her up and discovered a bunch of things I had seen her in and then The Lady's Not for Burning, which I most definitely had not.
(And I hadn't realised that they had actually got some of the full RT magazines up there!)
A significant rabbit hole, if it continues to have photographs I've never seen of performances I care about.
I hope that today was better balanced, or, idk, at least included another absorbing rabbit hole.
Thank you. I had an unexpectedly very bad night, so most of the day was off-kilter, but in the evening I ran a bunch of errands with
[edit] You should be entertained that in the process of looking around for more Christopher Good, I just fell through Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jeeves (1975) and By Jeeves (1996) and came out the other side with Martin Jarvis.
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A significant rabbit hole, if it continues to have photographs I've never seen of performances I care about.
Yes, indeed! :D
You should be entertained that in the process of looking around for more Christopher Good, I just fell through Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jeeves (1975) and By Jeeves (1996) and came out the other side with Martin Jarvis.
Lol, but, of course. I recognised his name, but apparently not enough to remember it was from the thing I finished watching quite recently. (And this even brings us almost right back to the beginning, because I think at the start, when you had only watched Varos (and I was trying to explain about the whole giant moth thing from the 60s), I linked you to this little video of him and Maureen O'Brien at a con, where she ribs him about playing Jeeves at the start of it (and gives him a chance to tell a favourite story from that): https://youtu.be/6dObkyvpw7Q?si=Q2k3A0GJ4NRzEl8L This isn't actually related to the giant moth; he has been in DW three times on TV and once on audio, and he's talking about DW TV appearance #2.)
Was the ALW the one that Steven Pacey was in, or am I thinking of something else? (I know he did musicals and I feel sure there was a J&W one, although maybe it was a later run or something; he'd be too young for a 1975 performance, I think - he was still pretty young when he started B7 in 1980, if not quite as young as Josette.)
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I ended up reading an entire book of miscellaneous Richard Hughes, too.
I recognised his name, but apparently not enough to remember it was from the thing I finished watching quite recently.
Oh, what was it?
I linked you to this little video of him and Maureen O'Brien at a con, where she ribs him about playing Jeeves at the start of it (and gives him a chance to tell a favourite story from that)
I did watch that! He is incredibly endearing in storyteller mode. "I hardly think so, sir, they haven't been invented yet."
Was the ALW the one that Steven Pacey was in, or am I thinking of something else?
No, that's it! He was Bertie in the 1996 London By Jeeves, which means he was not acting across from Martin Jarvis, because their Jeeves was Malcom Sinclair, but he did originate the rewritten part. (The two musicals seem to be very different, with very few songs and none of the book carrying over from the first version to the second. A cast recording of the 1975 Jeeves does exist, but Andrew Lloyd Webber is supposed to have suppressed it to the best of his ability. I find this unfairly hilarious.)
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Oh, what was it?
Oh, no, I just meant Danger UXB, which you said, forgetting of course that you might not realise I had just finished watching it.
No, that's it! He was Bertie in the 1996 London By Jeeves, which means he was not acting across from Martin Jarvis, because their Jeeves was Malcom Sinclair, but he did originate the rewritten part.
I thought it was something like that! I remembered he was in musicals and that the Jeeves thing was very confusing, which I think I found out when I was curious about their being a J&W musical.
A cast recording of the 1975 Jeeves does exist, but Andrew Lloyd Webber is supposed to have suppressed it to the best of his ability. I find this unfairly hilarious.
Some people have problems with things not existing; others have the reverse!! XD
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I had no idea. Did it live up to recommendations, despite the lack of James Maxwell and/or Suzanne Neve?
Some people have problems with things not existing; others have the reverse!!
I am now, of course, deeply invested in someday hearing the 1975 original cast recording.
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Oh, yes, it was v good! I just had a bit of a break with it - I seem to keep stopping and starting with TV lately, but I've been improving lately, and finished it off just recently. They found a lot of different takes on 'they disarm a bomb'. It was v impressive!
Not that it wouldn't have been improved by James Maxwell, though - IMO everything is! XD
I am now, of course, deeply invested in someday hearing the 1975 original cast recording.
Well, naturally. Sometimes a person has to find out how bad a thing is. /she says, still occasionally watching random episodes of the Cheapest Soap Ever Made (IN SPACE edition), Jupiter Moon from time to time.
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I'm glad! It was one of the first significant pieces of television I watched in high school and I found that it more than held up when returned to in 2022. (We chased it with Powell and Pressburger's The Small Back Room (1949), after which we ran out of narratives about WWII bomb disposal I could recommend off the top of my head.)
Sometimes a person has to find out how bad a thing is. /she says, still occasionally watching random episodes of the Cheapest Soap Ever Made (IN SPACE edition), Jupiter Moon from time to time.
Thank you for understanding.
[edit] In classic fashion, Christopher Good turned up tonight as a Drones Club-style silly-ass sidekick in Bullshot (1983), a brilliantly stupid parody of Bulldog Drummond translated from a popular and long-running stage show, which as far as we can tell means they had a budget for the giant octopus and could get the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band to do the music. Highly recommended, cinematic dumbassery at its finest.
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I can't find an image of him in Danger UXB, but he's a Captain Miles West who usually shows up in conjunction with advances in enemy technology; at least one of his appearances is a lecture on new fuses and their counteraction; basically he's an infodump with an interestingly bony face. In the cold open of ITV's Casting the Runes [Internet Archive, by way of hopeful illustration], he's John Harrington in the long red scarf, which means he isn't Edward Petherbridge and he isn't long for this world, either. I think I became fond of him because he threw himself so seriously into being run down and rent to death by an invisible demon without benefit of special effects. His looks like a mostly bit-part filmography, so having him turn up in a film was entertaining on top of the film itself.
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At least the 1974 production (my wife's favorite) remains extant.
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I know it is vanishingly unlikely that any television broadcast in 1950 would have been recorded, but I still object!
At least the 1974 production (my wife's favorite) remains extant.
Why is that her favorite? (I haven't seen it. I have only seen the play live, but I have been lucky enough to see it twice.)
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Glad you were able to move your body a bit; hope you're able to re-locate soon.
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Well, she came home from the vet—yearly physical, delayed a month—and promptly knocked over a pile of papers in my office so that she could sit on the cardboard underneath them.
Glad you were able to move your body a bit; hope you're able to re-locate soon.
Thank you. I need sleep and I need not to have crises one another another. It would be nice.