The House on the Corner is an early Australian television program which aired from 1957 to 1958. A 10-minute segment on Sydney station ATN-7, it was a drama about a family, and was produced by the Christian Television Association. Cast included Harry Howlett (who also wrote it), his wife also played a role, as well as Rosemary Barker and Annette Andre.[1]
| The House on the Corner | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Drama |
| Written by | Harry Howlett |
| Starring |
|
| Country of origin | Australia |
| Original language | English |
| No. of episodes | 4 |
| Production | |
| Producer | Harry Howlett |
| Running time | 10 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | ATN-7 |
| Release | 1957 – 1958 |
The series aired live, with the cast consisting mainly of amateurs drawn from church drama clubs.[2] It is not known if any of the episodes were kinescoped (note: kinescope recording was an early method of recording live television, used in the days before video-tape was widely available).
It was probably the first attempt at a dramatic TV series produced for Australian television, though not the first dramatic TV series produced in that country (overseas-financed children's series The Adventures of Long John Silver was the first in that regard, and pre-dated the introduction of television to Australia) Australian TV drama was relatively rare at the time.[3]
ATN next attempted drama with the series with Autumn Affair, a soap opera, and the well-received monthly anthology series Shell Presents (sharing production with GTV-9, which alternated in producing episodes). Other 1950s-era attempts at local television drama included twice-monthly one-off plays on ABC, and the short-lived GTV-produced hospital series Emergency.
Background edit
A condition of a commercial television station's licence was that it had to make available free pro-rate air time to the Christian religious dominations; ATN-7 had an allocated quarter hour on Sunday afternoon. The manager of ATN-7 in Sydney, Len Mauger, allowed Harry Howlett, a former actor and then executive for an association of Protestant churches, to use that quarter hour for a drama series. It was called The House on the Corner and was given the nickname The Brothel on the Bend.[4]
It was directed by David Cahill. According to Ailsa McPherson, who worked on the show as a script assistant, "it had a script with a social message and some highly dramatic scenes, with settings created by scavenging among the stock flats and properties available at ATN.[4] She said the actors would come into Seven's studio on Sunday afternoon and there was a camera rehearsal before transmission.[4]
See also edit
References edit
- ^ Vagg, Stephen (29 August 2020). "Annette Andre: My Brilliant Early Australian Career". FilmInk. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
- ^ "Television Parade". The Australian Women's Weekly. Vol. 24, no. 53. Australia. 5 June 1957. p. 4. Retrieved 2 May 2015 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ Vagg, Stephen (18 February 2019). "60 Australian TV Plays of the 1950s & '60s". FilmInk. Archived from the original on 15 January 2020. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
- ^ a b c McPherson, Ailsa (2007). "Dramas and dreams at Epping: early days of ATN-7's drama production". ACH: The Journal of the History of Culture in Australia (26). Australian Public Intellectual Network. Retrieved 16 July 2022 – via Gale OneFile.
