Radio: Snake Gully

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30529, 26 August 1964, Page 8

Radio: Snake Gully

When 3YA broadcasts the final episode of “Dad and Dave” on Friday evening, the station will have passed a landmark in Australasian broadcasting. - , The 2276-episode Australian serial about a family from the farming community of Snake Gully has taken nearly 24 years to play. Part of the first episode, originally broadcast from 3YA on October 1, 1940, can be heard on Friday as well as an interview in which Warren Toogood recalls making the serial in its early years. The serial was made by George Edwards and his company for an Australian sponsor, It was first broadcast in. Australia in 1937.

Lorna Bingham, who played the role of Annie Morton right through the series, is believed to have written all the episodes. Her mother, Loris Bingham, was the first Mum, and Edwards started by playing four roles himself— Dad, Alf Morton, Ted Ramsay, and Old Hans (a rouseabout who lasted about 1000 episodes). One of the big events of the “Dad and' Dave” year was the Snake Gully Cup, run on the same night as the Melbourne Cup. .It was recorded well in advance and in great secrecy—many big office sweeps hinged on the result —with a commentary recorded by one of Australia’s top racing commentators. “Dad and Dave” was defunct mainly because of the death, of the principal players, Toogood said. ' “It was a big part of the real life of Australia—so much so that the characters were looked' on as real people,” he said. “We have had many instances to prove this. When Dave and Mabel

were married the studio received many wedding presents. When, in due time, their twins arrived, there were even parcels of clothing sent. “The early shows were cut straight on to disc—ait the rate of six episodes a morning. Acting had to be accurate. We used to get our scripts the' night before. We would study them and we were prepared to go to the studio the next day and cut them cold. These were wax discs. If you made a mistake then it all had to start again. So if anyone kept making a mistake his part would soon be cut out of the script” Schubert Cycle The world of Schubert’s “Die Winterreise” is one of unrelieved sadness—neither nature nor humanity offer solace to the wanderer as he passes through the winter landscape, from one bleak episode to another, on his way towards the final tragedy. A new recording of the song cycle sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Gerald Moore (piano) can be heard from 3YC on Sunday evening. Musset Play

The French dramatist, Alfred de Musset, wrote most of his plays for publication and not for performance and so they are free of early-nineteenth-century theatrical conventions. After one was performed with success in 1847 he was plagued by requests for new works. Eventually, he wrote the one-act “On ne sauriat penser a tout ” The play (3YA, Sunday after-, noon) is a farce. about absentmindedness. Racial Island

The essayist and literary critic, V. S. Pritchett, led

what he calls a double life— Western and Oriental— on his recent journey to. Iran. In a talk (3YA, Saturday) he describes Iran as a country “strange, but not totally strange ... Iran may be rather Russian; it may be Asiatic: but in fact it is an old racial island in the land ocean of Asia ...”

M.G.M. wanted her as a prestige star butwas unable to make satisfactory plans for further* films. Typ independent company projects for Garbo films in 1948-50 collapsed due to moniy troubles.

Come-back Reports Hardly a year haj gone by since without repqrts of a Garbo come-back. Last year, for instance, during It he London season of the Glrbo festival she was a guest <rf the producer, Sam Spiegal' on his yacht bn the Mediterranean and was reported to bethinking over a filta-role offer. Reports of the Londih season of the festival say it was greeted with “a clamdpr of astonishment, tribute, Raise and discovery.” Its success was attributed not to a siasm

of nostalgia but to a hew generation of Garbo fans-an estimated three-quarters V of the audience would have bten too young to have seen tie films before. Romantic Roles ' The films in the festival will each run for three days in Christchurch. : Garbo plays, great romantic roles in the first pair of films, Marguerite Gautier in "Camille”. (1936), Dumas’s drama of renunciation and reconciliation, with Robert Taylor as

Armand, and Tolstoi’s “Anna Karenina" (1935) with Fredric March. In the comedy “Ninotchka” (1935), with Melvyn Douglas, she plays the Soviet special envoy who arrived in Paris full of statistics and preconceived ideas about capitalistic society. This film was apparently revived in Italy during the 1948 election at the request of the American State Department Swedish Queen Garbo nearly retired in 1932. She returned to Sweden in 1932 when her first contract with M.G.M. ran out and made her return conditional on the filming of “Queen Christina” (1933) in which she played a Swedish queen involved in a romance with a Spanish envoy, played by John Gilbert.

The fifth film in the festival is “Marie Waleska” (1934) with Charles Boyer as Napoleon. The film cost 2.8 million dollars—an enormous sum for the depression years. Garbo’s last film, “TwoFaced Woman” (1941) was i not a great success and M.G.M. '.refused to reissue it until last 'pear. She was presented as an , kll-American glamour girl, a - Ki instructor who posed as a i ymp to win back the love of ■ ter wealthy husband (Melvyn Inuglas).