Murderous cads down under: Blue Murder and Heart Attack
Two Dial M for Murder knock-offs from George F. Kerr
I’ve written elsewhere about George F. Kerr, the English writer who emigrated to Australia and worked at the ABC for several years. This piece focuses on two of his original television plays, Blue Murder and Heart Attack.
Blue Murder was a 1959 mystery thriller about a young man who kills his actress mother. I’ll offer a synopsis below, with spoilers.
A producer, Martin Johnson (Hugh Stewart), arrives in Sydney hoping to persuade theatre star Thelma Lane-Forest (Nancye Stewart) to appear in a play. Thelma has not acted since her last stage appearance received bad notices, particularly one by Australian theatre critic Philip Gage (Colin Croft). Thelma has also arranged for a journalist, Lundy (Richard Davies), to “ghost” her life story. She has a son, Ricky (Ric Hutton, pictured above), who does interviews for television. Ricky is romantically involved with Jeanette Gage (Derani Scarr), the sister of Philip Gage who dislikes Ricky.
Lundy arrives at Thelma’s house on Sydney’s north shore, where he is met by Ricky who explains he has murdered his mother and intends to blame this on Lundy. Ricky then kills Lundy. Jeanette and Philip arrive at the house to discover the dead bodies of Thelma and Lundy. Ricky says that Lundy murdered his mother. While Jeanette believes him, Philip interrogates Ricky’s story and eventually figures out the truth.
According to TV Times, Blue Murder had its origins as a stage play Kerr was working on which he decided to turn it into a television script. He set it in Australia stating, “I believe one should write about the place one lives in.” It doesn’t really read like it takes place in Sydney though: rather, it’s set in “Dial M for Murder land” where everyone talks in quips, dresses formally, drinks lots of cocktails, and there’s always someone planning on murdering a relative. (Other Australian TV plays in this vein include In Writing, Funnel Web, It’s the Geography That Counts, The Big Killing, Write Me a Murder, and Heart Attack.)
Apparently, Blue Murder originally ran for 90 minutes but was reduced to 60 after it had been cast at the behest of director Ray Menmuir. The script probably could have been cut even more: the suspense is quite strong once Ricky kills his mother and Lundy turns up, but the early scenes feel like padding – Martin Johnson is a character introduced then doesn’t appear again, and the interrogation between Philip and Ricky went on too long. It feels like a stretch that Philip was an Australian theatre critic in London and is now in Sydney, and his sister loves Ricky.
Still, some of this was very entertaining and there is definite novelty in a theatre critic being the hero.
A hostile critique came from Frank Thring who, in his capacity as a TV critic for TV Week opined “an anticipatory shiver of cold foreboding ran through me when I saw the name of George F. Kerr attached” to the play, calling Blue Murder a “monstrously amateur little playlet” adding “anyone who could become involved in such a shambles of their own free will deserves all they get.” Tell us what you really think, Frank.
Blue Murder isn’t bad. There are some good moments. I just wish Kerr had written it to be really set in Australia.
Heart Attack aired shortly afterwards. The ABC had planned for its first TV drama production of 1960 to be an adaptation of Nigel Balchin’s novel Make Mine Executioner (you may recall the 1947 feature film with Burgess Meredith), directed by William Sterling in Melbourne. It was all cast and ready to go when a problem emerged locking down the rights – the ABC decided to get Kerr to whip up a quick play that could use the same cast and sets. What he came up with was Heart Attack.
Brian James, who was cast in the lead role of Mine Own Executioner, disliked the script so he quit and they replaced him with John Morgan instead; all the other cast returned. Morgan plays a doctor called Wynter, whose career is threatened by a blackmailer called Pearce (played by Edward Brayshaw) who has learned of Wynter’s affair with another woman (June Brunell). Pearce threatens to tell the doctor’s wife, Judith (Beverly Phillips), unless he is paid off. Dr Wynter does so but Pearce keeps asking for money, so Wynter decides the solution is murder. It was very Dial M for Murder like and took place entirely in London.
Reviewing the production, “Janus” of The Age said Heart Attack “had one of the feeblest plots ever peddled on Melbourne TV… 65 minutes of incoherent mush” and suggested the ABC “stick to imported scripts” for a while. That critic later said it “set Australian TV playwriting back several years” and then at the end of the year called it the worst Australian drama of the year. It was probably the most vicious sustained critical attack I have read on any Australian television play.
Frank Thring called Heart Attack a “turgid and interminable little essay in ennui… about which absolutely nothing was surprising except that it was directed by William Sterling who doesn’t usually waste his talents on the desert air and that during its treacly course Miss June Brunell gave a quite remarkable impersonation of Barry Humphries.”
The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald described it as a “routine medical-domestic drama… given a routine performance… the play had a kind of tired professional finish but no real originality in its plot or its techniques” in which the leads “all acted competency but without much real conviction.”
I read the script for Heart Attack. It’s not that bad. It’s padded and loses momentum. You can tell it was cranked out in a few days – although the ABC liked it enough to adapt it on radio.
Oh, and Mine Own Executioner was filmed by the ABC in April 1960. Janus said the production was a “waste of time”. But then Janus argued that the ABC should make less Australian dramas, so stuff him. There was plenty of good material out there, it’s just that the ABC wasn’t filming it.
(Originally published in 2021.)