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Australian television series From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
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]
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