During the artic vortex which swept through the nation , this reviewer snuggled under a blanket on a recliner in the tropics and watched on TV the warming 1959 Americanised film version of the highly successful Australian play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, by Ray Lawler , starring Ernest Borgnine, Anne Baxter, John Mills and Angela Lansbury, the latter with a confected Aussie nasally voice, sounding like Madge the friendly manicurist in the old Palmolive dishwashing liquid television advertisement .
In fact, Lansbury is shown , below, a widow named Pearl , giving a manicure in a barber shop...not sure if she used dishwashing liquid... but was advised to use a blowtorch on the hardened canecutter's nails.
In fact, Lansbury is shown , below, a widow named Pearl , giving a manicure in a barber shop...not sure if she used dishwashing liquid... but was advised to use a blowtorch on the hardened canecutter's nails.
While Lawler's play was set in Carlton, Melbourne , the film switched it to Sydney, with shots of Bondi, the Harbour Bridge and Luna Park . It seems Melbourne is more suited for movies about the end of the world, such as On The Beach ,starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner,Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins .
American actor Ernest Borgnine played the lead role of "Roo", a tough itinerant Queensland canecutter who, during the off season , comes south with his mate, Barny, and teams up with his girlfriend of 17 years , Olive, a barmaid , each year presenting her with a Kewpie Doll.
The Yanks sexed up the story, inserted a dash of Disneyland by placing some of the action inside a toy factory, where Kangaroos are being mass produced for the Christmas market , instead of a dreary Victorian paint factory, as written by Lawler.
Roo is a handyman in the factory and gets about in a dustcoat bearing ROO in large letters . In one part he is seen loading boxes of kangas , below, onto the back of a truck , a neon sign for the national airline TAA and the Harbour Bridge in the background.
American actor Ernest Borgnine played the lead role of "Roo", a tough itinerant Queensland canecutter who, during the off season , comes south with his mate, Barny, and teams up with his girlfriend of 17 years , Olive, a barmaid , each year presenting her with a Kewpie Doll.
The Yanks sexed up the story, inserted a dash of Disneyland by placing some of the action inside a toy factory, where Kangaroos are being mass produced for the Christmas market , instead of a dreary Victorian paint factory, as written by Lawler.
Roo is a handyman in the factory and gets about in a dustcoat bearing ROO in large letters . In one part he is seen loading boxes of kangas , below, onto the back of a truck , a neon sign for the national airline TAA and the Harbour Bridge in the background.
This writer was overcome with nostalgia and nearly fell out of his rocker in the part dealing with a romp at Luna Park with its river caves, Coney Island mirror maze and the Big Dipper , as I had disported myself there with a considerable number of young journalists back in the 1950s , on one occasion proudly winning a plaster Collie or German Shepherd dog for a nurse called Geraldine with my incredible skill at hoopla . Those were the days.
While the play received a poor response in America , mainly because the audiences had trouble understanding the Australian vernacular , it did result in the film version, which upset many, but was seen as a great aid to our immigration drive to populate or perish to prevent being over-run by marsupials . In America the film was released under the steamy title , Season of Passion.
In Lawler's final dramatic scene in the play he had Roo smashing the doll in rage when tearful Olive turns down his proposal of marriage. The Yanks, however, made a happy ending to the film with Olive and Roo smiling and laughing loving at each other over the bar in a pub which sells Bex headache powders and cut sandwiches , no sheilas seen breasting the bar with the boys in those brave days when real Aussie men drank with each other and were interested in Kewpie dolls .
Anyway, The Doll play was a smash hit in Australia, made a big impression in the UK, where Lawler played Barny, Roo's offsider, and an aspiring actor Richard Pratt also trod the boards , later becoming the Melbourne millionaire paper products company chief who, with his wife, supported the arts in a big way .
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London theatre programme in Little Darwin Collection .
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In Lawler's final dramatic scene in the play he had Roo smashing the doll in rage when tearful Olive turns down his proposal of marriage. The Yanks, however, made a happy ending to the film with Olive and Roo smiling and laughing loving at each other over the bar in a pub which sells Bex headache powders and cut sandwiches , no sheilas seen breasting the bar with the boys in those brave days when real Aussie men drank with each other and were interested in Kewpie dolls .
