Wuthering Heights (1959 film)

Wuthering Heights is a 1959 Australian television play adapted from Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. It was directed by Alan Burke and based on a script by Nigel Kneale which had been filmed by the BBC in 1953 in a TV play starring Richard Todd. It was made at a time when Australian drama production was rare.[3][4]

Wuthering Heights
Directed byAlan Burke
Written byNigel Kneale
Based onnovel by Emily Brontë
StarringLew Luton
Delia Williams
Production
company
ABC
Distributed byABC
Release date
28 October 1959 (live, Sydney)[1]
9 December Melbourne (recorded)[2]
Running time
100 mins
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish

Cast

Production

The story was mostly filmed live, but some segments were pre-recorded around Sydney.[5] Lew Luton was a DJ and presenter of teen shows at the time.[6] Brunette Annette Andre dyed her hair blonde so as to contrast with dark-haired Delia Williams.[7]

Reception

Wuthering Heights was one of three plays that Alan Burke directed that year. He said they all received "tiny ratings" and that Wuthering Heights "was too large for our television conditions, and things went wrong."[8]

The TV critic for The Sydney Morning Herald thought the play was "straightforward enough in its story-telling and sufficiently wide-ranging in its techniques" but "hardly ever caught the necessary brooding Gothic spirit of the time, the place and the situation." He criticized Lew Luton as being too often "merely surly, when he should have been daemonic, and in general failed to reconcile his desire to work like a twentieth century actor." Other actors were praised, and Alan Burke's direction was called "carefully smooth; but there were moments when the spirit of the production was closer to Stella Gibbons than to Emily Brontë."[9]

The reviewer for The Age said the play was disappointing and that "the atmosphere of bleakness and howling winds was not created with realism. Noises off were much too prevalent. The casting was not up to standard. . . . Luton showed a lack of understanding on the part of both actor and producer."[10]

gollark: Sinthorion wished for it to be real, so I am criticizing it.
gollark: Wow, how bad.
gollark: Telepathy sounds less convenient than email. What if I want to send a file? Do I just have to very slowly encode it in a sequence of emotions?
gollark: How exciting.
gollark: > I wish 40k was real ÅAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆ

See also
  • List of live television plays broadcast on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1950s)

References
  1. "TV Guide". Sydney Morning Herald. 26 October 1959. p. 22.
  2. "Untitled". The Age. 3 December 1959. p. 13.
  3. Vagg, Stephen (18 February 2019). "60 Australian TV Plays of the 1950s & '60s". Filmink.
  4. "Wuthering Heights live on TV". ABC Weekly. 28 October 1959. p. 10.
  5. "T.V. Highlights". The Biz. New South Wales, Australia. 28 October 1959. p. 11. Retrieved 21 May 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. "Lew Luton Back". Sydney Morning Herald. 2 September 1972. p. 5.
  7. Marshall, Valda (25 October 1959). "TV Merry Go Round". Sydney Morning Herald. p. 111.
  8. Interview with Alan Burke
  9. "Wuthering Heights on ABN". Sydney Morning Herald. 29 October 1959. p. 11.
  10. Janus (17 December 1959). "Disappointing TV Drama". The Age.


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