Afternoon of a Nymph

"Afternoon of a Nymph"
Armchair Theatre episode
Directed byPhilip Saville
Teleplay byRobert Muller
Original air dateSeptember 30, 1962 (1962-09-30)
List of episodes

Afternoon of a Nymph is an episode of the British Armchair Theatre series made by the ITV franchise holder ABC Weekend TV and first broadcast by the ITV network on 30 September 1962.[1] It was written by Robert Muller and features Janet Munro and Ian Hendry in the lead roles. It was directed by Philip Saville and produced by Sydney Newman.

The production was precorded at a time when plays were typically broadcast live. The script was published.[2]

Premise

A young woman, Elaine, wants to be an actress but struggles against the demands of the profession.

Cast

  • Janet Munro as Elaine
  • Ian Hendry as David Simpson
  • Peter Butterworth as Ronnie Grimble
  • Patrick Holt as Rogers
  • Jackie Lane as Ginger
  • Aubrey Morris as Joe, make-up man
  • Jeremy Lloyd as Lord Tony Bright)

Production

Sydney Newman recalled that Muller, a showbiz columnist, "thought he would like to try his hand at a TV play about the grind of an unknown curvy actress trying to succeed in the cutthroat showbiz world of randy men. I sicced Peter Luke onto Robert and eventually we got a dandy script, which, again, Philip Saville directed most imaginatively. "[3] According to Shirley Bassey's biographer, "it’s not hard to imagine that some of the inspiration for the play may have come from this encounter with a clearly troubled young Shirley."[4]

Reception

The second of Muller's seven plays for Armchair Theatre, Mark Duguid writes: "Although it lacks the cynical bite of, say, Alexander Mackendrick's The Sweet Smell of Success (US, 1957), Muller's script convincingly evokes the sordid shallows of showbiz."[1]

A contemporary reviewer, Maurice Wiggins in The Sunday Times described the play negatively as being "a pretentious affair".[5]

Variety wrote the "trouble with the script was that Muller cleverly and sharply drew the background and witty dialog, but he couldn't win much sympathy for Elaine."[6]

Hendry and Munro married in 1963.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c Duguid, Mark (2003–14). "Afternoon of a Nymph (1962)". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  2. ^ John Russell Taylor (ed.), Anatomy of a Television Play (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), 138-9 and 175-203.
  3. ^ Newman, Sydney (2017). Head of drama : the memoir of Sydney Newman. p. 324.
  4. ^ Williams, John (2010). Miss Shirley Bassey. p. 194.
  5. ^ White, Leonard (2003). Armchair Theatre: The Lost Years. Tiverton, Devon: Kelly Publications. p. 69.
  6. ^ "Armchair Theatre". Variety. 17 October 1962. p. 37.