Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows actor Ruth Cracknell speaking about her first acting job in a radio serial and describing how radio drama was made in front of a live audience. This is intercut with footage taken of a 1948 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast with a live audience watching actors on a stage deliver their lines into a microphone. The director–producer cues the sound effects operator, who has a 'sound effects box’, which is used to create the sounds of a car crash, a door slamming and the phone ringing. The clip concludes with Cracknell saying, almost whimsically, that she always wanted to do sound effects.

Educational value points

• The clip features actor Ruth Cracknell OAM (1925–2002). Cracknell’s career in radio, revue, theatre, television and film spanned 56 years, but it was through the role of Maggie Beare, the senile mother in Mother and Son (an Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program), that she became celebrated throughout Australia. Renowned as a comic and stage actor, Cracknell also appeared in a number of Australian films including Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Spider and Rose (1994) and Lilian’s Story (1995).

• Radio work formed an important part of Cracknell’s early career, particularly radio serials. Cracknell’s first professional engagement as an actor was in a radio drama called Ask Anne Carter in 1945. She went on to appear in a number of radio serials including the Lux Radio Theatre’s Young Wives Tales, Stairway to Fame (1954), The Right to Happiness (1950) and Sound of Thunder (1962–63). Cracknell notes in her memoir that 'Radio was the one sure source of income for the actor in the 1940s and early 1950s’.

• The Lux Radio Theatre, which ran from 1939 until 1951, was broadcast live to all states in Australia each Sunday at 8 pm and became a Sunday night institution. It was based on a very successful US version of the Lux Radio Theatre that presented a 1-hour re-enactment of a Broadway play or Hollywood film. Originally broadcast on 2GB and the Macquarie Network, the Lux Radio Theatre moved to 2UW and the Commonwealth Network in 1941.

• The clip includes footage of a radio play being performed in front of a live audience and also broadcast live. Unlike other radio plays, which were recorded in a studio or live in front of an audience for later broadcast, the Lux Radio Theatre sought to involve the audience by making the production as much like live theatre as possible. Attending the performance of a radio drama was a special occasion and the actors were expected to be glamorous and always appeared in evening dress.

• The radio play The Grant Case is shown being performed in 2UW studios in 1948 and footage is taken from a newsreel item that showed viewers what was involved in putting a radio play to air. The Grant Case was produced and directed by Dick Fair and it starred actors Muriel Steinbeck, John Saul and John McCallum.

• The clip indicates how sound effects were created live for radio dramas. At the time almost all sound effects were manual, although a few very basic sounds had been recorded on disc. The standard sound effects prop was a scaled-down door, which could be opened, rattled, slammed or knocked on as required. Sound effects operators often had a stressful job, particularly in commercial radio where they were not only responsible for creating effects and playing discs, but also had to operate microphones and faders.

• The producer–director of a radio drama had a very visible role on stage. Dick Fair, the producer–director featured in this clip, is introduced to the audience at the beginning of the play and then remains on stage where he cues actors and the sound effects operator.

This clip starts approximately 11 minutes into the documentary.

We see old footage of the Lux Radio Theatre, 1948 in front of a live audience. A man rings a large bell.

Radio announcer And here is the producer-director of the Lux Radio Theatre, Mr Dick Mayor.
Ruth Cracknell The first professional engagement in August 1945 …
Radio announcer John McCallum and Reginald Collins.
Ruth ... we’d get dressed up in evening dress and we’d be very glamorous and we’d all be lined up on chairs and there’d be a microphone in the centre of the stage and there was often a piano over there and there was a sound effects box with gravel and coconut halves for the horses’ hooves and a door which would open and shut and I always wanted to do sound effects really.

More footage of the Lux Radio Theatre and how the sound effects worked.