Afternoon of a Nymph

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"Afternoon of a Nymph"
Armchair Theatre episode
Directed by Philip Saville
Teleplay by Robert 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. [2]

Contents

The production was precorded at a time when plays were typically broadcast live. The script was published. [3]

Premise

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

Cast

Production

Afternoon of a Nymph was Muller's first play. [4] 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. " [5] Muller had interviewed a young Shirley Bassey in November 1958; according to her biographer John L. Williams, who described the interview as "exceptionally revealing" and Afternoon of a Nymph as "a damning account of the explotation of a starlet", "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." [6]

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". [7]

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." [8]

Hendry and Munro married in 1963. [1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Duguid, Mark (2003–14). "Afternoon of a Nymph (1962)". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  2. ↑ Vagg, Stephen (6 January 2024). "Girl-next-door or girl-gone-bad: The Janet Munro Story". Filmink. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  3. ↑ John Russell Taylor (ed.), Anatomy of a Television Play (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), 138-9 and 175-203.
  4. ↑ Joseph, Michael (1980). 25 Years on ITV. London: Independent Television Books Ltd. p. 85. ISBN   0 900727 81 0 . Retrieved 19 July 2025.
  5. ↑ Newman, Sydney (2017). Head of drama : the memoir of Sydney Newman. p. 324.
  6. ↑ Williams, John (2010). Miss Shirley Bassey. pp. 193–197.
  7. ↑ White, Leonard (2003). Armchair Theatre: The Lost Years. Tiverton, Devon: Kelly Publications. p. 69.
  8. ↑ "Armchair Theatre". Variety. 17 October 1962. p. 37.
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