All Passion Spent (radio play)

All Passion Spent is a 1939 Australian radio play by Max Afford.

All Passion Spent
Wireless Weekly 29 Mar 1939
Genredrama play
Running time60 mins (8:00 pm – 9:00 pm)
Country of originAustralia
Language(s)English
Home station2FC
SyndicatesABC
Written byMax Afford
Directed byCharles Wheeler
Recording studioSydney
Original releaseMarch 30, 1939 (1939-03-30)
Wireless Weekly 11 Oct 1941

According to the Adelaide Mail "Afford has departed somewhat from his usual type of work. As a rule he writes thrillers, the type of play with which he first attracted notice."[1]

The play concerned "a narasitic hunger in old age—extreme old age—that devours youth... living in constant association with the aged' is frequenty very unwholesome for the young has been noted by many who cannot claim to be scientists."[2]

The play was popular and produced again in 1941.[3]

A copy of the script is at the University of Queensland's Fryer Library.

Premise

edit

According to Wireless Weekly the synopsis was as follows:

When Joan and Robert Mason came to the magnificent old guest home at "Greystones." they believed they had found their ideal place. There was an aura of antiquity about the place, of rest and repose, and perhaps it was this that influenced the personnel of the paying guests, all of whom were nearing the sunset of life, old folk in whom all passion was spent. Gradually the healthy young couple fell under the spell of the house, a sinister spell as Joan Mason discovered with the passing of the weeks. It worked, too, on Robert and on that gentle, hopeless, invalid, Muriel Weatherby. The magnetic attraction of the young, and virile for the aged and infirm form the theme of this unusual drama.[4]

References

edit
  1. ^ "New Type Of Play By Max Afford". The Mail (Adelaide). Vol. 27, no. 1, 400. South Australia. 25 March 1939. p. 13 (Magazine). Retrieved 24 October 2023 – via National Library of Australia.
  2. ^ "Radio Programme Points". Ouyen Mail. No. 1492. Victoria, Australia. 22 March 1939. p. 3. Retrieved 24 October 2023 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ^ "Australian S.-W. Broadcasts", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, 36 (41), October 11, 1941, nla.obj-722413113, retrieved 24 October 2023 – via Trove
  4. ^ "Thursday... March 30", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, 34 (1), Sydney: Wireless Press, March 29, 1939, nla.obj-723746983, retrieved 24 October 2023 – via Trove
edit