Keen to see Ken Loach's landmark drama which created a national furore when seen in 1966 - was it the Wednesday Play, or Play for Today? Attracted huge audiences, followed by public outrage; an early repeat screening at the time and quickly fostered the founding of the housing charity Shelter. Black and white print, of course - colour TV was still two years away. It would be encouraging if the downbeat mood of our nation today could stimulate and rejuvenate a new perspective on the way forward with screenplays of clarity and searing intensity.
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I happen to have it on DVD, but did watch last night's IO thought very good Documentary of the Week on Beeb 2, "Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach". -
It was good, wasn't it?
I remember well the furore over Perdition but I thought then and still do that it was not the best judgment of his career.Comment
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It was broadcast as part of the Wednesday Play series - WP didn't transform into Play For Today until 1970. I'll always love the Wednesday Play theme music, which is so evocative of that period.
A great drama-doc that tells a terrible story. Those were Carol White's own children being 'taken away' from Cathy at the end.
Ray Brooks (Cathy's husband) went on to make a very good living from voiceovers.
For me, the only discordant note is when Geoffrey Palmer pops us an an estate agent early in the film. Not his fault - he wasn't hat well known at the time.Comment
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Carol White's own story is a sad one.Comment
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Indeed, jean. She did several well reviewed performances post Cathy Come Home before seeking stardom in Hollywood which failed. She took to drink and drugs and died in her early 50s in 1991.Originally posted by jean View Post
CCH still leaves me gutted and in 1966, the year of the documentary, I recall the fervour of the Wilson Labour government in wide scale housing schemes, albeit building blocks, - upturned shoe boxes we called them at the time! - which tackled the problem nationally but also created regret for the demolltion of housing estates and a sense of community.Comment
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Core boozianism and done on the cheap, with a lot of skimping - one of the biggest mass architectural scheme failures of all time. The extent to which the shine has rubbed off capitalism in the interim, particularly since it gave up presenting a glossy competing image pre Communism's collapse, reminds one just how outraged people then were about homelessness, which I just remember as a few voluntary tramps and alchoholics on the streets, while in my youthful sense of adventure I languished in smelly damp bedsits with dangerous coin-fed geysers, double gas rings, gas heaters and only one-bar functioning electric heaters, presided over by cantankerous landlords and ladies who put notices saying "Sorry, no blacks, no Irish no dogs" in newsagent's windows, and chucked one out onto the street if there was a whiff of ladies' perfume! There was usually another available if one got to the nearest phone box that worked the moment local daily paper came out with room lets. Of the many things about the 1960s that I look back nostalgically on, "housing improvements" weren't generally one of them.Originally posted by Stanley Stewart View PostComment
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