Eleanor Witcombe in 2017.
Screenwriter and playwright Eleanor Witcombe, whose most enduring works were the adaptations of My Brilliant Career and The Getting of Wisdom, has died in Sydney. She was 95.
My Brilliant Career producer Margaret Fink, who hired Witcombe to adapt Miles Franklin’s 1901 novel, a coming-of-age story about a headstrong young woman played by Judy Davis, tells If: “Her contribution to the film is incalculable.”
She began her professional career as a playwright in 1948 when the Mosman Children’s Theatre Club commissioned her to write three plays for children: Pirates at the Barn, The Bushranger and Smugglers Beware.
In 1952 she left for two years’ work and study in London. On her return she wrote one-hour adaptations of plays, books, and stories for ABC radio, the Lux Radio Theatre and the Macquarie Radio Theatre.
She also wrote the books for stage musicals A Ride on a Broomstick and Mistress Money for the Philllip Street Theatre.
Screenwriter and playwright Eleanor Witcombe, whose most enduring works were the adaptations of My Brilliant Career and The Getting of Wisdom, has died in Sydney. She was 95.
My Brilliant Career producer Margaret Fink, who hired Witcombe to adapt Miles Franklin’s 1901 novel, a coming-of-age story about a headstrong young woman played by Judy Davis, tells If: “Her contribution to the film is incalculable.”
She began her professional career as a playwright in 1948 when the Mosman Children’s Theatre Club commissioned her to write three plays for children: Pirates at the Barn, The Bushranger and Smugglers Beware.
In 1952 she left for two years’ work and study in London. On her return she wrote one-hour adaptations of plays, books, and stories for ABC radio, the Lux Radio Theatre and the Macquarie Radio Theatre.
She also wrote the books for stage musicals A Ride on a Broomstick and Mistress Money for the Philllip Street Theatre.
- 11/5/2018
- by The IF Team
- IF.com.au
Bruce Beresford’s proto-Mean Girls drama shines thanks to its teenage lead Susannah Fowle and Barry Humphries’ appearance in a deadly serious role
Rightly regarded as one of the finest films ever made about Australian adolescents, the director Bruce Beresford’s 1978 drama The Getting of Wisdom exists in a space unaffected by time. It’s hard to imagine the film’s themes – from puberty-related growing pains to repressive institutions and comparisons between small-town and big-city life – ever going out of fashion. And the story is so well told, with such attention to detail and an implicit understanding of the rhythms required for interesting drama, it has aged not a jot over three and a half decades.
Adapted from the author Henry Handel Richardson’s novel, the film is a tale about growing up, the title another spin on “coming of age”. And its central location, an exclusive Melbourne ladies college,...
Rightly regarded as one of the finest films ever made about Australian adolescents, the director Bruce Beresford’s 1978 drama The Getting of Wisdom exists in a space unaffected by time. It’s hard to imagine the film’s themes – from puberty-related growing pains to repressive institutions and comparisons between small-town and big-city life – ever going out of fashion. And the story is so well told, with such attention to detail and an implicit understanding of the rhythms required for interesting drama, it has aged not a jot over three and a half decades.
Adapted from the author Henry Handel Richardson’s novel, the film is a tale about growing up, the title another spin on “coming of age”. And its central location, an exclusive Melbourne ladies college,...
- 8/16/2015
- by Luke Buckmaster
- The Guardian - Film News
Updated through 5/25.
"In his nonmusical writing, the teasing, puzzling, half-nonsensical 'novel' Tarantula pales in strangeness next to the matter-of-factly autobiographical Chronicles," Ao Scott wrote last week in the New York Times. "And, similarly, while cinematically inclined Dylanophiles might want to sample the eccentricities of Renaldo and Clara or Masked and Anonymous — or the brilliantly elusive kaleidoscope of Todd Haynes's I'm Not There — the full mystery of Bob Dylan is better grasped in documentary form." That piece ran as Film Forum's double Dylan doc feature opened and, as Dylan turns 70 today, there's one night, tonight, left to catch it: Da Pennebaker's Don't Look Now (1967) — at Alt Screen, Brynn White gathers critical takes and a clip — and Murray Lerner's The Other Side of the Mirror, a "compendium of Newport Folk Festival concert footage from the early 1960s."
Don't Look Back also screens tonight at the Glasgow Film Theatre as part...
"In his nonmusical writing, the teasing, puzzling, half-nonsensical 'novel' Tarantula pales in strangeness next to the matter-of-factly autobiographical Chronicles," Ao Scott wrote last week in the New York Times. "And, similarly, while cinematically inclined Dylanophiles might want to sample the eccentricities of Renaldo and Clara or Masked and Anonymous — or the brilliantly elusive kaleidoscope of Todd Haynes's I'm Not There — the full mystery of Bob Dylan is better grasped in documentary form." That piece ran as Film Forum's double Dylan doc feature opened and, as Dylan turns 70 today, there's one night, tonight, left to catch it: Da Pennebaker's Don't Look Now (1967) — at Alt Screen, Brynn White gathers critical takes and a clip — and Murray Lerner's The Other Side of the Mirror, a "compendium of Newport Folk Festival concert footage from the early 1960s."
Don't Look Back also screens tonight at the Glasgow Film Theatre as part...
- 5/25/2011
- MUBI
Would Bob Dylan stop his punishing schedule for Martin Carthy's samurai sword or a slice of Alela Diane's apple pie? We asked some famous fans to come up with the perfect gift for him…
Geoff Dyer: writer
What I propose is this: that on 24 May, at 7pm BST precisely, we all throw open our windows and – in homes, cars or bars around the world – play a Dylan track on our stereos or iPods. Checking a photocopy of his birth certificate I see that Robert Zimmerman was born at 9.05pm, but 7pm is a good time because, well, it chimes with 70. It also means that a good part of the planet can join in the gift-celebration at the same moment (11am in California). The choice of track is up to you. Some people will go for anthems like "Blowin' in the Wind" that I can't bear to listen to or...
Geoff Dyer: writer
What I propose is this: that on 24 May, at 7pm BST precisely, we all throw open our windows and – in homes, cars or bars around the world – play a Dylan track on our stereos or iPods. Checking a photocopy of his birth certificate I see that Robert Zimmerman was born at 9.05pm, but 7pm is a good time because, well, it chimes with 70. It also means that a good part of the planet can join in the gift-celebration at the same moment (11am in California). The choice of track is up to you. Some people will go for anthems like "Blowin' in the Wind" that I can't bear to listen to or...
- 5/21/2011
- by Geoff Dyer
- The Guardian - Film News
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