The Stone Faces (1957) [unseen]
 Written for television in 1957, by J.B. Priestley, The Stone Faces was Luise's second appearance in the popular BBC television series Sunday Night Theatre (she had previously played 'Nina' in an adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull in 1950), which was broadcast on 1st December 1957. It centres around a hotel in Mexico with Luise playing a famous film star, 'Inga Arlberg', trying to escape what we'd now call the paparazzi and get away from it all. It is not known if this film was ever broadcast again and, indeed, whether it still exists. Any information would be gratefully received at the usual email address. Below is an interesting interview with J.B. Priestley about the play and writing for television in general that appeared in the 29th November 1957 edition of the Radio Times magazine:
Writing for Television: J.B. Priestley, whose new play 'The Stone Faces' is to be televised on Sunday, discusses in this interview with Peter Forster the increasing opportunities of the medium, and his own attitude towards it.
A PLAYWRIGHT in his early sixties, with well over twenty stage plays to his name (and many of them very much to his credit), who is also a novelist, a broadcaster, a frequent public-speaker, and a very busy journalist, might reasonably be excused for not seeking fresh fields to conquer. Yet the ability to respond to challenge has always been one of J.B. Priestley's many talents, and he has now written his third original play for television, The Stone Faces, which can be seen on Sunday.
The play runs for an hour, and is set in La Venta, a remote spot in Mexico, where a single hotel accommodates oil-men there on business, as well as tourists and archaeologists who have come to see the huge, bodiless, prehistoric, carved stone faces which stand at the edge of the jungle, and which lend to the play's title a symbolism that becomes clear in the course of the action. Of the plot, enough to say that Mr. Priestley has turned inside out Kipling's famous lines to the effect that 'The Jew shall forget Jerusalem, Ere we forget the Press,' showing how it is equally unlikely that the Press will ever forget us, if we happen to be a famous film star trying to escape to somewhere quiet.
'I've had the idea at the back of my mind for several years,' Mr. Priestley tells me, 'but never wrote it before because of the difficulty of casting the central character. Then at a party I happened to run into Luise Rainer, a very fine actress who had been a great film star in her time - and the difficulty was solved.'
'Stimulating Change'
How does Priestley respond to working for a medium which up to a point calls for the same abilities as writing for the stage, but beyond that point is quite different? 'After twenty-five years in the theatre, I find the change stimulating. In my stage-plays, for instance, I've always been a great one-set man. I should think I know as much as anybody living about the problems of getting half a dozen characters in and out of two doors and the french windows! Television is flexible, allowing more sets, and with them a different lot of technical problems.'
What about the actual writing, and the need to provide opportunities for actors? 'Again, as a rule, I've written for intimate playhouses - as witness my long association with the Duchess Theatre, London - and television is the most intimate playhouse of all. An actor needn't "project" on TV, in fact usually he mustn't do so. On TV you can almost see an actor think, and thus you can write parts which call for an intimate kind of acting, and more subtle effects than most of those possible in some huge great barn of a theatre.'
Does Priestley think that TV will eventually build up a repertory of really worthwhile, original, television plays? 'Undoubtedly, and it is doing so all the time. The drawback from an author's point of view is that too often his play is screened once and then gone forever. There should be more repetition of the good ones, but as more and more is put on film, that difficulty should disappear. And an advantage is that TV now offers the dramatist a worldwide market. In fact, as a playwright, all other things being equal, I must say I would prefer to be writing for television than for the theatre.'
[This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine, November 1957]
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Credits |
Cast |
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Writer: J.B Priestley
Producer: Harold Clayton
Designer: Clifford Hatts |
Wilfrid Lawson as Stephen Flesser
Gareth Jones as Bill Murdoch
Frances Rowe as Simone Murdoch
Maureen Beck as Rosa
Pauline Black as Hilaria
Duncan Lamont as Dr. Sumner Ames
Helen Horton as Dorothy Stafford
Luise Rainer as Inga Arlberg
Edward Hulton as A Mexican porter
Don Lee as A workman
John Bloomfield as Sam Beakin
John Bell as Man reporter
Jeanne Griffiths as Woman reporter
Andreas Antoniou, Joseph Boyer, Bernard Callaghan, Michael Cobere, Jeffrey Gardiner, Don Gilliland, Dorothy Grumbar, Patrica Kerry, Nigel Sharpe, Nicholas Shiafkalis, John Slavid, Burnell Tucker, John Tucker as Pressman
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The Stone Faces