Daisy, Daisy (TV Play)
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''Daisy, Daisy'' is a 1955 American television play by
Sumner Locke Elliott Sumner Locke Elliott (17 October 191724 June 1991) was an Australian (later American) novelist and playwright. Biography Elliott was born in Sydney to the writer Sumner Locke and the journalist Henry Logan Elliott. His mother died of eclampsi ...
that aired as an episode of ''
Playwrights '56 ''Playwrights '56'', a.k.a. ''The Playwright Hour'', is a 60-minute live American dramatic anthology series produced by Fred Coe for Showtime Productions. Twenty episodes aired on NBC from October 4, 1955, to June 19, 1956. It shared a Thursday ...
''. It was based on the Ern Malley hoax making the play one of the few works on American television at the time to draw inspiration from Australian culture.


Plot

William Bingham is an unsuccessful "artistic" writer married to Glenda, who loves best sellers. Willie spends eight hours one night writing a cliche-ridden book. It is meant to be the confessions of a 17-year-old Australian girl named Daisy Smith who has recently died. The book is accepted by a publisher and becomes a best seller. Glenda becomes convinced that William knew a Daisy Smith when he was a GI in Australia. Then Albert Smith turns up claiming to be Daisy's father.


Production

It was Tom Ewell's first live television play in three years. Sumner Locke Elliott was Australian and based the script on the Ern Malley hoax. The writer had a generally excellent relationship with Fred Coe. However he says he had his only argument with the producer over casting during the making of this play. Elliott said comedy was not Coe's "forte" and the play was a "mess".


Reception

''Variety'' said "Starting off with a promising but familiar premise" Elliott "had the choice of either developing that premise logically but risking the problem of an overfamiliar theme, or developing in an offbeat direction and making the outcome of the play a non-sequitur. He chose the latter, and not only did the concluding portion not follow the promise of the beginning but became rather ponderous and dull."


References


External links


Daisy Daisy
at
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{{Sumner Locke Elliott 1955 television plays Nonexistent people used in hoaxes Works by Sumner Locke Elliott