Ok, a disclaimer the original film of this drama, broadcast on ITV on the 18 of October 1959, was not kept, and neither was the remake of 1965 broadcast on BBC2 on the 21st of March of that year. All that remains audiovisually is the second remake of 1970, a somewhat experimental musical with many scenes shot with background sets of blown-up panoramas of Liverpool (!), which was broadcast on BBC1 on the 18th of March.
Marc Cunliffe (Letterboxd review) “there are so many songs in the 50 minute running time that you wonder how much of the original dialogue was cut out.”o
script of the screenplay (dated 1960) in the Alun Owen Papers held at Bangor University, https://calmview.bangor.ac.uk/Calmview/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=AO%2F1%2F43
*Gibson8 (Letterboxd review) “Owen had written Hard Days’s Night after the boys saw his original version of this play and there is a little of this banter between the three but because of the poor music, low quality staging and apparent refusal to make any kind of social comment beyond | ‘what happened to the trams?’. | ‘Oh…we’ve got buses now’ | this is a disappointment.”
last Liverpool tram ran in 1957.
In 1965 BBC2‘s prestigious Theatre 625 (1964-68) presented Owen‘s trilogy of Liverpool-Welsh plays in which, for the most part, an emotional journey ends in anticlimax: ‘Progress to the Park‘ (tx. 14/3/1965), ‘No Trams to Lime Street‘ (tx. 21/3/1965) and ‘A Little Winter Love‘ (tx. 28/3/1965).
John Lennon saw it and liked it, so it was instrumental in securing Alun Owen his gig as screenwriter for A Hard Day’s Night.
Marc Cunliffe (Letterboxd) “when the Beatles were looking for a screenwriter who could write scouse convincingly for their debut movie, A Hard Day’s Night.”
Jim Gains FBcomm (2021) “Immediately following the 1970 broadcast of the Wednesday musical play of No Trams To Limestreet, BBC 2 discussed it on their Late Night Line-up programme hosted nightly by Joan Bakewell … and it featured Marty who performed the title song and discussed how the musical of Alun Owen’s classic Mersey stage play came about. Would be great to see it again.”
Mon 25th of October 1970, the musical play ‘No Tram to Lime Street’ began its run at the Palace Theatre, Manchester.
https://camera.abcatlarge.co.uk/tag/no-tram-to-lime-street
Also revival with the Bill Kenwright production of the musical at the Liverpool Playhouse,1995.
POSTED November 2024.
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