Peter Yeldham Peter Yeldham i(A24044 works by)
Born: Established: 25 Apr 1927 Gladstone, Kempsey area, Mid North Coast, New South Wales, ; Died: Ceased: 20 Sep 2022
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Peter Yeldham was a screenwriter, playwright, and novelist. He began his career in the early 1940s while still a teenager, writing scripts for Sydney radio station 2GB, along with short stories and a newspaper column. Following service in the Australian Army (when he was posted to Japan), he returned to Sydney and worked as a freelance writer, mainly writing scripts for locally produced radio dramas.

Dissatisfied with poor rates of pay and seeking adventure, he moved to England with his young family in 1956, where he started writing for film and television. After returning to Australia in 1975, he wrote scripts for a string of iconic Australian feature films and television mini-series. In the early 1990s, he turned to writing novels: his thirteenth novel was completed when he was 88.

Yeldham died at the age of 95: fellow script-writer Roger Simpson described him in an obituary as a 'writer's writer'.

Sources include:

Slatter, Sean, 'Vale Peter Yeldham, Screenwriter, Playwright and Novelist', InsideFilm, 30 September 2022. (https://if.com.au/vale-peter-yeldham-screenwriter-playwright-and-novelist/)

Most Referenced Works

Notes

  • Further Reference:

    • Keavney, Kay, 'Gambles That Paid Off', Australian Women's Weekly, 20 July 1966, p.9.

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Murrumbidgee Kid Camberwell : Viking , 2006 Z1240849 2006 single work novel historical fiction

'The small town of Gundagai in the 1930s is no place for the attractive and flamboyant Belle Carson and her young son, Teddy – particularly when she longs for him to achieve the success that eluded her on the stage and screen. Determined to pursue this dream, she abandons her husband and their Murrumbidgee River home for a more vibrant city life. But Belle’s obsession leads her and Teddy – whom the press christens ‘the Murrumbidgee Kid’ – into a world where nothing is safe or familiar. And from her carefully hidden past a threat soon emerges to make their precarious lives even more vulnerable . . .

'From rural Gundagai to the bright lights and shady underbelly of 1930s Sydney, this is a beautifully written and absorbing story about an unconventional family’s coming-of-age.'

Source : author's blurb

2006 commended The Fellowship of Australian Writers Victoria Inc. National Literary Awards FAW Christina Stead Award
form y separately published work icon Jessica Bryce Courtenay's Jessica ( dir. Peter Andrikidis ) 2004 Sydney Australia Geneva : Screentime Network Ten Powercorp , 2004 Z1131698 2004 single work film/TV

A sweeping saga of love, deceit and sacrifice set during the early years of the twentieth century in the farmlands around Narrandera, then a small frontier town in rural south-west New South Wales. The narrative focuses on the Bergman sisters, Jessica, the feisty tomboy who loves to help her father work their farmland, and her beautiful sister, Meg, who is being groomed by her mother, Hester, to be the perfect wife so that she can marry her way out of poverty. However, Richard, the man that Meg has set her sights on, falls in love with Jessica, and they later have a son. Undeterred, Hester schemes to wrench the couple apart so that Meg can claim both Richard and his son. She eventually commits her daughter to a mental asylum, and it is there Jessica receives news of her lover's death and almost loses hope. After enlisting the help of Mr Runche, a down-and-out lawyer battling alcoholism, she is eventually released and, years later, it is the reformed Runche who gives Jessica the courage to fight for the return of her child.

2005 winner Logie Awards Most Outstanding Miniseries or Telemovie
form y separately published work icon The Battlers ( dir. George Ogilvie ) Adelaide Australia : South Australian Film Corporation Seven Network , 1994 Z946537 1994 series - publisher film/TV The 'battlers' are the itinerants left living a hand-to-mouth existence on the back roads of rural Australia after the Great Depression. The Battlers is also the love story of Snow and Dancy, which becomes a celebration of the human spirit against a backdrop of hardship and survival.
1995 winner Logie Awards Most Popular Drama Program

Known archival holdings

National Film and Sound Archive (aka ScreenSound Australia) (ACT)
Last amended 6 Jul 2023 12:06:39
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