Cirrus@Austlit

Max Afford was born in Adelaide in 1906. He began his career as a journalist, but in the following decades he would go on to write some of the most popular radio and stage plays in Australia. Full of clever schemes and witty dialogue, Afford’s detective stories were extremely popular. He also wrote dramas with political overtones, which ranged from examinations of Australian life after the Second World War to the founding of his home town, Adelaide. In 1938 he married teacher, actor, and costume designer, Thelma Thomas, who later designed costumes for some of his stage plays.

Max Afford worked as a reporter and feature writer at the Adelaide News and Mail from 1929-1934. In 1935 he joined Radio 5DN as a producer and continuity manager. In the early days of his radio career, when Afford was writing thrillers for Adelaide broadcaster 5CL at the rate of at least two a month (c.1934), his works were sometimes only listed in radio guides as 'a radio thriller by Max Afford', with no title or other distinguishing information.

In 1936 his play William Light - the Founder won the South Australian Centenary Drama Competition. The same year saw him move to Sydney (leaving Adelaide on 27 September 1936, according to the Adelaide News of 18 September 1936), where he worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for five years before becoming a freelance and prolific writer of fiction and radio plays, gaining enormous popularity as a serial writer. Hagen's Circus (1941), for example, ran for 800 episodes.

In 1939 the Canberra Times reported that Afford was ‘probably the only Australian radio playwright to have sold a serial to the B.B.C.’ His plays sold to the B.B.C. were reported to include Fly By Night, Labours of Hercules, Oh, Whistle When You're Happy, The Four Specialists, and For Fear of Little Men. The same article claims that in South Africa Afford reportedly sold Mr. Allchurch Comes to Stay (this title has not been traced anywhere outside this article), Merry-Go-Round, and Two Hundred Thousand Witnesses. Cairo also reportedly bought some of these plays, and Polskie Radio, in Poland, is said to have asked for The Four Specialists, which was also sold to Canada, where he sold For Fear of Little Men ('Australian Radio Plays: Success of A.B.C. Playwrights Abroad', Canberra Times, 14 August 1939, p.2.).

None of these productions have been traced so far, though his Queer Affair at Kettering was produced twice by the BBC in the 1940s. Afford's stage play Lady in Danger, was the first Australian play produced on Broadway (1945), although it was not well received there.

Afford’s success as a radio play writer has been attributed to his mastery of radio drama techniques as well as to his exciting plots and realistic characterisation. As well as the plays he also published six detective novels. Their central character, the detective Jeffery Blackburn, also featured in a number of his radio plays.

A chain smoker, Afford died of cancer at the age of 48.

Sources: 

"AUSTRALIAN RADIO PLAYS" The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995) 14 August 1939: 2. Web. 30 Jan 2018 .

"PERSONAL PARAGRAPHS" News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954) 18 September 1936: 5. Web. 30 Jan 2018 .

Additional Sources:

Max Afford's Playwright's Award

Australian Dictionary of Biography - Max Afford

Project Gutenberg - The Vanishing Trick (contains a brief biography)