'IN this, one of his best-known and more popular radio plays, Edmund Barclay takes the story of a girl, a natural aristocrat, who escapes from her own vulgar domestic setting and becomes the model for a rising portrait painter, Arthur Gride.
'The play is the first among those outstanding A.B.C. plays chosen for revival in the Jubilee Year.
'Though in general Arthur Gride is part of a fashionably arty set, he soon falls in love with Mary, whose inward as well as outward beauty has in spired him to paint the picture of his life and the “art sensation of the year.” There is sadness behind the face he portrays.
'“My life?” says Mary when Arthur begins to probe. “That’s just like this tattered glove I’m wearing isn’t it? The tattered glove you won’t let me mend.”
'The outcome of the relationship is unfolded with skill and feeling by Barclay in a story which was inspired by his looking at a famous painting, The Girl With the Tattered Glove, now hanging in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
'Barclay makes it clear, of course, that his reconstruction of the events leading to the painting of the picture is quite imaginary.'
Source: 'The Girl with the Tattered Glove', ABC Weekly, 30 December 1950, p.26.
According to the Shepparton Advertiser (29 April 1938):
This is a tragedy of little things, in which the author has tried to demonstrate the old truth that real, human drama is not dependent upon catastrophe or great adventure, but that it is inherent in everyday life and in everyday people. The story occurred to the author while he was discussing with some friends the meaning, if any, behind the expression of a girl's face, a face immortalised in the famous oil painting, "The Girl with the Tattered Glove.”
The painting in question is by William Nicholson, an English painter.
First broadcast (nationally) on 5 May 1938, from 8pm.
Producer: John Cairns.
Cast members included Betty Ross (Mary), Keith Howard (Arthur Gride, the artist), and Victor Laxon (Henry, the spineless lover).
Produced again as part of the ABC's Jubilee productions in 1950. and broadcast on 6 January 1950 on 2FC, 3AR, and 4QG, from 8pm.
Cast: Pat Sieben (Mary Sawyer), Brian Smith (Arthur Gride), Phillip College (Barnard), Richard Matthews (Mary's father), Myra Noblett (Mary's mother), Ron Haddick (Mary's brother), Jeanne Gill (Mary's sister), Rod Douglas (tram conductor), Len Sweeney (Blenky), Robert Fricker (Henry Bell), Evon Hutton (Brenda), and Lilian Pritchard (Customer) .
