AustLit

Lynn Foster wrote for radio and television in both Australia and Britain. She was the first Australian woman radio producer and serial writer.

Foster said in a 1937 interview that she had submitted her first novel to a publisher when she was 16; asked to re-write and re-submit it in six months' time, she instead burnt it on a re-read ('Radio Stars ... and Their Ambitions'), and moved towards drama.

By the age of 22, Foster was one of three permanent dramatists employed by 2GB to write for their in-house B.S.A. Players: the others were John Appleton and Eric Mason Wood ('New Radio Plays'). At that stage, she told Australian Women's Weekly, she had 'already written hundreds of dramas', and her current roles meant she might 'write three or four plays day by day' ('Every Day Brings Another Play'). In the same interview, Foster mentioned beginning her career by working as assistant stage manager, in props, and as a prompter, as a means of learning to be a playwright. For her early work with 2GB, she adapted overseas works (including the Professor Fordney stories by American writer Austin Ripley) and wrote original scripts (for example, 1937's Life Stories of the Stars, a series of short biographies of actors).

In the late 1930s, Foster moved to stage production, beginning with Keith Winter's Worse Things Happen at Sea, which she produced for the Sydney Players' Club at St James Hall in November 1937 ('"Art-Arties" Satirised'). She retained a strong interest in drama, writing for the stage and winning drama awards, although her radio work far outstripped her stagework in terms of overall quantity. She was also involved with Doris Fitton's Independent Theatre from c.1936, writing one-act plays alongside such dramatists as Sumner Locke Elliott. Her radio work influenced her stage work. In 1938, for example, the Independent Theatre produced, on the same night, two one-act plays by Foster: the domestic drama Tension and the comedy Radio Ex-Tension; the latter depicted, on stage, attempts to produce a radio version of Tension.

She also worked as a script-writer for 2GB's sister station 2UE in Sydney (beginning with the serial Nothing Ever Happens in 1938), as a freelancer, and, for four years, as a writer for Lux Radio Theatre, for which she largely adapted American plays to Australian settings ('Visitor from Sydney').

In 1938, Foster wrote the twice-weekly series Sacrifice, based on stories of sacrifice by people such as Captain Lawrence Oates, Marie Curie, Father Damien, Edith Cavell, and Cecil Rhodes ('New Series').

During World War II, Foster served on the entertainments committee of the Australian Women's Weekly Club for Servicewomen, alongside chair Mrs A. Shelton Smith and fellow members Lorna Alford (of the ABC) and Sylvia Tree ('Our Club'). She also wrote propaganda for local radio, including Adolf in Blunderland (based on a BBC play of the same name) and The Radio that Hitler Fears.

By the 1940s, Foster was working more heavily in production than in writing. In 1946, Foster wrote and produced the serial Crossroads of Life, a drama that attracted attention for its focus on social issues (rather than that melodramatic and emotional plots that contemporary critics of daytime radio serials–designed for women audiences–deplored). In an interview, Foster noted:

'Cross- roads' itself is important in the lives of thousands of women listeners all over Australia, and consequently it can be assumed that the serial and my message it may have to convey would have quite a considerable effect on Its listeners. Therefore, my attitude is that it should do some good In the community as well as entertain listeners. For this reason I have always retained my main interest in some important social problem, which is worked out on the air through the 'Crossroads' characters.' ('Crossroads of Life')

In this sense, Crossroads of Life was a forerunner to Foster's later television work in Divorce Court and The Unloved.

Foster's output as a writer and producer was prodigious. In 1947 alone, the radio programs she produced included Mr and Mrs North, Doctors Courageous (which she also wrote) and the sequel Drama of Medicine, Big Sister (a serial that she also adapted), the Nyal Radio Playhouse, and A Case for Cleveland ('Visitor from Sydney'). A Grace Gibson Productions show, the Nyal Radio Playhouse was based on American anthology radio series The First Nighter, and largely produced American plays that had not been previously produced in Australia ('Nyal Radio Playhouse').

Foster relocated to London in 1948, settling in the popular Dolphin Square flats (also home to other Australian expatriate writers, including Rex Rienits ('Talented Australians'). Her work in London included radio and television scripts for the BBC: she adapted work by British writers (including Ronald Gow's Ma's Bit o' Brass) and fellow expat Australians (including Dorothy Blewett's Quiet Night, and wrote original scripts, including radio play Mine Own Vineyard, standalone television play A Perfect Stranger, and the television-play cycle The Exiles.

Australian newspapers reported in 1949 that Doris Fitton (with whom Foster had worked at the Independent Theatre) might follow her successful London run of Australian Bill Gates' The Earth Remains with a play by Foster, but no such production eventuated ('Film News from Overseas').

Sources:

'"Art-Arties" Satirised', Sydney Morning Herald, 1 December 1937, p.12.

'Crossroads of Life', National Advocate, 6 September 1947, p.3.

'Every Day Brings Another Play : Sydney Girl's High-speed Job', Australian Women's Weekly, 31 October 1936, p.38.

'Film News from Overseas', Sunday Times, 4 December 1949, p.20.

'New Radio Plays', Sunday Mail, 30 August 1936, p.8.

'New Series of Stirring Radio Drama of Sacrifice', Australian Women's Weekly, 10 September 1938, p.26.

'"Nyal Radio Playhouse" Brings Brilliant Drama to 2CH', Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 17 January 1945, p.11.

'Our Club for Servicewomen Opens This Week', Australian Women's Weekly, 16 January 1943, p.12.

'Radio Stars ... and Their Ambitions', Australian Women's Weekly, 11 September 1937, p.46.

'Talented Australians in London', Sun, 31 August 1948, p.11.

'Visitor from Sydney – Writes and Produces Plays for Radio', Examiner, 7 January 1947, p.5.