Rebecca

Summary

1947 BBC live studio production of the play Rebecca, adapted by Daphne du Maurier from her best-selling novel.

Theatre play

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) [more information]

Play synopsis

A young woman, who remains nameless, met Maxim de Winter by chance and married him. He has taken her back to his ancestral estate of Manderley. Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, drowned the previous year, and her ghost haunts the newlyweds’ home. Rebecca’s devoted housekeeper, the sinister Mrs. Danvers, is still in charge of Manderley, and she frightens and intimidates her new mistress. The girl feels that she can never compare favourably to Rebecca and soon she feels that Maxim is still in love with his dead wife. But we learn that Maxim had demanded a divorce from Rebecca, and she had refused. Furious, he seized a gun and shot her, and then sailed out to the harbor in Rebecca’s boat and sank it, with the body inside. There are further twists, including the discovery of Rebecca’s body, before the truthemerges, Mrs Danvers disappears and Manderley goes up in flames.

Note: this is the plot of the novel but the play differs in significant ways, and substitutes a happier ending.

Production history

Daphne Du Maurier’s novel was published in 1938, and she herself adapted Rebecca as a stage play in 1939; it had a successful London run during the war, opening at the Queen’s Theatre on 5 April 1940.

Date of transmission

Sunday 19 January 1947

Time

8.30-10.15pm

Channel

BBC Television

Credits

Producer

Harold Clayton

Playwright

Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989)

Original Book by

Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989)

Cast

Dorothy Black	Mrs Danvers
Howard Douglas	William Tabb
Dorothy Gordon	Mrs de Winter
Josephine Gundry	Maid
Michael Hordern	Maxim de Winter
Desmond Keith	Giles Lacy
Megan Latimer	Beatrice Lacy
Eric Messiter	Colonel Julyan
John Roderick	Frank Crawley
Leonard Trolley	Robert
Frederick Victor	Frith
Ward. Mackenzie	Jack Favell

Additional details

Origination

Live from studio

Vision original

Monochrome

Later transmissions

Presented again at 3.00pm on Tuesday 21 January 1947.

Extant status

No archival copy is known to exist.

Play tags

adaptation of novel; thriller

Print sources

Title

Radio Times, 17 January 1947 (Magazine)

Linking notes

listing, p. 35 and article, p. 33