Ready for the Glory

Comedy play centred round a three-times married titled woman with a history of drinking, Lady Pruella Baynton, played by Ann Todd, and Walter Adge, a veteran Able Seaman with a lower-deck vocabulary, played by Colin Blakey. 

A marriage bureau has brought them together, and the play opens with Walter's arrival at Lady Pruella's Gibraltar villa. There he meets the predictable hostility of the other residents of the villa - Lord Baynton, Pruella's eccentric last husband (played by Stephen Murray), Starkey, her current constant companion (Terence Alexander) and Pud, Baynton's 21-year old daughter by another marriage (Frances White). 

The play was written for Armchair Theatre by Alun Richards, who had a naval background. Ann Todd had made numerous appearances in TV plays but this was only her second appearance in two years. The other was the Love Story production Phyllis Hammond Died Herewhich was broadcast the previous October. Todd admitted that she would have liked to have done more television but was constantly busy travelling to make documentaries for her own production company. 

One reviewer remarked on Ready for the Glory; "this was first class entertainment, brisk, revealing dialogue, good situations, splendidly cast and sensitively acted." Ready for the Glorywas produced by Leonard White, directed by Jonathan Alwyn. An ABC Television production. Broadcast on Saturday 8th January, 1966 between 10.05 and 11.05pm.   

Published on April 4th, 2020. Based on original TV Times article and adapted.