hal kanter

Referred to this memoir by US tv producer-director-writer Hal Kanter the other day for a book I'm writing. Kanter gets so many things wrong on one page it's hilarious, but that usage of 'indigenous' to mean local is the bit that has worn least well, isn't it. He mentions three cast members of Last of the Australians and misspells each of their names. The weirdest bit is he is claiming credit for direction. I wonder if he did direct it, but they weren't permitted to say so? Seems unlikely that the union would allow that, or that Crawfords would be that deceptive. Well, in the scheme of things it's not important really. 

the last of the australians

As I write to you I have watched 11 episodes of The Last of the Australians, and am on to my 12th. In between watching the show I am reading of Alan Seymour's 1967 novel of his play The One Day of the Year on which The Last of the Australians is ostensibly, ostensibly mind you, based. To be honest I'm not 100% sure how this worked i.e. was Terry Stapleton - who played the character of Hughie in the original play when it opened in 1958 - actually inspired by these characters to adapt them into a sitcom (albeit with different names - Hughie became Gary and Alf* became Ted)? Or was this some kind of sleight of hand whereby he and Crawfords could say that the Last of the Australians was no way an imitation of Till Death Us Do Part (1968+) because it was based on something from 1958?

It's an interesting show to watch but not always enjoyable. Or even often enjoyable. It does have all the classic Crawfords people in it, not just Keith Eden and Maurie Fields and Terry Norris but also Noni Hazlehurst, Jacki Weaver and Vanessa Leigh. Of the main cast, of course Alwyn Kurts, who no-one had ever imagined could possibly be a comic actor, and Rosie Sturgess who was famous for her time with Graham Kennedy in particular so she had form as a comedian. Richard Hibberd was Gary in the first season, Stephen Thomas in the second (Hibberd quit the biz to join the Hare Krishnas). 

Anyway, I'm plouging on because this is my job now. I'll let you know if anything nice happens. 

*Clearly they couldn't have kept the name Alf for the father character because of Alf Garnett. I suppose 'Hughie' became 'Gary' just in the general update to the 1970s. 

road to nhill

I borrowed this film on DVD from work, having seen it when it came out but not since, and it was overdue yesterday. Perry and I set off to return it this morning and then it started raining heavily the minute we left the house, so I thought OK, I'll watch it instead while we wait for the rain to recede. 

Apart from, as I remembered it, being a pretty great movie, it also features a lot of former Crawfords  people, such as  Lynette Curran, Monica Maughan, Lois Ramsey, Patricia Kennedy, Alwyn Kurts, Terry Norris, Bill Hunter, Tony Barry, Peter Aanensen, and Don Bridges (who was in two episodes of Special Squad so just qualifies). In fact, of the only people in this film (eg Denise Roberts) who weren't in some Crawfords show like Homicide or The Box or both, it's probably because they were/are too young. I don't think that's so much a matter of the casting being drawn from a bunch of old Crawfordsites as it is a sign of what constituted an experienced senior actor in the late 1990s. The Sunday Age's review (from 16 November 1997 p. 36) described the cast as 'perhaps the finest collection of character actors ever assembled for an Australian film'. 

Alison Tilson told the Sydney Morning Herald's Ruth Hessey in 1997 that she wrote the film so her father could enjoy something at the movies without the word 'fuck' in it.* 

For some absurd reason I recalled Road to Nhill as being set in Nhill. Why on earth would it be, given the title? It's set in Pyramid Hill, a place which actually is not even very proximate to Nhill (262 km) and which has no special road leading to it, despite the discussion early in the piece of the difference between the 'road which actually goes to Nhill' and 'Nhill Road'. 

This seems like a distortion of the truth but there you go. I guess someone just thought 'Nhill' was a decent name for a nowhere place. 

Here's the Pyramid Hill store from the film, above, and google earth, below. 

Thought you might like to see a drawing of it in 1933 from the Age (14 Feb p. 12). It was built after the previous building was destroyed in a fire in 1932. The accompanying article says the new building has been 'treated in the Florentine manner'. 

Anyway, back to the film. It is not quite a film about nothing; it's about how a car accident (not actually a mundane incident, but not immediately fatal for anyone) exposes the strengths and weaknesses of a whole lot of relationships. Also, Alwyn Kurts gets to utter lines like 'I'm skipper of B grade' in a Wes Andersonian tableau. 

On the whole, as glib as it may read, just a really nice but not insubstantial film with some truly spectacular actors, a great script and marvellous locations.

There is a narratorless 'making of' documentary with the DVD that tbh doesn't add a lot to the whole. A lot of material about the making of the four-bowling-ladies-upside-down-in-the-car sequence. Matthew Dyktynski refers to the older actors as 'icons of Australian product'. There is a clip from Homicide in there, when they canvass the various tv shows they've all been in. Terry Norris is featured heavily in the 'making of' but Alwyn doesn't feature and neither does Bill H. 

*Ruth Hessey 'Women 1 Men Nhill' Sydney Morning Herald 14 November 1997 p. 66

where leonard teale used to live

This, according to a few letters sent by Crawfords in the early 1970s (and the Sands and McDougall for 1974) is where Leonard Teale lived in the early 1970s. 

But that's basically all I have to say about it, except that there is mention of the home in the Age in October 1994 as having been sold (LT died in May of that year). I admit when I parked outside it this morning I half imagined Liz Harris still lived there but obviously she does not. 

I suppose it is odd/interesting that Alwyn Kurts and George Mallaby lived in comparatively humble circumstances. I don't know if Kurts was married* but Mallaby was, to Ruth Bass (he used to write scripts for Homicide under her name, I gather). 

Laura asked me the empathetic question which Homicide actor would I most like to visit at home, in the time he was alive, and I replied Norman Yemm. The addresses I gleaned of the other actors were from letters asking them to come to a launch for Yemm's replacement, so I suppose he wasn't invited, or at least, there's no letter to him. But the only N Yemm in the Sands and McDougall is at 401 Chesterfield Road East Bentleigh. I suppose I should pay it a visit sometime. 
 

*Update 27/12 I did some research. He was married twice. The first time was to a woman called Jean Pember (although one article refers to him in the same sentence as Jean Jember, so...?) but they divorced in 1939 after she supposedly found him sleeping with a vaudeville artist called Dulcie Kelly but the whole thing seems to have been something of a charade. He then married Eileen O'Hehir who was an athlete who worked in a shoe store. So it seems. Eileen outlived him. He appears to have had one child from his first marriage and two from the second, though his obit in 2000 only mentions two children. 

Perth Daily News 8 November 1939 p. 12

visiting alwyn and george

Today Perry and I went to Caulfield to visit the addresses Alwyn Kurts and George Mallaby lived in in 1971. This is the Mallaby apartment - it's a ground floor flat in a quiet cul-de-sac in South Caulfield.

I assume this is the same building, though it's hard to be entirely sure. It's obviously been renovated up the wazoo if the building existed in 1970. 

This is where Alwyn Kurts lived, a rather odd looking bunch of flats in North Caulfield. His place was way up the back. 

This is one of its windows, upstairs from the laneway alongside. 

This is its door.

These are the stairs to its doors. 

This is the front of the same building. 

I don't know what to do with this so-called information but it's real. Next destination, Leonard Teale's house. 

special squad: mad mountain mumma

Mary Canny as Bridey and John Diedrich as Davis with Hawkins (Smith) in the background at Spencer St Station

Another uninteresting picture, of Alan Cassell (Anderson) and Hawkins' back. I only took this because there's the famous Spencer Street train mural in the background. I mean it is that. 

I listen to podcasts like Blank Check and The Filmcast and I wonder 'where the hell do these people get the time to be so on top of all these fucking horrendous (sounding) films?' and then it occurs to me that I have watched about forty episodes of Special Squad in the last few weeks. 'Watched' is a slightly problematic term as I have really often just had it on in the background. I have antenna primed for when they go to interesting places, which is what intrigues me most. but also, the bonhomie of the Special Squad trio is, I have to say, pretty infectious. 

In many ways, it's just updated Homicide, ten years later, and not that updated. The difference is that Special Squad don't always have to be investigating murder (a few times on Homicide they weren't investigating murder either - but they almost always were). They just get assigned the troublesome cases that need more in-depth investigation. They work long hours and they sacrifice their personal lives to the job. We don't know too much about them - Joel Davis (John Diedrich, who is probably super-annoyed that his fame is everlasting from being retooled thirty years ago to be 'Glen Twenty' on Bargearse) is a young, swingin' guy who'll go far; Greg Smith (Anthony Hawkins) is a man with a family and a moustache; Don Anderson (Alan Cassell) is their boss whose wife we met once only to see her shot about twenty minutes later by a man whose toyboy Anderson did away with; Anderson is apparently comforted by the news that his late wife was looking forward to a holiday with him (Crawfords don't understand grieving very well, in my experience, except when it's motivation for revenge). 

In an article for the Age published on 31 January 1985, Barry Dickins writes about his experience as a bit part actor on Special Squad. He talks briefly with Diedrich and Hawkins:

‘”They spent five million bucks on this series, mate”’ says John Diedrich, the star of the show. “And now they’re winding it up.”   

‘The other older Special Squad copper is called Tony, a real nice guy who tells me he wishes he was doing comedy. “Oh, they don’t like funny stuff,” he whispers to me in the Crawford caravan, putting on his Special Squad sox. “You can pull a funny face if you like, but you can’t overdo it. I think what Crawford wants to do is capture contemporary violence.”  

What I note is that line about 'now they're winding it up'. I'm not entirely sure I know which episode he's talking about, and in fact he might not even have made it in, but the point is that the show gets axed, they have to keep churning it out and I can well imagine that once a Crawfords show got the chop - notwithstanding it had a life of being repeated a few more times thereafter - they might well have done a sweep of the archives for the sillier scripts that no-one would ever have pitched in a fresh new hot show. This episode, 'Mad Mountain Mumma' (IMDB wants you to think it's 'Mad Mountain Momma' and in its defence, autocorrect does too) is not really properly documented in IMDB which had obviously given up by this point. 

This is just a silly episode, and indicates to me that everyone is going through the motions. A wealthy man, I'm not sure why he's wealthy but guess what he used to be a circus performer, whatever, he dies in the first few minutes, is picked up by his boyfriend (played by Daniel Abinieri) and chauffeur (Roger Ward) and summarily dispensed with (poisoned?). That's all par for the course I guess. But then the murdered man's wife turns up from the country (a town called Mad Mountain) and she's a witch called Bridey, played by Mary Canny in what might actually be the biggest role Canny ever played (Crawfords got her in again eight years later to be in The Flying Doctors). Bridey somehow convinces Abenieri's character ('Dillon') that she's put a curse on him and he has to go to the State Library, which is to Special Squad what the Sunnyvale High library was to Buffy) to find out how to lift the curse. 

Apparently he has to make an axe and cut off her head, and we do spend quite a bit of time with him making an axe and chopping a watermelon in half, but this element of the story goes precisely nowhere thereafter so let's forget about it. 

I'm nearly through these episodes and then I'll have to figure out what precisely I have learnt. The next episode has a small role for Alwyn Kurts (yes his eyes are open! Wide open) as a crook who dies in the first five minutes. Crawfords always had a place for their own. 

the end of inspector fox

Sorry to break it to you but Inspector Fox died, on 17 July 1973 in episode S10E22. There is a slightly bizarre account of the episode on IMDB where the writer uses the actors' names instead of the characters ('It is the last couple of days on the Homicide squad for Detective Leonard Teale. He has been promoted to Inspector and transferred to lead a new unit...'). Anyway there's a weirdo around modelling himself on Lee Harvey Oswald who wants to kill David Mackay but instead he shoots Colin Fox and there you have it.* Alwyn Kurts went on to host Beauty and the Beast and his departure was the end of that particular show, until it was rebooted umpteen times. 

Melbourne Age 12 July 1973 p. 35

Inspector Fox's replacement is Reg Lawson, played by Bud Tingwell. 

Sydney Sun-Herald 8 July 1973 p. 81

Whole new set of opening credits - whereas the first colour shows with Kurts/Teale had an opener that was modelled very closely on the original (Ds in a car, all get out together) now the opener is very tech-heavy with a lot of communications imagery featuring people who I'm pretty sure are not and never will be in the show itself, mainly D24 -  the communications hub of the force. This episode also features the debut of John Stanton.

Melbourne Age Green Guide Section 20 July 1973 p.3

* That Kurts and Teale left at the same time was used by Crawfords/Channel 7, I'm sure, to surprise viewers - the show is full of suggestions that Mackay was going to be killed, but of course at the last minute it's Fox. They used the same trick when they wrote Bronson out of the show - that time Mackay got shot early, and Bronson late in the episode. 

george makes a stand

...or something. In the 15 May 1973 episode of Homicide, entitled 'Yes, That's Sandra', suddenly George Mallaby, who's been a margin figure for a long time, suddenly becomes virtually the star of Homicide. Sorry for the 50-year-old spoiler but Mike Preston was about to leave the show, so possibly they felt the need to establish another young putative bit of eye candy there - the one you'd forgotten had been there all along.*

I know you think I'm crazy to care but anyway, this particular episode, remarkably, has a very subtly different beginning, adding a couple of little extra shots, not just of George but also of Alwyn Kurts being active. Go figure!!! What did Leonard Teale think? He was virtually out of the opening sequence which made it look like the Mike Preston show... and the weirdest thing is this was the second last black and white episode, so it was they only used this particular opening credit sequence twice - and then Preston left (because his character died) in the following episode... 

Looking forward to seeing what comes next.** 

* Except a super-camp ballet instructor says he is a 'bit soft around the rum-tiddly'. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, I suspect a bad thing and not something you say about someone who's meant to be hot. It was certainly an unwelcome come-on. 

** I'll have some things to say about Gary Day who replaced Mike Preston, but I'm processing the 'excerpts from a memoir' I found on a Homicide website... 

homicide episode 350 new opening credits

After episode 350 of Homicide they gave it a new opening sequence which was kind of exciting. Up until then (i.e. all through 1964-1972) the basic opening shots had just been variations on the idea of the men (whoever they were at the time) driving to Russell Street in a car and getting out of it. The new sequence is little action shots from the show - so - wrestling fighting and chasing. 

Alwyn Kurts comes first and yeah, he's great and he's the boss of Homicide, but...

Leonard Teale was surely by this stage the man most closely associated with the program in the public's mind, so I'm kind of surprised he wasn't giving star billing. I suppose it was no one actor's show. 

It surprises me that they put Mike Preston up next, as he'd only been in a show a couple of months (he features in a lot of the action sequences in the opener) whereas... 

George Mallaby (who Laura suggested, and I think correctly, looks a bit pissed off here) had been in the show for five years (that's a guess) longer than Preston, but he was listed/shown last. 

Go figure! Hey by the way if you were ever in any doubt, let me just confirm, I fuckin' love Homicide. For all kinds of reasons. 

homicide: 'grains of sand'/'the girl who wanted to go home' (may 1972)

After watching (almost completely, I've missed a few) close to 330 episodes of Homicide it occurred to me to wonder what attracts me so compulsively about this show. It is not nostalgia per se for me, I never watched police dramas of course when I was a child and I actually still don't really like them in themselves (I couldn't even watch most of the 2 May 1972 episode 'Grains of Sand' because it was so depressing - murder of a kidnapped child ffs). Aside from Ernie Bourne who I obviously have a soft spot for (but perhaps more for his depiction of Rob Lewis in Neighbours than for his Adventure Island stuff) I was not greatly familiar with any of the actors in Homicide (well, I suppose I did watch quite a bit of Class of '74/'75 ten or so years ago for a journal article I wrote, and Leonard Teale was ostensibly the star of that, but christ knows what he thought he was doing there - I suppose he thought he was maintaining an acting career!). 

It really does feel like time travel though, I know how stupid that reads, but I so thoroughly enjoy not just Melbourne of 50-60 years ago, but getting the sense of why Australians enjoyed the show so much - the familiarity of it all. Streetscapes, absolutely, and familiar place names. But also venturing into backyards, petrol stations, waste spaces, laneways and bedrooms (home interiors are a little less thrilling because they are almost always sets, constructed the same way and in the same depth through the close to eight years of episodes I have now watched). Not just what you see on the screen, either, but social mores too - things that people throw into the mix, the way we're supposed to empathise with George Mallaby's character Peter, a handsome young man who likes to play the field, or for that matter, Leonard Teale's character Mack, a handsome older man who likes to play the field (although he has a girlfriend, Joy, who suggested to him that she might be about to move to Brisbane for work and who was then shot in the neck by an escaped prisoner trying to kill Mack - she lived, but wasn't mentioned again lol). 

Anyway that said, I try not to get involved but 'Grains of Sand' is Norman Yemm's last episode and I will miss him. I couldn't really watch the actual episode as I said but I did watch the end of it which was not entirely dissimilar to Inspector Connolly's departure - in that he didn't definitively say he was going, just applied for leave, at Col Fox's urging. 

Homicide's producers etc clearly knew that Patterson was a popular character because they made it clear to us for some time before this episode that he wasn't happy in his job and finding it a strain, particularly because his wife was finding it a strain. 

Here he is on the steps, having said goodbye to Fox but no-one else, and about to stride down the street alone like Connolly did. 

The next episode, from 9 May, wastes no time: new opener (well, new-ish, they didn't waste time filming Kurts, Teale or Mallaby getting out of the car again, just inserted Mike Preston): 

Very little background on Preston's character Bob (who incidentally is only in it for 40+ episodes, so I won't get too attached). They do say Bob's wife left him, which I assume is flagging something into the future. Bob is the second of the Homicide team, after Lionel Long, to be played by a pop star - and like Alwyn Kurts, Preston had also been a TV show host. 

He is installed in Jim's old desk and that's the only time Jim is mentioned - Peter says something about how Jim's cleaned his desk out (but I thought he was only going on leave?!). 

Not much more to say about this episode. Here are Teale and Preston with Penny Ramsey who plays Sally Reid. 

Mildly interesting, to me, brief shots of the suspects (one of whom turns out to be the culprit for this particular episode's murder) visiting what was then known as the George, which would become about five years later the Crystal Ballroom, known as the Seaview Ballroom by the time I was going there in my late teens. Here as you can see it's basically a strip joint. I actually didn't know that about it. 

I will say that this is one of those instances watching Homicide when I get a weird little feeling - you don't see a huge amount of the frontage of this building, but even this was highly familiar to me. 

I say this a lot, but the 70s were a horrible time to grow up, so I guess in a way I'm processing something really. As I say it is compelling.