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

phil freedman

Melbourne Age 'Green Guide' 17 May 1979 p. 9

So I was wondering about the Homicide scriptwriters and did a search on Phil Freedman, there was a great article about him in the Green Guide in May '79 by John Teerds. Teerds was, oddly from our perspective now perhaps, more interested in Freedman's earlier work as a radio scriptwriter but Freedman's preference for TV busts out. Freedman was 64 when the article was written so I guess he was born in 1915 and now he's around 107. He started work in 1933 doing short stories for various magazines eg New Idea and I gather from another article that he had a short story in a collection in the late, um, I think 1930s. Interesting tidbit - Freedman lived in Walhalla in the late 1940s but who knows why! That was when Maurice West of all people persuaded him to write for radio. 

The direct quotes about Homicide are the most interesting to me though. He says of the show, 'We had a lot of criticism. It was a lack of slickness that was criticised by some. It might have been phrased differently but that's what it was - a lack of polish.

'People complained about the Australian accent and critics were unkind.

'I felt there was a lack of sympathy to the effort because we were teaching ourselves. There was very little encouragement.

'But the public loved it. They were obviously hungry for Australian stuff and they loved seeing things like the trams.

'Oddly enough, when it was shown to the people Metro Goldwyn Mayer they liked it too.

'They liked the sort of homespun look about it.' 

I must say I am still getting a huge amount out of watching these shows, not only historically in terms of the built environment, or social attitudes, or seeing actors who later became huge or were just very interesting and unusual actors, but also because often the stories are pretty good - at very least, tightly scripted and economically and imaginatively executed, and at best, compelling drama. I was watching one today I think called 'The Black Book' though now I come to think of it I can't imagine why it would be called that, with Sonia Borg and Leonard Teale on a pier at Black Rock and it was very early Polanski, and I was thinking, well we really missed out in many ways from this talent not having the opportunity to thrive in great film drama etc, at least a lot of it didn't have that opportunity, that didn't come until the 70s. But then many of these people were obviously often very versatile and apparently in constant theatre, radio, television work - it was surely a pretty satisfying life for many of them. 

The other great thing about Crawfords in the 60s (and beyond?) was their willingness to take on non-Anglo actors - they did this a lot - and people like Sonia Borg who was at least a triple threat if not more, acting and working as a scriptwriter and I think a kind of commissioning editor for the show. I see she later wrote the script for Storm Boy. 

I could ramble on. Obviously.