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In this article, an interview with veteran and now deceased Australian actor Leonard Teale is presented, to mark the release of a new CD of his recordings of famous Australian poems for the Fine Poets label, http://www.finepoets.com. It is called Leonard Teale Famous Australian Poems. This interview first appeared in TV EYE No. 3, October 1994. Leonard Teale was a multi-talented performer, well known for his radio rendition of 'Superman', his recital of 'The Man From Snowy River' and, of course, his role as Det. Sgt. Mackay in Homicide. He was the longest serving of all the Homicide detectives, appearing on screen from 1965 through to 1973. This interview with Leonard took place in March 1994 at his Sydney home, and is probably his last interview about television before he unfortunately passed away a few months later. Fine Poets Shop Fine Poets Bandcamp Fine Poets Ebay Leonard Teale Fine Poets Bandcamp Fine Poets Ebay Fine Poets Bandcamp What was your first television appearance? “ Well, I go back before television on television. When I was with ABC radio on the Children's Hourwe used to go around to the various Shows - the Exhibition in Brisbane, The Royal Melbourne Show, The Easter Show in Sydney - in which the ABC had various studios. The Children's Hourhad well-known characters, and we did a whole variety of things such as plays and serials, so it was an ideal thing for the listeners to actually be able to see the people doing the job while it went out on air from the various studios. Because you had people in a studio talking, moving, sometimes wearing funny hats and interacting with the audience, we were in fact for a couple of years doing closed circuit experimental television before television actually came, so I had some experience of it when it actually started. What year would that have been? About 1954 to '56. I left the ABC then because I knew that television was coming, and I had an opportunity to do a tour with the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. Television came in about September of 1956, if I remember rightly, with the Olympic Games in Melbourne. I think one of the first things I did, strangely enough, was something on the ABC's Children's Hour. I vividly remember doing an orchestral piece called 'Green Water', which was verse to a symphony orchestra, again with the ABC. By that time 'The Man From Snowy River' record had been released and I had a bit of a reputation for speaking verse. I remember 'Green Water' because I had no idea, I tried to learn it and it was a bit difficult to learn in a hurry, and I didn't know when we were coming to camera, I had no idea of anything like that. Nobody told me, nobody gave me a script and said we'll be coming to you on this verse, then we'll be covering the orchestra until that verse, then we'll come back to you for two lines here, nothing like that. In absolute terror I went through this entire verse, which lasted perhaps five or ten minutes, but felt like five hours. We got through it, and I asked my brother what he thought, and he said "It was very good - the face was smiling, and the eyes were saying HELP!" After that I did a number of one-off plays. I remember one called 'Shadow Of A Pale Horse', which was the story of a murder in a country town. It looks like the culprit is going to be hung, and a wise old man suggests that the father who wants this boy hung should defend him, and the person who was going to defend him should be the prosecutor - a reversal of the roles, and so the whole town begins to change; it was a brilliant idea and beautifully done. In the early days of television it was still a medium for not only information, but also for what you might call 'cultural pursuits' - as there were plays especially written for radio, so too plays were especially written for television. The BBC still do this, but we followed not the BBC so much as the American pattern. To me, it's interesting the change that came about when American television shifted from the east coast to the west coast; most marked, the difference in quality. As soon as it got to Hollywood the quality plummeted - absolutely plummeted. All the really good shows came out of New York, and amongst them some tremendous one hour plays, and we did exactly the same thing here - the one hour play was a feature of radio on a Sunday night, the BBC did it on television, the Americans did it, and so we did it too. At this stage the only local television productions would have been these plays, plus quiz and game shows, and variety. Yes, that's right. But as far as drama was concerned it was all American. There were a couple of local attempts made, Autumn Affair, a soapie, was one, but none of them actually met with much success. The ones that did succeed were those the ABC did on a Sunday night, the historical serials. The first one was Stormy Petrel with Brian James, the second was The Outcasts, thenThe Patriots, and after that The Hungry Ones. I had a small part in, I think, The Patriots and I played the lead in The Outcasts. But what had been happening before then, at the same time IMT started, was a variety show calledSydney Tonight. I'd been doing throughout the 50's a radio show called The Bunk House Show, which was a variety programme with singing and comedy and so on. It was written by George Foster and I used to play the character comedy parts, and I ended up doing the Sydney Tonightcomedy segments. After The Outcasts I did a couple of years with the Mobil Limb Show, replacing perhaps the greatest comic on television, Buster Fiddess, who had left to do his own show. Bobby and Dawn (Limb) had another show called Singalong ready to start during the summer holiday break and they got me, as a frustrated singer, to compere it. At the same time I was doing voice-overs for the news on Channel Nine, and I must say that the news studio where I was at Channel Nine has not altered in thirty years. Around this time there was a marvellous variety programme on Channel Seven in Sydney calledRevue, with Digby Wolfe. Every so often they would have poetry readings, and by this time 'The Man From Snowy River' had been out for about five years, and I became the resident poetry speaker. Then when Channel Ten started up they were looking for shows to put on, and I was folk-singing at the time in coffee shops all over the place. I put up this concept that we should do our own programme of folk-singing which they accepted. They started taking surveys about episode 7, and when the first survey results came out they overnight decided to cut all live entertainment, except for the news and Telescope, because the ratings were so bad. The highest rating was 14, and that was the test pattern! The simple reason for it was that there wasn't a biscuit in the tuner of most sets to be able to take Channel 10 - there was no one able to watch it, and the reason the test pattern was rating so high is because the technicians were watching it when they put in the biscuit. During the period before Homicide with all the American programmes on television, was there any feeling of frustration or resentment amongst actors that there was no work opening up in television? Very much. My first foray into the political scene was in the late 1950's. I was one of the senior vice presidents of the union, and we did a march by motor car from Sydney to Canberra to talk to various ministers about having a quota system, such as they had in England, where a certain amount of material had to be Australian. It was never intended that it should be like that: In 1952 or 1953, three heads of big Hollywood studios came to Australia unannounced, but the papers found out and asked them what they were doing here. They said "Holidays" - and the place they were holidaying was Canberra! At that time the film studios were fighting a battle in America against television, and one of their weapons was drive-ins. And they wanted to get into Australia before television came. As it just happened the American ambassador had direct door-openings to the PM, who at the time was Menzies. They finished their holiday after a couple of days and went back to America. We were ready to go to television then, but Menzies suddenly decided we would have hearings, and effectively the opening of television was held up for at least two years by this moving sideshow, which toured each capital city and held inquiries and decided who was going to get the licenses for it. That could have been decided in a lot less than three years. When TV eventually did come in 1956, the defences of the film industry had been set up. Now that may have been entirely coincidental - we didn't think it was. That started a lobbying not long afterwards for Australian material on television, which has gone on ever since. The model that we took was the English model - sure, they turned out a lot of rubbish but the Yanks turned out a lot of rubbish too, as we know they do. Only their best shows came out here, and we knew there was no way we could compete with the garage sale prices they were charging. As far as quality was concerned, we were afraid of losing the whole of the Australian character, the whole Australian culture, because the economics were a little bit difficult - at least that was our argument. That was why in '57 or '58 I took an interest in politics, and throughout the Menzies years I supported the Labour Party. So, yes, there was a very strong movement, certainly from the union, against this tremendous flooding of the country with American material. It literally is to the detriment of the country when you do not have your own culture represented in the media. Even these days - we got the whole of the Gulf War from CNN. Liz and I were in America the year before last and put on the television in our hotel room, and we could have been watching Australian television. The basic material is the same as we have here, and it isn't any great wonder to me that most kids are going around with baseball caps worn back to front.” Leonard Teale Famous Australian Poems is available from Fine Poets.com The poems on the CD are: 1. The Man From Snowy River by A.B. (Banjo) Paterson 2. A Bush Christening by A.B. (Banjo) Paterson 3. The Geebung Polo Club by A.B. (Banjo) Paterson 4. How MacDougal Topped The Score by Thomas E. Spencer 5. Holy Dan by Anonymous 6. Mulga Bill's Bicycle by A.B. (Banjo) Paterson 7. Riding of the Rebel by William Henry Ogilvie 8. Said Hanrahan by John O'Brien 9. The Fire At Ross's Farm by Henry Lawson 10. Ballad of the Drover by Henry Lawson 11. Trooper Campbell by Henry Lawson 12. The Shakedown on the Floor by Henry Lawson 13. The Man From Ironbark by A.B. (Banjo) Paterson 14. The Play by C.J. Dennis 15. Faces In The Street by Henry Lawson 16. Second Class Wait Here by Henry Lawson 17. Clancy of the Overflow by A.B. (Banjo) Paterson
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