THE NAKED CITY: STARS OF THE MONOCHROME BOX
Ever since Sesame Street first aired in the US in 1969 and Play School premiered on the ABC here three years earlier, children’s TV has been carefully crafted and scripted by those conscious of early childhood education. That was not the case back in the early days of Australian television in the late 50s, when shows for kids were often ultra-low budget, gag filled, slapdash affairs. The emphasis was on entertainment, lots of chuckles and nothing that was too instructive.
Whilst Melbourne spawned the more American style Happy Hammond, Gerry Gee and Princess Panda, in Sydney we opted for a more British approach. In fact, many of the early stars of the Channel Seven and Nine children’s shows were British expats who moved to Australia and found ready work in the thriving new industry.
One such personality was former UK child movie star Desmond Tester, who migrated to Australia after WWII. During the 1930s he had featured in films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotag’ and The Drum with Sabu. In Sydney he soon found work at Channel Nine with shows such as Kaper Kops and What’s My Line. Perhaps his most memorable, albeit offbeat contribution, was the infamous Cabbage Quiz, where youngsters competed for a number of awkwardly sized prizes, which they needed to hold onto until the finish. The trick was every time they got an incorrect answer they were loaded up with a cabbage. It was not unusual to see some tiny child, struggling to hold both prizes and cabbages, cruelly drop the lot – much to the laughter of the studio audience.
Channel Seven’s foray into children’s viewing was the Captain Fortune Show which first screened in 1957 with Alan Herbert as the bearded host of the program. It was not only live but apparently unrehearsed and seldom scripted. It soon became a huge hit with the kids, screening three times a week and on a Saturday. It was every child’s wish at that time to take part in the show, with invitations at a premium. Sadly, it appears there is no surviving vision although his daughter, Kathie Herbert, has put up a website at: https://captainfortune.com/.
Whilst appealing to more of a teenage and older audience, Channel Ten’s Aweful Movies featured a series of actors in the different States playing the ghoulish host Deadly Earnest. In Sydney the role was immortalised by the somewhat mysterious Ian Bannerman who presented weekly B-grade movies with a variety of actors, cheap props and theatrically dark humour. It soon gained cult status, thanks largely to what was labelled Bannerman’s “dead pan ghoul’ and survived for a good half decade from 1966 onwards.
Bannerman was another UK import, born in Scotland in 1938. As well as his acting skills he was a talented songwriter and musician and in 1969 recorded the album Rave In Peace with his band, The Grave Situation – now a sought-after collector’s item. The release featured songs such as “Screaming Mimi’s Deathoteque”, “Sunnyside-Up Crematorium Blues” and “Cec Cook’s Magic Shop”, for which he recorded a classic video clip:
Bannerman is thought to have died sometime in the 1980s but the latter part of his life remains a mystery, perhaps in keeping with his on-screen persona. In 2013 he was inducted posthumously into the Horror Host of Fame and is fondly remembered by those who recall the days before Channel Ten turned to crap.
Children’s and young folk’s TV has changed considerably since those early days of Australian television. The spontaneity has long gone, replaced by slick production values and a carefully constructed educational agenda – with not a cabbage in sight!
