Radio Australia Today Editorial

Skippy’s dad dies

4 February 2010

If you followed the exploits of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, you’d know that this first Australian superhero lived on a bush park. You’d also know that she had an unique ability to click-click-click her mouth, and all the actors around her would translate this into news that a group of escaped prisoners were in the park and were planning to rob a local bank disguised as Amercian businessmen and using sawn-off rifles concealed inside their overcoats, and that it was due to happen at 2.15 on Thursday afternoon.

But what you might not know was that one of the people behind the series was an Australian actor who was virtually the first actor to make it big on the U.K. stage in the 1930′s.

John McCallum, an impossibly handsome man (even in his latter years, as you could see from the photo above), went to London as a young man, training at RADA, touring in stage productions, starring in film, returning to Australia to fight in the war, and going back to London to continue his career.

He never forgot Australia, and insisted for years that Australia should support its own actors, a prescient view that may have been one of the factors in Australia having so many actors taking over the international film world today (Sam Worthington, Nicole Kidman, Rose Byrne, Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce etc etc).

And Skippy, a true international phenomenon. A good friend of McCallum’s told us today how the wallaby that played Skippy used to be kept in a hessian bag until required to shoot their scene. A fellow actor, on seeing this bag, exclaimed: “If that’s the dressing room for the star, then what will they give me!” As an animal lover, I find the scenario repugnant, but the comment still has to rank as one of the funniest.

McCallum will be missed. Right up to his death he was outspoken, still pushing for a national theatre company which would, he always said, bring actors to national, and perhaps international, prominance.

We need more people like John McCallum. Our thoughts go to his wife of 62 years, actress Googie Withers.

- Phil Kafcaloudes