As well as taking a stab at the national anthem, my father composed a piece of music that he called Fantasia for Solo or Orchestra and Vocal. He was thrilled when I played this at the Fremantle Music Society. “I am very proud that it was performed publicly by my daughter,” he told me. “I couldn’t have asked for more in the world than to have my dear Margaret play the piece for me.”
Although this book is primarily about David, it may be helpful to mention a little of what I was doing after David went to London. In the years during which David was studying at the Royal College, I was also spending a great deal of time at the piano. I had practically stopped playing during the previous four years, because I was an adolescent who wanted to assert my individuality. In addition, having David around, with his often difficult behavior, had inhibited me. Then, when David went abroad, I began practicing regularly again and took lessons with Madame Carrard. I obtained my associate in music in piano performing—an advanced music diploma issued under the auspices of the universities of Australia—which I completed in under a year, achieving good marks. In 1967, I entered the Perth finals of the Commonwealth Concerto and Vocal Competition, coming in second. In the following year I actually won the competition and was sent to Melbourne to compete in the Commonwealth final. I didn’t win, but it was very exciting to have gotten so far.
A year later, at the age of twenty-three, I was back in Melbourne, where I stayed for three years, studying piano with Ada Corder, better known under her maiden name, Ada Freeman. Ada was renowned in Melbourne musical circles for having taught Nancy Weir, one of Australia’s leading pianists. She was an inspiration to me; we had an excellent rapport and what was meant to be a one-hour lesson would often run to three hours at no extra cost. After the lessons, I would practice for about five hours a day on a piano that my mother’s sister-in-law, Auntie Gertie, had kindly lent me. At the same time I supported myself by working part time for a law firm.
My musical life was a very full one. I appeared as a soloist with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The whole family came to hear me play when I appeared in Perth. My father called me “a real knockout,” and said that I had “brought the house down.” I was fortunate in having very good conductors. In Perth I played under the sympathetic baton of Sir Bernard Heinze. He made me feel very special, by guiding the orchestra to take into account my own interpretation of Liszt’s “Hungarian Fantasy.” I gave the piece a Gypsylike flavor, and Heinze ensured that the orchestra flowed with my approach. For the Melbourne performance I played Rimsky-Korsakov’s Concerto in C-sharp Minor, conducted by the distinguished Dutch conductor Willem van Otterloo. Several of my performances were broadcast on Australian television, and I also received good write-ups in the papers.
My father always gave me a great deal of encouragement. He was not at all opposed to my leaving the family nest and becoming more independent. Shine wrongly portrays him as desperate to keep the family together at all costs. (“You are not going! I won’t let anyone destroy this family,” Peter says in the film.) The reality was quite different. For example, he wrote to me as follows:
“My dearest daughter, Here is a letter for you in reply to your last letter. I must admit that your writing looks more like music to me everyday, so keep up reading all that literature. The more the better, as my intentions are to bind all your letters and treasure them as a work of art…. Living away from home will make you wiser. Of course I consider now that you have reached maturity and can make up your own decisions…. My dearest, your ever loving pop and family XXXXXXX”
When I returned to Perth in 1971, I joined the Australian Broadcasting Commission as a secretary. In July 1973, I made my first trip abroad, traveling to England (with a few days’ stopover in Singapore) and then on to Israel. I wanted to learn Hebrew, so I took a five-month course in Tel Aviv. After another year in Perth at the Australian Broadcasting Commission, I decided to move to Israel in 1975. I planned to take a degree in English Language and General History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. But I was in no hurry, and took a tour of sixteen European countries on the way. When I arrived in Israel, I settled in Jerusalem. Living in that beautiful city, which holds such a special place in the hearts and minds of the Jewish people, gave me great inner peace and intellectual joy.
Before I left Perth, my father and I shared a very special, silent moment, capturing the unspoken understanding we have always had. I had no idea that it was to be the last time I would see my dear father alive. There was some trepidation on my father’s part that I was going to live so far away, yet he was glad it was Israel. He had been a supporter of a Jewish state throughout his life, and especially so after the Holocaust.
When I had finished my degree at the Hebrew University, I taught English and piano in two Jerusalem high schools. After a few years, I met my Scottish-born husband, Allan, a doctor who works in the main hospital in Beersheva, the capital of southern Israel’s Negev desert. I settled in Beersheva and now teach piano in a small music conservatory just outside the town.
A short time after I left Australia, on December 29, 1975, my father passed away quietly and unexpectedly in his sleep, at the age of seventy-two. In many ways he died with a broken heart. It seems that along with a propensity for musical talent in our family, there is also a tendency to mental illness. It was truly a huge blow to my father to see first Hannah, his only sibling to survive the Holocaust, institutionalized and then his son David fall prey to the same affliction.
Right up to the end my father felt that while he could not cure David, he could nevertheless improve his condition with the right mixture of nutrition, exercise, deep breathing, and positive thinking. When this didn’t succeed he was extremely sad. Far from being a villain, as Shine suggests, he had in fact devoted a large part of his life to David; so it was a terrible thing for Dad at the end to see his son in the state that he was.
Of course my father had his faults; he could be stubborn and fixed in his ideas, and Leslie found him at times domineering. But overall he was a wonderful man—principled, warm, generous, and always ready to help those in trouble.
Shine suggests that David did not attend Dad’s funeral—which is not true. The film shows only a graveyard scene, which is set nine years after his death. Standing over my father’s tombstone, Gillian asks David, “What do you feel?” and my brother replies, “Nothing.” Gillian then asks a leading question, “Nothing at all?” to which David replies sarcastically: “Well, I’m shocked, stunned, and completely amazed—how does that sound?” Then David and Gillian walk off while, in the words of the screenplay (scene 194), “We hear joyous singing: Tuniculi, Funicula.’” This glorious nineteenth-century Italian song by Luigi Denza is a particularly distasteful choice of music to play over my father’s grave.
The reality was quite different. After Dad’s death, David made it clear, both at the funeral and afterward, that he had very fond memories of his father. Certainly he never said that he felt nothing when Dad died. On the contrary, he paid tribute to our father in the newspaper two or three days later. “If I have done any good at all, I owe it to my father,” David wrote. He has also told me repeatedly in various letters how much he loved Dad. For example, on April 4, 1977, he wrote, “I’m missing Dad, I can’t believe he’s dead.” Again, on May 23, 1978, he wrote that he was still struggling with his father’s death: “It seems unreal, even though I participated at the funeral.” He also told me about how impressed he was, now that he himself had studied, because it made him realize just what a broad knowledge of music my father had acquired, and how much Dad had taught him.
David praised Dad to others, too. In a letter dated January 2, 1976, to Sir Keith Falkner, director of the Royal College of Music, he wrote: “Pop was a super human being and I wish you could have met him.” He added that he and the family would be in mourning for seven days, according to Jewish custom.
In fact, David never said anything negative about my father until Gilli
an and Scott Hicks conceived the idea of making Shine in 1986.
14
THE ROAD TO REHABILITATION:
A GOOD WOMAN AND
A FAIR MAN HELP DAVID
After my father’s death, David continued to live at home with Louise, Leslie, and my mother. (Suzie, like me, had moved out.) My father’s death was a huge loss to the whole family. David, in particular, took it very badly. He became terribly depressed, his health declined, and his behavior was erratic. For example, he would eat wherever he felt like it, all over the house—Leslie often discovered bits of cheese lying in unlikely places and had to plead with David not to leave food around, as it attracted mice and rats.
This period wasn’t easy for the family. Those same people who had been so eager to involve themselves in David’s life before and after he went to London were now no longer interested in his welfare. In May 1976, Leslie left for a long-awaited first trip abroad— to Europe, North Africa, and to visit me in Israel. Not long afterward, David’s condition deteriorated further; my mother, Suzie, and Louise held extensive discussions with David’s doctor, who strongly advised that David go back into hospital, where he could receive full-time supervision and medical care.
So David was readmitted to Graylands. Even then his life was not without music. The hospital had a piano for David to play on, and his favorite music resounded throughout the wards. A nurse told my mother on one of her frequent visits that David added “tone” to the unit, and cheered everyone up with his joyous melodies. He didn’t play all the time, of course, but he certainly wasn’t barred from playing, as has been stated numerous times in the media since Shines release.
After a few weeks of treatment, David’s condition improved sufficiently for him to be discharged. He chose to go and stay for a while with Mr. and Mrs. Price, a very good-hearted couple who lived on the outskirts of Perth. Our family home was in a noisier inner-city district, while the Prices lived far from Perth’s metropolis, where it would be quieter for David and he could take long country walks.
As the fact that the father who had done so much for him was no longer there began to sink in, David became aware that it wasn’t easy for his family to cope with his mental illness full time. He realized that he needed to take charge of his own life, and to his great credit, he began to take steps toward being more independent and responsible for himself. He was extremely lucky at this time to meet two fantastic people, who were to help him enormously on the road to rehabilitation.
One of them was Dorothy Croft, known to her friends as Dot. She and David met while he was in Graylands Hospital. She was also a pianist, and was playing one evening for a choir in an outer suburb of Perth, where David, who was having a night out of the hospital, had gone to hear the choir. Someone suggested he sit next to Dot at the piano. He offered to turn the pages for her and she happily accepted, because as every pianist knows, a good page turner is invaluable. Impressed at the way he did the job, she asked the choir mistress who this man was. When she was told she was shocked. She couldn’t believe it was the same David Helfgott, whose career she, like many other Perth music enthusiasts, had followed with avid interest over the years.
Dot felt a strong urge to help David and started visiting him at Graylands. She often took him to the beach for short breaks, and gradually their friendship blossomed into a close relationship. Dot told me later: “David was very romantic. He used to bring me chocolates and so on.”
During the eight years in which they were seeing each other, Dot helped David enormously, encouraging him, finding him pupils for piano lessons, having him stay for weekends. She arranged concerts for him and also other activities such as tennis matches. She put his newspaper clippings in order, pasted them in scrapbooks, and labeled them according to date and category. These are the clippings that my father is shown burning in Shine.
My mother liked Dot tremendously. She often wrote to me about the outings on which she accompanied David and Dot. When I was on a trip back home, I went with her and David to visit Dot. I could immediately sense what a warm atmosphere there was in Dot’s home, and what a genuinely kind person she is. David and I had a lovely time playing duets on Dot’s two pianos. It was great fun, and felt just like old times. David seemed to be in the best of health, and very happy with Dot.
In 1977, David decided to look around for a suitable place to live and this is when the second person who was to prove such a help to him appeared. The Reverend Robert Fairman was a Methodist minister who ran a halfway house (Bassendean Lodge) licensed by the Australian government for people with emotional and psychiatric problems. David sought his help and instantly liked the lodge. For the next seven years he was cared for by this remarkable man, first in Bassendean and afterward in another district of Perth, where the lodge was reestablished under the name Gildercliffe Lodge.
I have spoken to the Reverend Fairman and he told me that when David came to inspect the lodge, the first thing he did was to take a look at the bedroom and the second was to ask if they had a piano. They did, and after playing it he remarked that it was better than the piano he had been playing at the Selby Centre, a local government-run mental-health rehabilitation organization where he was then working as a book binder.
“When David came to me I knew nothing about his background,” said the Reverend Fairman. “I saw a young man, rather scholarly in appearance, quite intelligent in speech and conversation, displaying a nervous little laugh and overly polite. David played the piano from the day he arrived. In fact, he made it his own. At Bassendean we moved the piano to an unused building a little way away from the main building, where David could play undisturbed. However, he loved an audience, and would often shout to the residents at the top of his voice, asking whether they had a ‘favorite.’ David did not confine himself to the classics. Since I am Irish-born I would often request ‘Danny Boy’ or ‘The Rose of Tralee.’ The theme from the movie The Sting was particularly popular with some of the other residents.”
My mother, Leslie, Suzie, and Louise went to see David regularly. Leslie tried to help David in many ways—not only as an emotionally supportive brother, but also more practically. He gave David all sorts of small gifts that he felt would make his life more comfortable. He bought him a television set and gave him money whenever he needed it.
I went to see David at the lodge during a return visit from Israel in 1980. The place was very pleasant, with billiards, table tennis, darts, and so on, and a staff of fourteen to look after residents’ needs. David went out a lot and soon knew the area well. He often went swimming in the clear waters of the nearby Indian Ocean. He was very popular with his fellow residents, both men and women, who included some of the kindest and most gentle people imaginable. At Bassendean, David tutored a couple of students and enjoyed a busy social life. This continued after the lodge moved.
“When we moved to Gildercliffe Lodge, we pulled the extra bed out of David’s room and placed David’s piano in his bedroom for his own exclusive use,” the Reverend Fairman told me, adding, “David gave lots of concerts. There was many an evening when my sister-in-law helped David fix his bow tie and brush down his tuxedo. As well as giving concerts, David also taught advanced-grade pupils in this period. He probably had the most active social life of any of the fifty residents at the lodge. He went out late most evenings and away at weekends. In fact, he was the only resident to be given his own key to the front door. David lived a full social life—a monk he was not! Very often some lady would appear at the front door to take David to a function or whatever. In particular, he met Dot Croft. Everyone knew about this because the residents’ phone was located right at the center of the lodge, and everyone could hear—in most cases to their great amusement—David’s loud affirmations of affection.”
Contrary to what has been stated in hundreds of media reports all around the world about Shine, David gave many public performances during his stay at the lodge. In 1978 he appeared as a special guest artist at a concert to raise money for
his old high school, the John Forrest Senior High School. He played piano duets with a local musician, Helen Dear, including one of his favorites, “Spanish Dance No. 2,” by Moszkowski, a nineteenth-century Polish-German pianist and composer.
David also appeared many times in public together with Leslie, who was now working as a violin teacher and a musician. These were very popular affairs. My brothers had been making a name for themselves and the concerts were usually sold out and attracted press interest. For example, they gave a series of concerts at the Subiaco Theatre Centre about which Music Maker magazine ran a two-page article headlined “Ladies and Gentlemen … It’s the Helfgott Brothers.”
David also began playing with the Karrinyup Symphony Orchestra, for which Leslie already played second violin. Dot took David to rehearsals with the orchestra and for concert appearances. The conductor was none other than Frank Arndt, our first piano teacher, who once again spent much time encouraging David, as he had done in the past. On one particularly memorable evening on November 9, 1980, David played the Bach D Minor Concerto with the orchestra. It must have been a nostalgic occasion for him, because he had first played it when he was only twelve years old. Even then he received excellent reviews, much better ones than he gets now. “Helfgott’s lyrical style was a pleasure to hear,” wrote music critic Barbara Yates Rothwell. Under the headline “Tunes of Glory,” Derek Moore Morgan, the music critic of The West Australian, wrote: “David Helfgott negotiated the considerable pianistic pitfalls of Balakirev’s ‘Islamey’ with fluency and clarity.”
David’s rehabilitation took a further step forward when Leslie found him a job playing the piano three nights a week at Riccardo’s Restaurant and Wine Bar in September 1983. Riccardo’s is the bar shown in the opening scene in Shine, where it is renamed “Moby’s.”
Out of Tune Page 13