I was already in Israel at this time, but family and friends kept me informed of David’s popularity and success at Riccardo’s. They sent me videos of David playing, surrounded by an appreciative and enthusiastic audience. His adoring fans plied him with cigarettes and drinks, entranced by his music. He had enormous fun, as did the customers, when he played Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee” or one of his other favorites. My family often went to see him play and it warmed their hearts to see him so happy, and to hear the cheering of the audience. Even Madame Carrard turned up. “I don’t usually go to this kind of bar at my age,” she told me later, “but I had a marvelous time.”
David received a lot of local press publicity, and was attracting large crowds who came to hear him play. He would often joke with the customers. When patrons asked David to play Beethoven’s Fifth, David would reply with a grin: “Which one? Symphony or Concerto?” (Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, and five piano concertos. One of David’s special talents was that he could also play symphonies that had been transcribed for the piano.) He was described in the press as “leering mischievously through bottle-lensed spectacles.” David’s appearances at Riccardo’s became such an event that when he finally stopped playing there in 1986, Music Maker magazine ran a cover story entitled “Riccardo’s—The Party’s Over.”
These were not the only concerts David was giving. In July 1984, he played Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the Nedlands Symphony Orchestra at Winthrop Hall at the University of Western Australia under the baton of the Polish conductor Henryk Pisarek. (“Winthrop Hall has seldom seen such a huge crowd. David Helfgott gave it all the lyricism, sensitivity, and passion we had come to hear and the audience responded with great warmth,” wrote critic Jan Shepherd in Music Maker.) David also played with his beloved teacher, Madame Carrard, on May 25, 1985, at a special concert at the Octagon Theatre, which is situated on the campus of the University of Western Australia. They played both solo and two-piano works to great acclaim, including Milhaud’s “Scaramouche.” On November 16, 1985, David and Katie Hewgill played the Rachmaninoff Sonata for Cello and Piano, at the same venue. In 1986, David gave three more concerts at the Octagon Theatre, selling out over 2,000 seats at this octagonal-shaped venue. His program included three preludes by Rachmaninoff and one of his favorites, “Pictures at an Exhibition,” by Mussorgsky. All the concerts were very well received. One was even broadcast on television.
It was during the period in which he was playing at Riccardo’s that David met Gillian Murray, a divorcee and a professional astrologer with two grown children. From then on David’s relationship with Dot abruptly ended and she found herself dramatically shut out of his life. Gillian had been introduced to David by the owner of Riccardo’s, Dr. Chris Reynolds, and several months later, on August 26, 1984, they married. My family in Perth attended the wedding. (Gillian and Reynolds fell out badly over the making of Shine, so the character in the film who is directly based on Reynolds was changed to an attractive blond woman.)
After they were married, David and Gillian began to make trips abroad. I met them in London in 1986 at Rudolph Steiner House, and David and I had great fun playing Dvorak’s New World Symphony, a wonderful piece arranged as a piano duet, which we used to love performing together as children.
David and his new wife traveled all over Europe in the late 1980s. He gave many concerts, performing in, among other locations, Vienna, Sion (in Switzerland), Budapest, Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, Bonn, and Düsseldorf. In 1988 they came to visit me in Israel. David gave a private recital in Jerusalem at the house of a friend of mine. My husband and I took Gillian and David touring. He particularly loved visiting the ancient Jewish mountain fortress of Masada, and the Dead Sea, which is the lowest point on earth, and we all had a great time.
David also went to London, where he studied with Peter Feuchtwanger, a German music professor from Munich who had lived in London since the 1970s. Later, in October 1994, David returned to give a concert at the Royal College of Music. I was very pleased for him and his successes.
David has undoubtedly spent some exciting years with Gillian. She has taught him several new skills, such as yoga, and she has tried hard to bring his nicotine and caffeine addictions under control. (At one stage David was smoking over 130 cigarettes a day and drinking about twenty-five cups of coffee.) In many respects, Gillian has made David very happy and for this the whole Helfgott family is grateful to her. But in other ways, David has changed for the worse. When Gillian met David, he was well on the way to recovery. He had had the benefit of seven caring years with Reverend Fairman and almost eight with Dorothy Croft. He was reasonably independent, playing with his brother Leslie, and performing with various orchestras. He could, for example, catch public transport by himself without difficulties. He had his own bank account. Yet when I saw him in 1988 in Israel, he was already manifesting some rather peculiar habits. For example, when catching sight of our dog, David exclaimed: “Is it a cat? Is it a wolf?” and finally, “Is it a dog?”
Later, in 1991, when I saw David in Perth, he spoke in an even more unusual way: He said to me over and over again: “Hello Margaret, hello Margaret, hello Margaret, hello Margaret, my Santa Margarita.” I was quite mystified, as David had never talked like that before. And as time went by he became more and more hyperactive, talking rapidly and leaping from one subject to another.
Another equally serious development was afoot. After marrying Gillian, David started saying things (and more specifically telling journalists things) that are completely untrue. I don’t believe that David says these statements of his own volition. I believe Gillian, who has herself said some pretty nasty things, encourages him to talk in this way. Certainly the habit became more marked after Gillian got together with Scott Hicks in 1986 and they began to plan Shine. The derogatory remarks about people who had helped David in the past coincided with the appearance of articles praising Gillian for “rescuing” David. Thus began Gillian’s myth building.
I was particularly concerned because it was not just my family, but other good people who were being trampled on by Gillian to promote herself and what she considered was best for David. I met the Reverend Bob Fairman again for a long talk in 1996, after Shine had come out. This kind Christian man, with his ready smile and engaging, gentle manner, poured his heart out to me. He had looked after David for seven years; now he was on the verge of tears as he outlined the cruel things Gillian Helfgott and Scott Hicks (and sometimes also David) had been saying about the period when David was with him. Numerous articles and television and radio programs around the world talked about David “lying and dying on floors of halfway houses,” being denied access to the piano, and so on.
“David was not ‘locked up in mental hospitals.’ This is all a myth,” said the Reverend Fairman. “When he was at the lodge, which was most of the time, he was free to come and go, visit his family, give concerts, have girlfriends, go on holidays—and he did all of these things. At the same time, he received proper medical supervision in a caring and professional environment, which is, of course, what people who have these kinds of mental problems need.”
The Reverend Fairman was distraught about the things that David has said about the lodge since he met Gillian. “Some of the remarks are just absurd— that we didn’t have any knives and forks, for instance. Can you imagine fifty people eating three cooked meals every day without cutlery? David did not bury his face in a lady’s crotch, as has been claimed, nor even touch one in an unseemly way. Nor did he run around naked. During the time he was with us, he was much more coherent than he is now. In spite of his nervous disposition, he radiated a quiet dignity and was most gentlemanly. Contrary to the numerous newspaper reports, he was a free agent. I had no authority to tell David what to do, nor did I ever try. He had a very enjoyable time at the lodge. It was a pressure-free environment and he had plenty of friends.”
My brother’s calm state is confirmed in official reports by his docto
rs. For example, a report prepared by a consultant physician in March 1983, just before David met Gillian, states that my brother’s “speech was normal throughout the interview.” It can also be seen on interviews he gave to Australian TV discussing concerts he was giving during this period, programs such as the ABC’s Nationwide (January 1984), and Nine Network’s Mike Willesee Show (July 1984), broadcast a month before he married Gillian. It would not have been difficult for Scott Hicks to obtain videos of these programs.
David was not “released from dark years in an institution” as one paper put it following an interview with Gillian, describing life at the lodge as “a nightmare.” The lodge had a reputation for excellence; the Reverend Fairman has even received parliamentary citations for his work. In March 1984, Barry Hodge, Western Australia’s Minister for Health, wrote a special letter, “commending the Reverend Fairman for his valuable work on behalf of the state of Western Australia.” And in April 1986, Graham Burkett, a member of Western Australia’s Legislative Assembly wrote: “The Reverend Fairman is one of the most respected and highly regarded persons in Western Australia and his hostel is often displayed by the government as an example to persons operating similar hostels.”
Fairman is not the kind of man to run to his lawyers. Yet in 1987 he became the first of several people involved in this sorry saga to contemplate legal action against Gillian Helfgott. In July of that year he instructed his lawyer to send a letter threatening a defamation suit against her for remarks she had made in The Australian Women’s Weekly. She had said that David “lived in a room like a cell,’ was “sedated into almost catatonic state” and had been “left to suffer alone.” The Reverend Fairman warned her not to repeat these allegations.
Gillian also claimed that David “hadn’t played [the music which he then played at Riccardo’s] for almost fifteen years,” which is simply not true. I myself heard him play when I visited the lodge in 1980. Other residents and staff at the lodge also protested that this article was “misleading and totally inaccurate.”
The Reverend Fairman told me that after this episode, when he heard that Gillian and Scott Hicks were planning to make a film, he had telephoned the film company in Adelaide; but no one had got back to him and he was never interviewed for Shine or shown a copy of the script. Sometime later, when he heard further rumors of all the untrue things that were to be included, he rang again and eventually managed to speak to the screenwriter. The Reverend Fairman said he was assured that he had no need for concern—the film was to be highly dramatized and, he gathered, fictitious. “I was very surprised,” the Reverend Fairman said to me, “when I saw that Shine was being described as a true story. I was shocked to see the character supposedly representing myself locking the piano away from David—I never did anything like that. The filmmakers’ line of thinking must have been: Why let facts spoil a good story?
“David was in a far better shape when he was under my care than he is now. He is an intelligent man, and you could then hold an intelligent conversation with him. He often went home to see his family and they often came to visit. In the whole seven years, David never said one angry word against his father.”
The Reverend Fairman also described how in 1984 he went with his wife to David and Gillian’s wedding. “At the wedding reception I heard Gillian say to David It’s toilet time, David. Come along to the toilet.’ David never had to be told this when he lived at the lodge. He never groped women as he does in Shine. He did not babble as he does now. He talked normally. In fact, he was charming and a gentleman.
“I admire and love David Helfgott very deeply,” he added, “and it is greatly distressing to see the words now coming out of his mouth. I think if he realized the hurt that these untrue things he is saying to journalists are causing, he would be deeply hurt himself.”
By 1997, the Reverend Fairman had had enough. He fired off several angry letters to newspaper editors. The one to the Los Angeles Times read as follows:
“Dear Sir,
My attention has been drawn to an article in your newspaper (March 24, 1997) by Mr. Scott Hicks. In seeking to defend himself, sadly he forces me to defend myself and my work among the emotionally disturbed. In saying that Mr. David Helfgott lay on the floor,’ ‘abandoned,’ ‘out of sight’ of those who now ‘profess’ such concern for him,Mr. Hicksbetraysameanstrategy, namely throwing muck in a different direction.
These unkind accusations were compounded by Mr. Hicks in a television interview in which he added ‘sick and dying.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. David came to my home, discharged from hospital and almost immediately enjoyed a fairly active social life. In my home he taught piano, as he did also in the home of Mrs. Dot Croft. Daily he caught a train to work as a book binding employee. Most evenings he was out attending functions, or actually performing at some concert …”
It is not only the Reverend Fairman who is distressed at the falsities Gillian has been feeding the media. Writing to the editor-in-chief of The Australian Women’s Weekly on June 26, 1987, Dorothy Croft said:
“I wish to protest in the strongest possible terms about your scurrilous and inaccurate article. The content is sickening to those who know the truth about this pianist’s life … I can’t believe that a reputable magazine could lower its standards by printing such things … David was not ‘locked up in a “cell, deserted and alone.’ He had security, care, and love.”
Dot’s letter goes on to outline in great detail David’s concerts, friends, and social and sporting activities. “David’s life did not begin again when he walked into Riccardo’s restaurant in 1983. This myth has been promulgated in a large number of articles that have been written about David Helfgott and it is high time that it was shattered into a million little pieces.” The publisher of The Australian Women’s Weekly, Richard Walsh, confirmed in reply to Dot’s letter that information for the article had been supplied by Gillian and David.
Later Dot told me: “In all the years that I knew David, he never once said anything derogatory about his father. I was amazed when I read newspaper interviews in which he said things like ‘Daddy was cruel.’ I wondered why in the world he was saying these things, and I can’t believe that they can be his own thoughts.”
It’s clear that the myth-making originates (to a large extent at least) from Gillian, while at the same time she promotes herself as David’s rescuer. For example, describing the period between his return from London in 1970 and his first meeting with her in 1983, Gillian is quoted in The Herald newspaper on May 30, 1986, as saying: “Imagine him locked up in an institution for twelve years. Sometimes they wouldn’t even let him play the piano. He suffered from severe loneliness with no one to ever care about him.”
In Shine, David is referred to as “a stray dog,” as he wanders into “Moby’s” by himself in 1983. Had Scott Hicks done his research (or spoken to me or Leslie or others), he would have come across positive reviews of David’s music such as the ones already referred to dated November 10, 1980. Now, as a result of the film, endless newspaper articles have stated with apparent authority that David didn’t perform in public between his return from London and 1983, when he came “under the watchful eye of his wife Gillian.” The magazine New Idea carried an article along these lines on August 24, 1985, under the title “The Love That Reclaimed a Lost Genius.”
I have found that once journalists become familiar with Gillian’s and Shine’s version, it is very difficult to persuade them to publish the truth. The myths become the facts. Before his marriage to Gillian, it was a different story. For example, The West Australian (December 17, 1983) praised “His girlfriend Dorothy Croft.” The National Times (January 6, 1984) stated that “the dramatic turnaround in Helfgott has been wrought by his girlfriend Dorothy Croft… and his manager Chris Reynolds.”
The many long letters David wrote to me in Israel from 1975 to 1983, most of which I have kept (but to which Gillian holds the copyright), also tell a different tale. They are without exception upb
eat and positive, with dozens of references to attending or playing in concerts, to lessons with Madame Carrard, and to auditions at the ABC and elsewhere. David mentions his concerts with Leslie, playing cards with Leslie, and going out dancing with Mom. He writes with enthusiasm of his leisure activities, of the tennis he played and the Chinese restaurant he ate in. He also refers sympathetically to his first wife Claire, and to the “happy days” of his childhood. He praises life at the hostel. His letter of April 4, 1977, tells about the “good friends” he had made. On May 23, 1978, he wrote: “The hostel is very nice and I have good friends there.”
Leslie, who visited David throughout this period, confirms all this: “During the time he spent at the Reverend Fairman’s lodges, David was very happy. He had good food, a good bed, and a piano. He had his independence. The lodge was the best place for David to be at that time. It was very positive for his mental health. It was really excellent therapy and his condition improved no end.”
This is the accurate version of events before Gillian entered David’s life. The distortion of the truth as presented in Shine has done nothing but hurt a great many decent people. The only person who has benefited is Gillian.
15
THE MAKING OF SHINE
While I was on a visit to Perth in June 1986, my sister Suzie was contacted by a film director who was in town. He said he was going to make a movie about David and the Helfgott family, and wanted to talk to us about it. When Suzie told me about this, my initial reaction was to be cautious. I had no idea who Scott Hicks was, and I thought that a stranger wanting to put our family in full view of the world might well result in an invasion of privacy. We were not, after all, public figures and had not sought a life in the public eye.
Out of Tune Page 14