A Paper Inheritance

by Dymphna Stella Rees

  I’ve had to lay my cards on the table. She didn’t make very much out of the Adelaide concerts, though they were judged successful. Still, Melbourne ought to be more lucrative. If she decides to dispense with me, I’ll demand a month’s salary, don’t you think, to compensate for the Moreton Bay and messing up my stay in Perth etc, etc?

  Outwardly the status quo seems to hold. It’s almost as if we’d never been parted; which isn’t so good in a way. White shouldn’t have stayed with her so much in Adelaide, then she’d have felt the pinch. As it is, the only pinch she’s feeling is my salary. I asked her to think about the future today and she was vague as usual. It nearly drives White and me mad trying to get anything definite out of her. He says she didn’t discuss the future (a) with me or (b) without me, either way in Adelaide, much to his and my disgust. Still, I’ve told her to think it over. She said she’ll see how the Melbourne concerts go.

  Must now tear myself away from the delight of talking with you and on with the EJ junk.

  Les was on the countdown for Coral’s return to Sydney.

  I have been wondering a lot about you over the weekend, my sweet, hoping you’re not too lonely and desolate but also that you’re not having such a good time that you’ve forgotten me.

  Later the same day:

  As expected, just got your two letters – sweetheart. Every word you write is lovely, delicious and I come too soon to the end and then the excitement is over – for 24 hrs at least. I’m still struggling with the Home article. I must go to it. Work on the Herald is not so prolific. I still have that Manchester Guardian chap in competition with me and what’s more, the bounder has invited me to dinner at his home. Embarrassing!

  It was crisis time for Coral in Melbourne:

  I’ve just returned from a day spent by Eileen’s bedside. Does that portend evilly to you? The fact is, she’s cracking up. The concerts are proving too much for her. Last night – tho’ it was a packed house and they applauded vociferously – she was in a frightfully depressed state – said her memory was going through mental and physical weariness, and that she forgot and messed up every piece she played. White and I and the audience could discern no difference in her playing but she retorted that the really musical people and the critics would! I pray the critics don’t say frank things in tomorrow’s papers. There are no Sunday papers (or trams) in this church-ridden village. She reckons that her performances are becoming more and more substandard, until last night’s was 5th rate. Of course she’s hypercritical and sensitive but the feeling of going downhill is getting on her nerves. Then she’s worried about money and about the fact that when she does crack up – as she surely will at this rate – who is going to look after her and pay her nursing homes.

  She tactfully asked me whether we intended to settle in Sydney – and began fumbling about my contract. I know it’s been gnawing at her for some time and in all humanity I hate to add to her worries. She had a doctor in this morning and he said she ought to have a couple of months’ rest. At one stage it looked as if she’d throw up the whole business from this moment. Anyhow, with regard to me, the upshot is that she cannot afford to keep me going. She did not intend to take me to Brisbane and after Bris, when the public concerts cease she’ll only have her £25 a week, out of which she can definitely not afford to keep me. She’s already decided not to go back to Perth herself – can’t face the dreadful Trans trip. But she probably will go to New Zealand for a couple of months in the middle of August. We went into the business of taking me to New Zealand and the travelling expenses – £30 for boat alone – are far too heavy. So she’ll go alone.

  Coral suggested a compromise to Eileen, offering two weeks’ notice so that she would finish up after the Sydney concerts. It had been a difficult brief – but there were compensations.

  Taking all in all, I’m lucky to have got what I have out of it; she might have cracked up sooner. I doubt, too, whether I’d have made £5 every week in any other way. Of course, I wouldn’t have spent it either. I bought myself a new winter dress – £3 – the other day. I think you’ll like it. And a coat for Mother -£2/5/-. So that’s something.

  It’s now Monday morning and Eileen’s no better. I’ve lots of work to do too. I must get all her stuff absolutely up-to-date before I hand over. Do you know she even wants to save the postage stamps on fan mail now!

  Goodbye for today, dearest dear. A week today I hope to be with you. The relief of being with you again will be almost more than I can bear.

  PS It’s true about Eileen’s lapses on Saturday night. The Argus has given her a very cool and pernickety notice today. I haven’t seen the other papers and I fear the worst. It’s most upsetting.

  Les was surprised to hear about Eileen. But it meant Coral was on the way back.

  Darling – just got your serious letter with news about Eileen cracking up and about your contract. It’s grand that you’re coming up here next Monday – splendid. Two days less agony than expected. Bet your life I’ll be waiting for you at the station on Monday morning with heart full of love and arms ready to enfold you.

  13

  On the Air

  Only days into their long separation in 1936, Coral had written to Les about the possibility of a job at the ABC in Hobart. Nothing came of it but that was the start of them worming their way into a completely new world – the world of radio – or ‘wireless’, as it was called. This was a turning point in their careers, a move that would influence the direction of their lives for decades to come. How Coralie had heard about it, she did not elaborate, but from Adelaide sent a wire to Perth. It was the first communiqué Les received from the travellers and it lifted his gloom. He replied immediately.

  The telegram cheered me like hell. Whether or not the ABC job is any good I shall not know till I hear from you but the idea of being offered a job before I reach Sydney appeals to me considerably. Always I have wanted someone to offer me a job instead of my seeking one. Now the impossible has happened – or so I like to believe.

  Once Les had the details, he lost no time in writing off to the director of ABC Hobart to find out more information. He knew absolutely nothing about the ABC, broadcasting or Tasmania but he was out of work and short of money so had to take what he could find. The national broadcaster had only been established – by federal government proclamation – less than four years previously, its charter ‘to provide information and entertainment, culture and gaiety’. It was also required ‘to serve all sections and to satisfy the diversified tastes of the public’. My parents’ arrival back in Australia happened to coincide with the setting up of federal offices to coordinate the work of the separate state departments. This move would allow for nationally broadcast material, including music, talks and drama.

  I never heard or read anything more about the possibility of my father working in Hobart. Such an occurrence might have changed the course of all our lives.

  So Les came to Sydney and worked as a freelance journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald, reviewing plays, films and art shows. But he wanted more. ‘I knew I needed a more vigorous, innovative outlet.’ Soon he was able to send word that he had scored an interview with William James Cleary, the ABC’s second chairman. He wrote an excited letter to Coralie, who was in Launceston with Eileen Joyce.

  I must tell you a little more about the ABC job, about which I sent you a stop press card yesterday. It’s a clear case of their suggesting the job to me because I went in merely to see about talks. Cleary is a great talker and talked for an hour and a half about his drama plans. It was difficult for me to say much. He wanted to know about my history and whether I had any work to show him and then invited me to send in an application for the job – exactly what job I don’t quite know. I went home and did this, working in a good bit about you, too, and giving a full account of myself. I also enclosed Nettie Palmer’s article about me in The Red Page.

  I had lugged in my Press B
ook – what a great treasure it’s proving – and hurled it at Cleary’s hand. Yesterday I said: ‘In the event of your taking me on, what sort of salary?’ He said ‘Haven’t the faintest idea’. I then told him of the SMH job. Today he said: ‘Can you tell me what the SMH job is worth to you?’ and I said ‘£500 a year at least.’ He said ‘Ha’ and said he would think it over. At another time he said: ‘Of course we have no fixed scales for salaries – we give a man what he’s worth to us.’ I gather he is anxious to have men of general culture in the ABC, no doubt following the BBC’s idea. Let’s hope he gets better ones than the BBC. He asked me if I was interested in music and what languages I could speak and seemed attracted by my general knowledge of art, literature etc.

  As soon as my father returned to his digs, in a fever of post-interview elation, he set out the advantages an ABC job would offer:

  There would be tremendous Australia-wide prestige resulting from the appointment, at least I imagine so.

  Cleary talks as if the ABC has tons of money and can pay what it wants – might mean big rises in the future.

  It would be a chance to do more creative, more practical work – reading and criticising and doctoring radio plays, arranging contents etc. with possibility of visits to other capitals and the country.

  Cleary being keen on men with general culture, there might be various other chances within the Commission, such as taking over literary sections, or even the whole control of the more serious programme arrangements. (You see, I am a man of vision).

  The hours of work would be regular. Under the Herald arrangements, it seems impossible for me to know what I am doing for more than 24 hours ahead. Regular hours would give us opportunity of taking part in any other creative work, such as play production on the stage. In time I do not see why you and I should not get down to the business of writing and producing our own plays here, much more scope than in London I think.

  But, interestingly, it was Coralie who made the first move into broadcasting. (This is something I would never have known if I had not discovered that pile of 1936 letters.) She was the one who first sold a ‘talk’ to the ABC to be delivered on national radio and then walked into a recording studio in Hobart and delivered it. It was a world in which she would eventually make her mark.

  But there is a price for everything. She had to forgo her social life, as she reported:

  Eileen and Leon went to the pictures last night. I felt like going but had to stay at the hotel and prepare my wireless talk and fell asleep doing so. Hope the listeners didn’t fall asleep tonight when I was broadcasting it. I wonder if you were listening? I think it went well; the delivery might have been a trifle slow but it should have been clear. I didn’t want to make your mistake of going too fast as you did in your voice test – and perhaps I erred on the other side. It is lovely to think that you were listening and might send me a telegram of encouragement??? I’m to get three guineas for it. It took lots of time to prepare.

  Les did manage to hear the broadcast:

  Firstly I must tell you I heard your voice on the wireless tonight. I discovered the SM Herald had a wireless set in its library. The librarian found the wireless correspondent and he spent about an hour tuning to get Tasmania for me. The atmospherics were crackling like a bushfire. It was chronic. However, I waited about till 6.30 and switched on and sure enough heard your sweet voice through the barrage of irrelevant ether-scraping noises. It was grand – though I contained my enthusiasm, not being sure that it was you, for the voice was so faint that I could not clearly distinguish. But then I heard the well-known paragraphs about the slim bamboo fingers of E.J. and knew it was you.

  What a great pity I couldn’t hear it better. From what I did hear, the broadcast was completely successful. Your voice is splendid, clear, bell-like, velvety and when we settle in Sydney we must do something about using it – either on the stage or on the radio.

  Now, listen. Why not write to the Adelaide manager and try to arrange some broadcasts on the lines we have been dealing with – celebrities in Europe, women’s life there, Eileen Joyce. Re the enclosed cuttings about Eileen, they are from The Women’s Weekly, May 8 edition. There’s quite a lot about you, too. I’ll send one to your mother and father.

  Leslie was not so successful.

  The ABC has turned me down as I suspicioned by yesterday’s letter. I don’t think Bronner thought much of that broadcast on ‘200 Plays a Year’ and, as I told you, he probably had some justification for I never felt less like broadcasting than at that moment. So when I saw him yesterday he said: ‘We didn’t get you into the national broadcasts. Your material is alright but the selectors of the programmes don’t know enough about you, and feel you ought to have more experience broadcasting before putting you in the National bill. So we’re arranging for you to give some NSW broadcasts.’ It’s a poor finish to all the spectacular interest they showed me and my suggestions at the beginning: but perhaps the fault lies with me.

  Meanwhile, Coralie sent words of encouragement. While grateful, Leslie was at pains to water down her expectations.

  Thanks, Love, for your congratulatory telegram about the Cleary job. Telegrams are so dramatic, final and clear-cut, like a climax in a stage play, but in life things are never like that. They are hedged with qualifications, doubts and compromises. So is the ABC job, as I have already explained. It is over-simplifying things to imagine that they will suddenly embrace me at a huge salary and with clarion calls of publicity.

  I saw Charles Moses, the General Manager, today. I mentioned the play-reading job to him and he said: ‘Nothing can be done for a few months.’ When I mentioned to Moses the SMH work, he seemed relieved and said: ‘Keep that. Meanwhile, perhaps we could give you a small weekly salary to read plays for us. This would probably develop into a full-time job.’ This, though disappointing, is perhaps the best move.

  Now that they saw the opportunity, both were separately planning broadcast talks. However, much of the material came from shared experiences so they had to negotiate who did what and then make sure they didn’t encroach on each other’s territory. Leslie reported some ‘gratifying success’. He could see his future in the new world of radio:

  Moses liked the ideas I submitted: all of them. Result: Federal Talks Director Bronner has ordered SEVEN National talks, to be broadcast all over Australia at FIVE GUINEAS a time. Think of it! But this isn’t all. His is merely the Federal concern. I next went to the NSW Talks Director and arranged more talks with her. I am to give the first next week. Judging from general conversation, they seem starved for fresh first-hand talks and I should be able to give many of them. The directors seem more keen on literary talks.

  This country is absolutely starved for European contacts: that’s my dominant impression. I am desperately anxious to make a success of this broadcasting business because there seems so much future in it.

  There was a future there – for both of them. Coralie would be ‘on the air’ for many years, making her name as a broadcaster. Leslie was appointed federal drama editor of the ABC in December 1936, and until his retirement in July 1966 he extended and enriched the role of radio drama. He could not have guessed that, by establishing his career in the ABC, he would have the opportunity to nurture and facilitate the literary careers of many other Australian writers, thus fulfilling that private resolution he made when trying to break into the bastions of London’s newspaper world.

  In 1936 Leslie’s passionate belief that Australia must find its own voice in the arts, its own identity to replace slavish genuflection to British values and expression, was groundbreaking. As scriptwriter Eleanor Witcombe would declare:

  The acceptance and recognition of an Australian literature and a truly Australian voice did not just happen. It has taken many generations of struggle. In the long history of the fight for existence, some names stand out: one of these is Leslie Rees.

  Another legacy of my
father’s work was the profusion of Australians who developed their talents as playwrights under his guidance. One of those to benefit from that training was Witcombe, who went on to make a lifelong career as a dramatist. She played an important role in the birth of the Australian film industry, receiving accolades for her screenplay for the film My Brilliant Career. Of my father’s contribution she wrote:

  Leslie Rees was well known for his generous support of new writers, particularly with practical advice, often with an introduction to radio writing – the only paying medium then available for would-be writers. ‘Adapting plays,’ he would say, ‘will teach you structure.’ It has been claimed that almost an entire post-war generation of scriptwriters and playwrights was influenced by him.

  Looking back after decades, former chairman of the ABC Sir Charles Moses described Leslie as ‘a man who has made a unique contribution to Australian drama and literature’.

  14

  Searchlights over Sydney

  After the Eileen Joyce tour finished, my parents found themselves in Sydney. They fell in love with its physical beauty, its harbour, its mountains to the west, and its benign climate. And the life seemed to offer everything they valued.

  As my father described it:

  Sydney was indeed a smiling place to live. The beauties of the rocky inlets and points and coves, the pockets of virgin bushland, marvellous for weekend walks and so close to the built-up city streets, countless arcs of creamy or red gold beach along the near Pacific coasts, the unique vegetation and birds in wild, unsuspected gullies – all these riches were ours and we loved them.

  My parents decided that here was the time and place to have their family. And of course, they intended to be writing. For this purpose, they found a spacious flat overlooking Shellcove, a little bay wedged between Neutral Bay and Mosman Bay on the northern shores of Port Jackson. It offered longed-for advantages: water views from most of the windows and the hospitality of the landlord’s harbour-fed pool. On top of that, it was just a short ferry ride to the city.