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Norman Hetherington OAM, Australiaʼs most well-known puppeteer and creator of Mr. Squiggle
(which played on ABC TV for 42 years), died on December 6, after a long illness. He was aged 89.
This issue of O.P.E.N. is dedicated to Norman. Many have paid tribute to him and we celebrate his
life and achievements in the following pages.
Norman Hetherington 1921 - 2010
The following is a eulogy written and presented
by Richard Bradshaw at Norman Hetheringtonʼs
funeral on Monday, 13th December.
I was still at school when I first met Norman. That was in
1952 when I went to see a Saturday afternoon show at a
small puppet theatre for children in an old army hut in
Burnie Park, Clovelly. At the end of the program some
adults presented a marionette version of an Aboriginal
legend and one of those adults was Norman Hetherington.
They were not his puppets, but he was there for some
first-hand experience before he embarked on a career of
puppetry.
Later that year Norman turned up at a meeting of the
Puppetry Guild with two marionettes he had made. They
were based on traditional variety figures: a devilish
contortionist and a skeleton which could fall apart and
reassemble. They were stunning figures, better looking
than most we had seen in books of overseas puppetry.
Then in 1953 he mounted his first marionette production,
“The Reluctant Dragon”, a play by Harcourt Williams. I
remember it very fondly. Itʼs about a dragon who would
prefer to write poetry than wage war. He is finally worked
up to battle when he is accused of writing “punk poetry”.
Smoke comes out of his nostrils ... or from one nostril in
this case ... and this was the forerunner of lots more
smoke down the years. Norman designed brilliant
puppets, had a wonderful sense of fantasy, and used lots
of talcum powder ... to make smoke. In later years on TV
the human presenters faced the smoke from Bill
Steamshovel and Rocket. Sometimes it came out in
lumps.
Norman felt that puppets should do what humans couldnʼt.
In his 1954 production of “The Magic Tinderbox” the king
was transformed before our eyes. His arms became owls,
his legs became frogs, and his body became a big purple
pig. You canʼt learn to do that at NIDA.
One night, at a Puppetry Guild meeting in Erskineville,
Norman did something quite special for us. He used his
hands and bits of card to make an amusing series of
shadow sketches. I particularly remember the swan,
whose neck and head were his own arm and hand, and
whose body was Normanʼs head. Norman had a
wonderful head of thick, dark, curly hair and I remember
the audienceʼs delight when the swanʼs head turned to
preen the “feathers” on its back. He had to stop doing this
great little show when a chisel he was using to carve a
puppet slipped and cut into his forearm, seriously
damaging a tendon to his thumb and requiring surgical
repair Fortunately for everyone the accident did not end
his puppetry career.
As a boy Norman had attended Fort Street High where the
Principal was horrified to learn that Norman had decided
to leave school to study art. How could he possibly
choose the frivolous pastime of art above the academic
study of language, history and football? What future was
there in that?
Norman was sometimes called “Norm”, but his talents
were far from those of the norm ... (that bad pun is for Bill
Steamshovelʼs benefit). While he was a teenager studying
art at East Sydney Tech The Bulletin published cartoons
he sent them. [I hope his old school principal read The
Bulletin!]
During World War II Norman joined an Army Entertainment
Unit. The actor Michael Pate was in the same unit and
wrote a book about it. On the dust-jacket is a cartoon of
the members of the unit, “The Islanders”, drawn by “Heth”,
which is how Norman used to sign himself. As the
obituary in the Herald mentioned, it looked a bit like a
Chinese character. There are two photos of Heth in the
book. In one he has a little moustache and a bowler hat
and is holding up the words of “Daisy, Daisy” for a
community singing session. In the other, with smock,
beret and palette, he is doing one of his lightning sketches
as part of a Concert Party for troops in northern
Queensland.
.
Photo:
Australian
War
Memorial
68989
These troop concerts took him north of Australia to New
Guinea, Dutch New Guinea and New Britain and the
lightning sketches were often of personalities in the units
they played to. These were accompanied by funny ad libs
from Norman and sometimes he would transform one
portrait into another by adding a few lines and turning it
upside down. Mr Squiggle was already on his way from
the Moon!