P

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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!
During the War Norman would contribute the occasional cartoon to the Bulletin and other magazines from up north and after the War he became a full-time cartoonist there, alongside Norman Lindsay and Ted Scorfield. He ended up doing a full-page cartoon spread in addition to single cartoons. In 1949 he made his first puppet following instructions in a 1935 Popular Mechanics Monthly from the U.S. that his father had given him. He saw that puppetry offered a way of combining his performance skills with his cartooning ability. TV came to Australia in 1956 and Normanʼs puppets began appearing on the very first night of ABC TV. He also worked on Channel 7 in a syndicated puppet show that included a “Cartoonerator” where he was able to use the talents he had developed as a lightning sketch artist. Meanwhile he continued cartooning for the Bulletin until 1960 and presented holiday puppet-shows in department stores. These were joyful little shows and very often culminated with a treasure surpassing gold... a large plum pudding. Often close inspection of a puppet would reveal something usually found in a kitchen drawer ingeniously integrated into the design. Mr Squiggle just happened. To fill a gap in programming. It was not planned that he would be around for 40 years but Squiggle clearly had other ideas! In Australia we often celebrate the larrikin, but here was a TV puppet hero who was gentle, extremely polite (“Please excuse my back Miss Pat”) and occasionally needed his hand held. That all began in 1959. A year earlier Norman had married Margaret and, thanks to her, Mr Squiggle would never be lost for words. We should remember that they worked as a team. In addition to Mr Squiggle, grumpy Blackboard [“Hurry up!”], the impish doormat, Bill Steamshovel and Gus the Snail ... two non-puppets joined the household: Stephen, now a Professor of Philosophy at UNSW, and Rebecca, who eventually became Mr Squiggleʼs presenter, the last of a line of talented presenters. And letʼs not forget the valued contribution of Mr Squiggleʼs director at the ABC, Beverley Gledhill. In the early days Norman was concerned that someone else might “borrow” the technique of Squiggle. Personally I think it would be very hard to find someone else who could draw such amusing and fantastic sketches leaning forward over a near-vertical pad with a pencil fixed at right-angles to a metre-long handle and a heavy weight at the end. And who else would give an umbrella to a fish? Often, as in the army shows (but for a reason not obvious to the young viewers) Mr Squiggle would ask for the picture to be turned upside-down.... and would then turn it into something fantastically different. No wonder thousands of children posted off their squiggles to see what might become of them. Five years ago the Mosman Art Gallery organised a splendid retrospective exhibition. It was called: “Mr Squiggle ; Whoʼs Pulling the Strings?” One exhibit was an envelope that a child had addressed as follows: “Mr Squiggle, The Moon.” It got there! Norman Hetherington, Bill Steamshovel, Mr. Squiggle and Gus Photo provided by Rebecca Hetherington
Page 1: Issue Nø 11 December, 2010 O P e N
Page 5 and 6: Publications 1974 Puppets of Austra
Page 7 and 8: To speak of Norman’s cartoonist s
Page 9 and 10: Whatʼs On - January Dream Puppets
Page 11 and 12: From Tehran To Torrensville Puppet
Page 13 and 14: Where is Kassius? He’s back! Waff

P

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?