| Garry McDonald | |
|---|---|
| Born | Garry George McDonald 30 October 1948 Sydney, Australia |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Spouse | Diane Craig, since 1971 |
Garry George McDonald, AO (born 30 October 1948) is an Australian stage and screen actor.
Contents |
McDonald was born in Sydney and was educated at Cranbrook School and National Institute of Dramatic Art.
McDonald first came to wide public attention playing the supporting character "Kid Eager" in the second series of the groundbreaking Australian television comedy series The Aunty Jack Show in 1973. It was while working on Aunty Jack that McDonald first performed the character for which he would become best-known, the gauche and inept local regional TV personality, Norman Gunston. Gunston's first appearance was in a series of brief sketches written by Wendy Skelcher which saw him reporting uncomfortably on a "sex-scandal drought" in his home town, the New South Wales city of Wollongong; a drought he eventually breaks by appearing nude on camera.
After Aunty Jack, McDonald went on to work with the same team in the comedy miniseries Wollongong the Brave (1973) and Flash Nick from Jindivik (1974). The Gunston character was revived for one episode of Wollongong The Brave, a parodic show business biography entitled "Norman Gunston: The Golden Weeks". Around the time of his major breakthrough on Australian TV in 1975, McDonald also made his first major film appearance, playing a minor role in the landmark Peter Weir film Picnic at Hanging Rock.
In 1975 McDonald revived the Gunston character for TV with the help of a writing team that included Morris Gleitzman (now a successful children's author) and veteran TV comedy writer Bill Harding, who had written for the pioneering Australian TV satire The Mavis Bramston Show.
The new series, The Norman Gunston Show, was a parody of the Tonight Show format, and McDonald himself has stated that it was originally based on a mediocre late-night chat show hosted by expatriate American entertainer Tommy Leonetti. The series saw Gunston as the unlikely host of his own national TV variety show. After a slow start the series rapidly gained a sizeable audience by word of mouth and, by 1976, it was a major hit with McDonald winning the Gold Logie Award that year, becoming the only winner in Logies' history to win the award in the name of the character he played.
Gunston's trademark outfit consisted of an iridescent-blue tuxedo jacket, black stovepipe trousers, and sneakers with white socks. McDonald used makeup to make his face deathbed white and had bits of tissue drying on shaving nicks.[1]
The first show was telecast live from a Sydney theater, with searchlights and mounted police on the street outside to mimic a Hollywood premiere. Gunston arrived by bus rather than chauffeured limousine and did the entire program with his pants unzipped and his shirt flapping out.[1]
The series, which satirised many aspects of Australian culture and show business, was a mixture of live and pre-recorded interviews, awkward musical segments – excruciatingly sung by Gunston himself in the broadest 'strine' accent – and continuing comedy sketches such as "Norman's Dreamtime" (in which Norman read stories to a group of children, such as "Why Underpants Ride Up"). The series also featured the TV soap opera parody "Checkout Chicks". Set in a supermarket, the parody mostly featured former cast members of the Number 96 series – Abigail, Philippa Baker, Vivienne Garrett, Candy Raymond, Judy Lynne, and Anne Louise Lambert.
Using Gunston's gormless personality as a cover to break down the defences of his "victims", McDonald pioneered the satirically provocative "ambush interview" technique which was used to great effect in interviews with Paul McCartney, Muhammad Ali, Keith Moon and actress Sally Struthers. When Gunston interviewed Elton John, who was in Australia to promote Tommy, Gunston began by asking "Are you going to premiere in Wollongong?" "No, but I've played tennis with her," John responded. "You're thinking of Evonne Wollongong," Gunston said, "I'm talking about the city."[1]
As Norman Gunston, McDonald also had a successful recording career, releasing a string of satirical novelty pop records that anticipated the pop parodies of "Weird Al" Yankovic. Norman's Top 40 chart hits included his interpretation of the Tom Jones classic "Delilah", the punk rock send-up "I Might Be A Punk But I Love You, Baby" and "We're All Marching In The KISS Army", a parody of the KISS single "I Was Made For Loving You".
Edited versions of the Norman Gunston shows were screened in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and it is arguable that McDonald's work was a direct influence on the later British comedy characters Dennis Pennis, Alan Partridge, and Ali G. In the late 1990s the Canadian actor Martin Short also created a distinctly Gunstonesque talk show host, Jiminy Glick. One of the sketches in that show, "La-la-wood Tales", is a direct copy of the "Norman's Dreamtime" sketch, featuring Glick reading a satirical fable about Hollywood to a group of children.
Although he inevitably suffered from typecasting as Gunston, McDonald was able to create another memorable character in the successful ABC television series Mother and Son written by Geoffrey Atherden. It was loosely based on the cult Carl Reiner comedy feature Where's Poppa?. The series was very successful in Australia. It was repeated many times and has become one of the best-loved Australian TV comedies of all time. It starred veteran actress Ruth Cracknell as Maggie Beare, a senile and dotty yet artful and manipulating mother. McDonald played her long-suffering younger son Arthur Beare, whose life is dominated by his obligation to care for her.
McDonald has also appeared on stage at Sydney's Her Majesty's Theatre and at Nimrod Theatres in many dramatic and musical productions.
McDonald was also the host of a sales video series for the now renamed Telecom Australia, promoting the Telememo communication network.
After Mother and Son, McDonald fought a public battle with depression which reached crisis point after an abortive attempt to revive the Gunston character for a commercial TV series in 1992. He is a member of the Board of beyondblue, an Australian national depression initiative. For his work in this area in addition to his services in the entertainment industry, McDonald was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia.[2]
Two portraits of McDonald have won awards at the Archibald Prize. In 1999 a portrait by artist Deny Christian won the Packing Room award and, in 2006, Paul Jackson's "All the world's a stage" won the Peoples Choice award.
In 2005 McDonald filmed a teleseries called "Step Father of The Bride" for ABC Television. In 2006 he made an appearance on Channel 9's mystery show "Two Twisted".
On 5 April 2008 he began his role of Nathan Detroit in the major stage production Guys and Dolls, which was held at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney.
In 2010 he has played Dennis Johnson in the touring play Halpern and Johnson alongside Henri Szeps, who played his venal and scheming older brother in Mother and Son.
In 2011, he appeared in David Mamet's play 'November', produced by the South Australian State Theatre Company.
McDonald has won four Logies in his television career, which are: