| Kenneth G. Ross | |
|---|---|
| Born | 4 June 1941 East Brunswick, Victoria |
| Occupation | Playwright, screenwriter |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Period | 1977 - |
Kenneth Graham Ross (born 4 June 1941) is an Australian playwright and screenwriter best known for writing the 1978 stage play Breaker Morant, that was based on the life of Australian soldier Harry "Breaker" Morant.
With the support of the South Australian Film Corporation this play was later adapted by Ross into a film of the same name in 1980.
The film was nominated for the 1980 Academy Award for the screenplay adapted from another source.
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Ross was born on 4 June 1941 in East Brunswick, Victoria.
His great-grandparents were Hugh Ross (who arrived in Australia, as a free settler, at Van Diemen's Land in 1837) and Barbara Ross (née McKenzie), and George Beckton and Eliza Beckton (née Peirson, born in Mansfield, Victoria). His grandparents were John Ross (born at Kilmore, Victoria) and Adelaide Elizabeth Ross (née Beckton, born in Jamieson, Victoria). His parents were Kenneth McKenzie Ross (born in Mansfield, Victoria) and Alma Ross (née Graham, born in Mansfield, Victoria). He has three children: Kendal, Kimberly, and Ian.
Ross attended Caulfield Grammar School in East St Kilda, Victoria,[1] where one of his teachers recognized and strongly encouraged his creative writing talents.[2] He also displayed strong debating skills whilst at school.
Ross was a tenacious and courageous Australian rules footballer who played well above his weight, and was a superb middle distance runner, excelling at the 880 yards (or half-mile), now the 800 metres.[3]
Ross, known as "Ken Ross" at school, began writing under the nom de guerre of "Kenneth Ross" in order to set himself apart from various other well-known creative Australians known as "Ken Ross".[4]
More recently, however, Ross has written under the name of "Kenneth G. Ross" in order to avoid confusion with the Scottish/American Kenneth Ross who wrote the screenplays for the movies The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File.[5]
Ross's play, Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts,[6] was first performed in 1978. The play was such a commercial and artistic success, that work started immediately to convert the script of the play into a screenplay.
Ross worked on the film as a scriptwiter, and the film was entirely based on Ross's play. The film was a top performer at the 1980 Australian Film Institute awards, with ten wins. It was also nominated for the 1980 Academy Award for the Best Writing (Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium).
Once it became known that Ross's film was near release, the Australian publisher Angus & Robertson re-issued an out-of-print and not widely known 1973 novel, The Breaker, that had been written by Kit Denton.[7]
It was issued with great gusto, with the original 1973 front cover, plus the factually incorrect announcement overlaid across one corner of the cover: "Soon to be made into a major film".[8]
This announcement was incorrect for two reasons:
In 1980, Ross took legal action against Angus & Robertson in the Supreme Court of South Australia for re-issuing the 1973 book with the factually incorrect announcement on the cover. With the support of crucial evidence provided by the film's director Bruce Beresford, Ross won his case. Angus & Robertson withdrew the 1979 version of Denton's book from sale, and trashed all the remaining copies.
Another, "revised" version of Denton's book (minus the cover announcement, and with a picture of actor Edward Woodward on the cover) was issued by Angus & Robertson in 1980,[10] which sold considerably more copies than his earlier, 1973 version.
Ross's emphatic legal victory did not receive a lot of publicity at the time; and many people today still labour under the misapprehension that it was Kit Denton's 1973 book that was the source for the movie.
In a 1984 interview conducted by Barry Renfrew, the Sydney bureau chief for Associated Press, Denton directly addressed the issue of whether the screenplay of Beresford's movie had been based, in any way, upon his earlier work.
The British-born Denton was most emphatic that in the process of his research in England for the project that eventually culminated in the publication of his novel, The Breaker, in 1973, he had met so much resistance from War Office officials to all of his attempts to identify, isolate, and view the pertinent official records that were associated with Morant, the charges laid against him, his trial, and his execution, that “after weeks of futile waiting, he [Denton] decided British officials were concealing the facts and he began to accept Australian claims that Morant had been sacrificed as a colonial subject”.[11]
In despair, Denton returned to Australia, and began to work on a screenplay about Morant.
No-one displayed any interest of any kind in his developing screenplay. However, the Sydney publisher, Angus & Robertson, suggested that some of his effort might be rescued if he was able to re-work his screenplay into a novel. Denton substantially re-worked his screenplay into the book that was published in 1973.
In the 1984 interview, Denton was most emphatic that he himself, his earlier draft screenplay, and his later novel “[were] not involved with the film [of Beresford in any way]”.[12]
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