Chips Rafferty

Chips Rafferty
Chips Rafferty
Born	John William Pilbean Goffage (1909-03-26)26 March 1909 Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia
Died	27 May 1971(1971-05-27) (aged 62) Sydney
Resting place	Cremated and his ashes cast into his favourite fishing hole in Lovett Bay, Pittwater
Occupation	Film actor
Years active	1939–71

Chips Rafferty MBE (26 March 1909 – 27 May 1971) was an iconic Australian actor. Called "the living symbol of the typical Australian",^[1] Rafferty's career stretched from the 1940s until his death in 1971, and during this time he performed regularly in major Australian feature films as well as appearing in British and American productions. He appeared in commercials in Britain during the late 1950s, encouraging British emigration to Australia.

Early life

He was born John William Pilbean Goffage in Broken Hill, New South Wales to John Goffage, an English-born stock agent, and Australian-born Violet Maude Joyce.^[2] Gaining the nickname "Chips" as a school boy,^[2] Rafferty studied at Parramatta Commercial High School before working in a variety of jobs, including opal miner, sheep shearer, drover, airman^[3] and pearl diver^[1] before making his film debut in Ants in His Pants in 1938. At that time he was managing a wine cellar in Bond St, Sydney.^[4]

Film career

Rafferty's onscreen image as a lanky, laconic bushman struck a chord with filmgoers and Rafferty soon became the most popular actor in Australia, appearing in such films as Forty Thousand Horsemen, The Rats of Tobruk, The Overlanders and Eureka Stockade.

Rafferty married Ellen Kathleen "Quentin" Jameson on 28 May 1941.^[5] He enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force the next day and entertained troops. He was discharged on 13 February 1945, having reached the rank of flying officer.^[6]

Hollywood also beckoned, and Rafferty appeared in American fare like The Desert Rats, opposite Richard Burton; The Sundowners, with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr; and Mutiny on the Bounty, with Marlon Brando. The most bizarre appearance was with Elvis Presley in Double Trouble in 1967. Initially, Rafferty was marketed in the United States as the Australian version of Cary Grant before being allowed to resume playing variations of the leathery bushman role that had served him well so far.

Rafferty also produced and wrote films for a production company, Southern International, which he founded in 1953,^[7] although none of these reached the same level of popularity as those he appeared in for other companies. These included producing The Phantom Stockman, producing and writing the original screenplay for King of the Coral Sea (1953), producing and providing the original story for Walk Into Paradise (1956) and producing Dust in the Sun (1958) and the Ambitious One (1959).

In addition to his film work, Rafferty also guest starred in a range of Australian and American television shows, including Gunsmoke, The Stranger, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Tarzan, The Monkees and The Wackiest Ship in the Army (as a different character to the role that he played in the movie version). He also participated in cinema advertisements that were part of an Australian Government campaign in 1957 called "Bring out a Briton". The campaign was launched by the government in a bid to increase the number of British migrants settling in Australia.

In 1962, the 198cm (6'6") actor was in a London club when a fellow Australian started an argument. Unaware his antagonist was a professional wrestler, Rafferty was provoked into 'stepping outside'. He received a serious beating that brought on a heart attack. Time spent recovering from the incident may have cost him the chance of roles in two major film productions.^[8][9]

Rafferty's final film role was in 1971's Wake in Fright, where he played an outback policeman. (The movie was filmed mainly in and around Rafferty's home town of Broken Hill.) In a review of the film, a critic praised Rafferty's performance, writing that he "exudes an unnerving intensity with a deceptively menacing and disturbing performance that ranks among the best of his career".^[10]

Hours before he died, Rafferty was offered a prominent role in the film The Day the Clown Cried by Jerry Lewis.^[1] The film has never been completed or officially released, and is apparently unlikely ever to be.

Death

Rafferty collapsed and died of a heart attack while walking down a Sydney street at the age of 62 shortly after completing his role in Wake in Fright.^[3] His wife Quentin predeceased him in 1964 and they had no children.^[5]

Honours

In the 1971 New Years' Honours, Rafferty was made a Member of the Order of British Empire (MBE) by Elizabeth II for his services to the performing arts.^[11] Australia Post issued a stamp in 1974 that depicted Rafferty in recognition of his work in Australian cinema, and in March 2006, Broken Hill City Council announced that the town's Entertainment Centre would be named in honour of Rafferty.

The Oxford Companion to Australian Film refers to Rafferty as "Australia's most prominent and significant actor of the 1940s–60s".^[12]

Australian singer/songwriter Richard Davies wrote a song titled "Chips Rafferty" for his album There's Never Been A Crowd Like This.^[13]

Associations

He was also a talented artist, and as "Long John Goffage" was a leading light of the Black and White Artists' Club.^[4]

He was a Freemason.^[14]

Filmography

Unmade Projects

Rafferty tried to make the following projects but was unsuccessful:

• The Green Opal - a £60,000 film about immigration he tried to make in 1951^[15]

References

External links

• Chips Rafferty at the Internet Movie Database
• Chips Rafferty at Australian Screen Online
• Chips Rafferty at Australian Dictionary of Biography
• Chips Rafferty at the Australian War Memorial
• Chips Rafferty Interview on Radio National
• Chips Rafferty at the National Film and Sound Archive
• It's an Honour