Tag Archives: Documentaries

Albert Tucker Interview

An Interview with Albert Tucker conducted by Justin Obrien in 1997.
Albert expands on his many insights,during the time he spent with John and Sunday Reed and other artists at Heide during the1940’s. An intimate insight into a unique man.

Joan Bilceaux – Female Melbourne Jazz and Blues Singer Actress Australia

Joan was the daughter of Jean and David Bilcock Sr. David was a pioneer Melbourne film maker whose amateur films,some featuring Joan as a child, gained awards and were the foundations of a lifetime career.

Born on the 4th Feb 1930 in Croydon, the oldest of five children, Joan showed early ability as a singer and in her teens became a member of an entertainment troupe called The Croydon Merrymakers.

First working with a Flinders Street clothing manufacturer as a bookkeeper, she was invited by her employer to do some part-time modelling of his range. She soon became a full-time mannequin and photographic model, early in her career being disappointed that she was rejected by Man magazine as being ‘too wholesome’ for its pin-up pages.
Tempted to look for a professional name, she chose to use Bilcock with the pronunciation ‘Bilco’ favoured by a branch of the family; but one day when asked by a reporter to spell it, she came up with B-I-L-C-E-A-U-X. Joan Bilceaux was born.
She had continued to pursue her love of singing and became recognised as a singer of jazz and blues, gaining a strong following with bands like The Steamboat Stompers. Basin Street Blues became her signature song and the opening line, ‘Won’t you come along with me…’, delivered with her characteristic power, invariably triggered a roar of applause that often drowned out, ‘….down the Mississippi’. She often appeared with visiting overseas artists of the stature of Louis Armstrong and Bob Hope.
Her modelling career bloomed; she became President of the Mannequins Association and was Mannequin of the Year in 1955. The ‘wholesome’ good looks that had denied her a pin-up career coupled with her height and slim, athletic figure, enabled her to win high fashion engagements while still modelling sports and swim wear.
Joan was ‘athletic’ in more than appearance; she was an enthusiastic rower and with her sister Linda, formed a successful rowing team that won competitions in coastal events such as the Anglesea Ocean Regatta.
In 1951 — a time when Australia had no feature film industry and when most so-called Australian films were produced here by overseas companies — Joan’s father was involved in a local feature called Night Club. It starred Joan, with future television comedians, Joey Porter and Joff Ellen, in lead roles.
Joan was not well served by writer-director A.R. Harwood and the film’s failure convinced her that she was not meant for the screen. She was wrong.
With the coming of television in 1956, Joan was chosen for the original cast of Channel Seven Melbourne’s Hit Parade — an ambitious mime show that won a huge audience. She became one of the Channel’s most popular stars while still performing at concerts and continuing her modelling.
When sharp-angled refrigerators replaced the curved lines of the 40s and early 50s, it was Joan who launched ‘The Sheer Look’ in a stunning long gown, her gloved arms forming a fetching right-angle.

With Chanel Seven director, Ian Jones, she created an early TV gem, Blues Studio One, a relaxed, partly ad-libbed show built around Joan rehearsing with Len Barnard’s jazz band. The show’s theme was the arrangement of Moonglow used in the film Picnic. Fans still speak of remembering her when they hear it.
Joan married Ian Jones in 1958 and, soon after, retired from television, singing and modelling. The couple had three children Darren, Angus and Caitlin. They were divorced in 1983.

Joan worked in the Art Department of Crawford Productions and also did some antique dealing with a friend. She travelled to Bali and India way before it was fashionable to do so and became an expert in astrology, cultivating a rich spiritual life. She had slipped happily from the limelight and lived out her years as a loved mother and grandmother to Eva, Rosie and Oliver.

Joan died peacefully on Tuesday 6th of March at Victoria Gardens Hawthorne from Kidney failure. She was 82.

Wonderful Western Port

DVD – Ned Kelly

Production Notes – by Darren Jones

The Story of Ned Kelly is a documentary we originally made for a Kelly exhibition in South Bank Melbourne. A strong point is the narration by Charles ( Bud ) Tingwell and appearance by leading Kelly historian Ian Jones. I was totally surprised when Bud agreed to do the read for just 1k. All we had left in the budget. Apparently he had just completed a stage show in Perth and had contacted his agent to see if anything was pending the day i rang. He did the whole read in one take. A real fair dincom professional and a true gentleman. Originally created under the banner of my first production company Picturepond Media, the film continues to enjoy an enthusiastic audience due to its strait forward and authentic portrail of the events that shaped this fascinating story. It really is the journey of a life time.

Buy the DVD

Buy DVD – The Story of Ned Kelly

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$34.95 (inc.P&H)
Order delivery estimate 3 – 7 days

Orders outside Australia

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Order delivery estimate 4 – 9 days

BOOK – The Friendship that destroyed Ned Kelly

Ian Jones

Lothian 1992

Preface

On the night of 26 June 1880 outlaw Joe Byrne, lieutenant of the Kelly Gang of bushrangers, shot his lifelong friend Aaron Sherritt, declaring to the dying man’s mother-in-law and pregnant bride, `The bastard will never put me away again.

Sherritt died an informer’s death, in a house bought by police money, wearing clothes given to him by a detective, with four constables dithering impotently in the next room. Even his funeral and his widow’s crepe were paid for by the police. Everything confirmed his guilt.

Aaron Sherritt is the classic traitor of Australian folklore. His name has a splendid ring of villainy to it and his best-known portrait shows an avaricious, almost cruel face, with sensual lips, cold eyes, and dark hair glossed back from a devilish widow’s peak.

But the `portrait’ is a contemporary press engraving which distorts Aaron’s features in conscious or unconscious homage to the traitor role in which he was already cast. In marked contrast, an original photograph records a striking, open face, with broad mouth ready to smile and bright, calm eyes. It is the face of a likeable rogue. In it you seek, without conviction, the man who betrayed his best friend for blood money.

Joe Byrne’s avenging role completed, he rode off to his own death only thirty-five hours later. He fell in battle with police, clad in plough-steel armour, as he raised a glass of whiskey in a last, defiant toast, `Many more years in the bush for the Kelly Gang!’

It was an end worthy of the outlaw legend he had helped to create and as preposterous as much else in the twenty-three year life of this opium-addicted bush poet who spoke Chinese, wooed barmaids, rode a magnificent grey mare, outwitted watching police to visit his widowed mother and was `the idol of the girls of the district’.

When some photographers won a bizarre photo session with Joe’s stiffened corpse hung on a cell door, they recorded a sadly handsome boy, the youth and gentleness of his face accentuated, rather than camouflaged, by a downy moustache and beard. Here is the poet, the lover, not the hard-riding outlaw, the killer.

In the end both the despised traitor and the swashbuckling outlaw seemed equally miscast

In essence, they were .Each was playing a role he had stumbled into.Yet each responded to the demands of his particular audience,so successfully that masque and reality interfused to become almost indistinguishable.

Ian Jones. from preface ‘The Friendship that destroyed Ned Kelly’ Lothian 1992

DVD – Rob Roy Hill Climb

Buy DVD – Rob Roy Hill Climb

Orders within Australia

$34.95 (inc.P&H)

Order delivery estimate 3 – 7 days

Orders outside Australia

We are happy to send DVD’s to International customers.

$39.95 (inc.P&H)

Order delivery estimate 4 – 9 days