Everything you always wanted to know about The Flying Doctors. Dedicated to Lenore Smith and Christopher Stollery.
 

Chapter 6 - The heartthrobs

This chapter is part of the book The Inside Story by James Oram. It's a book about the actors of The Flying Doctors and it was published in 1990. You get to know a lot about the actors and about working for the most popular Australian TV series.
Only to obtain second hand via websites like E-bay these days.

Peter O’Brien took one look at Minyip and laughed. He wasn’t mocking the town. He was not about to make Hicksville jokes which other actors, usually from Sydney, included in their repertoires. He was enjoying Minyip because it was not the small straggle of houses and buildings, complete with numbskull yokels, as had been described to him on more than one occasion. Compared to where he came from it was almost a metropolis. ‘To me Minyip is a big town,’ he observed. ‘Where I grew up in Jervois on the Murray River in South Australia, there was a water tank, a bowling green, a town hall, a footy oval and a tiny school. That was it. Minyip is much bigger than it looks on screen, I mean, the main street is bitumen!’

Now a star of the small screen, in fact an idol to many teenagers who surround him shrieking and screaming as though he’s just had three hit records in a row. Peter sometimes goes back home for a weekend with his old mates. He described one occasion thus: ‘On Saturday arvo (afternoon) I toss the coin at the footy, then on Saturday night there’s a cabaret at the local hall. Great fun, bring-your-own plate, one of those evenings where, before you know it, you can’t walk because all the beer’s on the floor. None of the boys talk to the girls, and at the end of the evening there’s the obligatory two or three fights.’

Such is life in a small Australian country town. The clichés sit comfortably. The overseas image of unsophisticated Australia is reinforced. The city intellectuals hate it but they seldom journey from their natural habitats of gossipy bistros to see it and even if they did they wouldn’t understand anything happening around them. You make your own fun in a small Australian country town and if that includes drinking too much and getting into fights forgotten next day, so be it.

Peter left Jervois, but not for ever, when he went to Melbourne in 1984 and got small parts in such television series as Prisoners and Carson’s Law. On his own admission, he played hard and often lived rough, at one stage sharing a house with eleven others, which meant that a decent night’s sleep was not high on his agenda. Then came the role of Shane Ramsay in Neighbours. In no time at all he was one of the most popular figures on Australian television, unable to walk up the street without, in his words, ‘getting the shirt ripped off his back.’

Weary, and not a little wary, of the attention, he went to Britain and Europe in 1987. He thought he would have no difficulty walking down the street with his shirt intact, but had not realised that Neighbours, now screened by the BBC, was fast becoming the hottest show on television, as well as the most maligned. He found this out while wandering along Oxford Street, London, peering idly into shop windows and wondering if his budget would stretch to another shirt or two. ‘Then I noticed a whole lot of people following me. I ducked into a shop. The owner hid me in a changing room and told the crowd I’d gone out the back way.’

Neighbours hadn’t yet reached Europe so he had no problems when he went across the channel. He slept on beaches, at airports, in cars. He hitch-hiked. He got into trouble.

On one occasion, in Greece, he was in a nightclub with two girls having a beer, generally enjoying himself and bothering no one. Trouble started when a local took a fancy to one of the girls.

‘Come on, you dance,’ he demanded in broken English. ‘No go way,’ she said. ‘Come on, come on,’ he insisted. ‘Push off,’ she said flatly.

Ever the gentleman, because above all country lads have good manners, Peter told the man something similar. A knife appeared in the man’s hand. Peter blinked, considered the seriousness of the situation and tried the charm that worked so well at home half a world away. It meant nothing to the Greek who was jabbing the air with the knife. He had never heard of Neighbours. Furthermore he was being addressed in a language so alien it could have been coming from someone from outer space. As Peter said later: ‘I was really scared and it looked bad. All my wit and charm had run out and he was still threatening me. Finally the police arrived and chucked him in the slammer.’

On his return to Australia, he was offered the role of Sam Patterson in The Flying Doctors which the producers describe this way: ‘A local boy, Sam Patterson learns to fly on the station his father manages. His quiet country ways, his friendliness and his ability as a pilot make him a favourite with the doctors and the townspeople ... Sam has to prove himself over and over to gain a permanent position as the Royal Flying Doctor Service pilot, the only job he ever wanted to do.

He establishes himself, not only as a good pilot, but a caring person who can assist the doctors in an emergency ...’

Peter describes Sam in more down-to-earth terms. ‘I like him as a character, but he’s a bit of a dag. He’s not a sophisticated city boy, he’s a worker,’ A little like Peter really.

When he first went on The Flying Doctors set he had butterflies in his stomach. There were two reasons. First of all he felt a trifle awed by the reputation of the series, which most actors and critics considered was a cut above the rest. ‘My first day on the set I was so nervous I could hardly remember what the character was like. I was scared about what people were going to think of me and how they would react.’ The second reason was that he hated flying, no small problem for an actor who has to clamber in and out of light aircraft the way other people get into their cars, and look confident while doing so. ‘I’m the world’s worst flyer. I always expect the worse when I get in a plane and I’m always grateful to touch down.’

Peter took the role in The Flying Doctors simply because he could not work forever in the sausage factory atmosphere of Neighbours churning out five half hours a week, even though it was a nice secure job. The Grundy Organisation, producers of Neighbours, tempted him with a fatter contract but he declined. He had to get his head onto a new show, had to develop his talents further than the cardboard character of Shane Ramsay. ‘I could have easily sat in Neighbours and been content, but I needed a change. I don’t think the character could have gone on any further and maintained credibility.’

There was another reason for the producers of The Flying Doctors wanting his name on a contract. The producers don’t talk about the reason in public, but behind closed doors, during their planning conferences, they all agree that a heart-throb is what the show needs.

A heart-throb is a male with the kind of looks and physique which will draw female fans to the screen no matter what role he plays. If he can act, so much the better. Sometimes they are called sex symbols and have been around since the days of silent movies; Rudolph Valentino was a heart-throb, Tom Cruise is one today. Nothing changes except the hair-cuts.

Actors hate being called heart-throbs. They may quietly thank the great make-up artist in the sky that they were not born looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame but they publicly detest the title. ‘Heart-throbs come in and out of fashion like pointy shoes,’ said Peter O’Brien. ‘It’s the media that makes you into one. If you can act then you don’t have to worry. You should just concern yourself with the quality of your work and make sure each role is different.’

On sex symbols he has said much the same. ‘It’s so ridiculous. Jack Nicholson is the sort of sex symbol I could handle being, that is, fifty, fat, balding and still getting the great parts.’

His mother, Betty O’Brien, also doesn’t see anything in her son that would be inclined to make the heart flutter. ‘It doesn’t really mean much to me,’ she said when the subject was raised. ‘He is just the same to me and no different to anyone else.’

But try telling that to the fans. Even though The Flying Doctors does not have the same high ratings as Neighbours the former, aiming for a family audience, Peter is still pursued by young females, anxious to obtain what their mothers have warned them about. ‘People say I could have my pick,’ he told the Australian fan magazine, TV Week. ‘Sometimes I go out with mates and they tell me there are girls around, but I’m oblivious to all that. If a girl came up, stripped naked and propositioned me, I might be aware of it, but I don’t go looking. It’s my mates who do well out of the girls who come up and say hello to me. I edge away, but my mates carry on talking to them. I suppose I could exploit the position if I wanted to, but if I did I would get a reputation that would spread like wildfire. I’ve never been promiscuous. I’d rather have a few beers with my mates.’

Nor does the media, the British media in particular, take notice of his protestations. With both Neighbours and The Flying Doctors screening in Britain, he has been pursued by the London press as if he was the biggest exclusive story of the year. In no time at all they had him all but married to his long-time girlfriend, Elaine Smith, a regular on Neighbours. She was astonished at the attention she received during a visit to London. ‘There were only two things they really wanted to know,’ she said. ‘One was about my relationship with Peter. The other was how much money it would take for me to strip.’

Caring little for the laws relating to bigamy, the press had him all but married to two women at once. One newspaper claimed he was about to wed Rebecca Gibney, his co-star on The Flying Doctors. ‘This was quite remarkable because she was getting engaged to someone else at the time,’ he said.

Peter kept finding media representatives in the most astonishing places. Had one popped up from beneath his bed he wouldn’t have been surprised. They followed him in cars, loitered like suspicious persons around his hotel and hid themselves in corridors. ‘It’s outrageous,’ he said. ‘When you arrive, it’s like you’re from Mars. Any bit of dirt they can find, they’ll go digging for it.’ The Australian press, on the other hand, treats the soapie stars in a more casual fashion. Australian reporters often have the telephone numbers of the stars and ring them every now and again for a chat or run into them at social functions.

The British fans weren’t far behind the media. Peter was mobbed by fans at Heathrow Airport and the car of BBC publicist, Carol Millward, was in danger of being demolished when he was driven to the Terry Wogan Show. Millward recalled: ‘He has hundreds of female admirers here and about a hundred people climbed over my car to get to him after the Wogan appearance. I think he was a bit surprised at how popular the show is but you know Peter, he’s so laid back he’s not affected by the star treatment.’

Rebecca Gibney, less used to such attention, was amazed. ‘It was pretty scary when all those girls tried to get at him. I got my hair pulled in the scramble and our driver got punched in the face. Pete’s pretty modest and doesn’t take the sex symbol tag to heart.’

When he returned in 1989, to play in a pantomime, Mother Goose, and a stage production of Butterflies are Free, he found the media were no less anxious to get his name in print, even if the stories had little foundation in the truth, or even none at all. One newspaper reported he got into a rage and chased three teenagers who had arrived at his house seeking autographs. Then he drove after them in his car. It made a nice little story, but Peter gave his version. ‘We hired a farm house. Once word got out that we were living there, the kids really did give me a hard time, even peering through windows. One day I came out and explained that we signed autographs at the theatre and to please not come into our yard. A couple of days later it was in the paper that I had threatened people and even tried to run a mother and family down in my high-powered Datsun. Just because I have a beaten-up VW and didn’t threaten anyone makes no difference (to the British press).’

Even Peter’s parents were not able to escape the British media’s hell bent pursuit of something other than truth. Jack and Betty O’Brien were at home one day when there was a knock at the door.

Introducing himself, a British journalist inquired if the O’Briens would like to talk about their son. ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Jack, who although affable was wary of talking to anyone from the media. ‘You better see Peter’s agent.’

The O’Briens thought they would hear no more. But they hadn’t taken into account the reporters ingenuity, not to mention his imagination. Soon afterwards a story appeared in a British newspaper claiming Jack was battling cancer. ‘Peter doesn’t know whether dad Jack will live or die,’ said the story. ‘The whole family is on tenter-hooks waiting for the doctor’s life or death verdict.’

Jack O’Brien was sickened. Five years earlier he’d had cancer of the bowel, but two operations had cleared him of the disease. ‘I’ve never felt better in my life,’ was his reaction to the story. ‘Right now I’m as fit as a fiddle.’

But there were more ‘exclusives’ in the story. It went on to claim that Peter was ‘terrified’ that if he had any children they, too, might be ‘cot-death victims like his elder brother.’

Betty O’Brien was upset and dismayed. She told the Australian publication, Woman’s Day: ‘We realised we would have to expect stories in the press about Peter when he became well known. But this story is the worst yet. I speak from my heart when I say I’m utterly sickened and horrified. Like many women, I had a stillborn baby. That’s the true story. It’s not an experience anyone wants to talk about, is it?’

Therein lies the danger of being a heart-throb. A heart-throb cannot be a person of ordinary failings, of commonplace background, of average ambitions and yearnings. His life must be lived

according to the ‘Dictionary of Superlatives’. His ways must be unlike those of lesser mortals. Everything about him must read like a script from a soap opera.

Peter O’Brien understands the heart-throb business. He might not like it but realises he is in an industry where idols must have their day, even if some do not contain twenty-four hours. Alex Papps, on the other hand, admits to being bewildered by media attention, and at a loss to know why it should be focused on him.

And it is. When he attended a country race meeting he was astonished to find trailing behind him a gaggle, or perhaps a goggle, of small boys, starry-eyed girls of all ages and not a few of their mothers, their Instamatics at the ready, and all wanting autographs. ‘It’s a very strange feeling,’ he said. ‘It’s nice to know that people react to what you do, but I don’t really know how to cope with it. I remember when it started to happen. I found it was strange to think people knew about you and saw your face in magazines.’

Being a sensible young man, Alex sat down and let the subject loose in his mind for a while. He knew he was placed on a pedestal because of his role in the soapie, Home and Away. He appreciated that if he was selling socks in a department store no one would be demanding his autograph. ‘The way I’ve worked it out is that the person who is being seen in the magazines or on television is a totally separate part of me. That is the way I’m trying to stay detached from it. I think I have to try and maintain the separation from what is the television person and what is me.’

He often tried to explain who he really was, that away from the television screen he was not the character, Frank Morgan, but a young bloke called Alex Papps who happened to have taken up acting as a career. ‘I’m the person who dags around at home, watches television and orders home delivery pizza, yet I’m portrayed as something completely different.’

He tried to explain but no one was listening. He couldn’t move without being swamped by fans; they even crawled through the windows of his small apartment. Sometimes, out of sheer frustration, he would deny his identity when approached for an autograph, a ruse that fooled no one, especially the fans. And always the tag he detested, the label of heart-throb, would be attached to his name. He would pick up a magazine and read a story about himself, which invariably began: ‘Heart-throb Alex Papps ...’

He would wince once again, ‘I hate the whole idea of being a heart-throb. What’s a heart-throb? I am an actor. I can’t cope with the idea of people who don’t know me saying they love me or they hate me because I’m in the public eye. It’s nice to have fans and have recognition. That is always a good thing. But it is easier to accept people liking you because of your acting than because they think you are a spunk.’

After a while Alex could take it no longer. The pressure of always being in the public eye, of being unable to move without being hounded, became too much. He was sick of going on promotional trips to shopping centres, being jostled, hassled, mauled, even grabbed by precocious young females on parts of the body generally considered private. Even though he enjoyed doing the soap, liked the cast and welcomed the security, he felt he had to get out of Home and Away.

Before Home and Away he had worked in The Henderson Kids, a family situation series, and had a small part in Neighbours before it became internationally famous and began worrying the British critics. After twelve months in Home and Away he received an offer he felt was too good to refuse. A week later he turned up on the set of The Flying Doctors. He felt enormous relief.

‘I want to develop as an actor, not a celebrity ... There is nothing more dangerous than believing your own publicity ... Sure, it’s flattering to have people write to you and compliment you. But I don’t judge my worth by the number of magazine covers I appear on. I go on how I feel when I am working and whether I’m learning anything or advancing ... It was very risky leaving

a high-profile programme like Home and Away. But you have to take risks. I knew I was leaving security for a big question mark, but that’s the nature of the acting business and I wanted to move on and do other things.’

Another point he saw in his favour was that The Flying Doctors was a mere one hour a week; Home and Away filled two and a half hours a week. His heaviest day on The Flying Doctors could involve five scenes; in Home and Away he could do twenty scenes in one day. Now he had time to develop his character, Nick Cardaci, a jack-of-all-trades, who does a bit of driving, gardening and crop-spraying, helps Emma (Rebecca Gibney) at the garage and wants to make money to support his ailing father, mother and sisters. ‘He is a likeable bloke, who is sensible and practical,’ said Alex. ‘Nick is more intelligent and together than Frank Morgan in Home and Away.’

But even when moving from one studio to another, from Sydney where Home and Away was made to Melbourne, Alex could not totally escape the heart-throb business. On his first day on the set of The Flying Doctors he was confronted by another victim in the form of Terence Donovan, father of the incredibly popular Jason. In an ironic twist, Terence was playing Jim Cardaci, Nick’s father, a long-distance truck driver who, because of the many miles he travels, takes too many amphetamines. The two actors had much to compare and were able to look at the heart-throb business from two completely different angles.

Terence Donovan has been an actor for more than thirty years, gainfully employed not only in many Australian television series but in films and on the stage. However, he was virtually unknown outside his country until Britain decided Jason was the best thing to come along in many seasons, or at least since the previous pop phenomenon. Terence was living in the leafy quietness of suburban Melbourne, watching his son develop from a cardboard cut-out in Neighbours into a pop singer and more serious actor. He knew Jason was a big name but not how big until his peace was shattered by the incessant ringing of his telephone. It rang so much he had to change the telephone number he had had for twenty years, which none too pleased him. ‘I was rather fond of that number,’ he said. Most of the calls were from overseas correspondents desperate for a new angle on Jason, if indeed a new angle existed.

The European paparazzi would ring me up at all hours of the day and night, friendly as anything, but very obviously after a story about Jason,’ he told Jenni Gilbert, of the Sydney Daily Telegraph. ‘It became a bit too much. I’d never really understood the popularity of Neighbours and the huge success my son has had over in Europe until I started getting all these calls. I knew Jason was going to fly high and do well because he has youth on his side, a good look about him and the ability and skill to be able to carry it through. None of us in the business even ten years ago were lucky enough to get that sort of exposure overseas. So maybe my peers and I paved the way for Jason and Kylie (Minogue) and their success.’

Alex Papps was nervous when he went on to the set of The Flying Doctors, as are many who have made the transition from soapie to series. Some consider The Flying Doctors to be little more than a soapie, but there are differences, although not enough to provide material for an all-night argument. Soapies use a camera technique that requires close-ups and extreme close-ups. The viewer is a witness to the stylised emotions; expressions of pity, jealousy, rage and self-doubt. Time is prolonged yet little happens, no character becomes so important they cannot be written out, there is an economy of narrative and conventional objects such as a telephone or door bell take on major significance. Also each episode in a soapie should end with one or more characters, if not hanging over a cliff, at least getting close to the edge. There should be more loose ends than on a plate of spaghetti. A series usually tells a complete story in one episode, sometimes two, but never longer.

Actors in series tend to look down a trifle on their soapie colleagues, but they shouldn’t because most began their careers in the lather of five half hours a week. Alan Batemen, former head of drama for the Nine Network, which screens The Flying Doctors in Australia, will have none of this snobbery. ‘I don’t see "soap" as a derogatory term,’ he said. ‘Brideshead Revisited was a soap opera. So was The Forsyte Saga. So were The Pallisers and Upstairs, Downstairs. There are wonderfully cute terms like "contemporary series" and "Australian drama series" but it’s really a way of categorising.’

Whatever he was appearing in, whether it be soapie or series, Alex Papps turned up on a Monday morning to work on an established show, playing a new character, with an unfamiliar cast. He knew some of the faces, such as Rebecca Gibney, Robert Grubb and Lenore Smith, having met them at functions. In Australia’s relatively small show business circle one would have to live as a hermit not to meet actors from various series at functions. Still, he was nervous. ‘Then the first person I spotted was a technician who turned out to be an old friend from my days on The Henderson Kids. Another person I knew from The Henderson Kids doubled as my stuntman for a horse race scene. It was a great relief to see familiar faces.’

Aware of the difficulty in entering an established series, of being the new boy on the block, the other actors gave Alex a welcome party that travelled around the clubs of Melbourne until the milkman hours of the morning. Alex’s doubts disappeared. He knew he had made the right decision and at least felt comfortable in his chosen profession. His writing hand, that had signed so many autographs felt better already. ‘It’s nice to have the focus taken off you,’ he said. ‘It’s good to be able to sit back and know everybody is not looking at me because it is an ensemble cast. I am not the centre of attention. I haven’t been brought on this show to smile for the cameras every ten seconds and hope people are swooning.’

In contrast, Brett Climo, who plays Dr David Ratcliffe in The Flying Doctors, is not sure whether he is a heart-throb or not. The fans have no doubts. One girl who got his home telephone number thought two o’clock in the morning a fine time to make calls. ‘Then she started sending letters saying I was leading her on simply by answering the phone,’ said Brett, still amazed he could attract such intense infatuation.

He is equally amazed people should bother to write letters to him. Fan letters. Letters full of gushing adoration. Letters from strangers. ‘It’s hard to talk about without sounding patronising, and I really respect what they’re saying. It’s great to know that your work has actually had an effect on people, that it inspired them to sit down and write something. I answer all the letters. I didn’t think I would, but I do. You just can’t ignore people when they go to that much trouble for you'.

Neither incidentally, does Peter O’Brien ignore the mail that he receives, which boosts Australia Post’s revenue by as many as 500 letters a week. His mother, Betty, helps with the letters, although she has learned that the content of some envelopes can be steamy. Fans tend to put thoughts down on paper they would never express verbally. ‘I don’t like reading the letters because some are quite personal,’ said Betty, diplomatically.

Maybe the reason for Brett Climo’s surprise at all that is happening around and to him comes from the fact he was never consumed by the desire to be an actor, at least not in his younger days. He never entertained his family be wearing a lampshade on his head and using a soup ladle for a microphone. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to be as he grew up in Sydney’s southern suburbs. Not until he was seventeen. He looked around, saw there was a job called acting and decided to ‘have a shot at it’. Taking a day off school, he found an agent and was given a small part in a film, The Times They Are A Changing.

He found it not a bad job at all. But to this day he does not see acting as the world’s greatest occupation, perhaps agreeing with Spencer Tracy who put it this way: ‘Why do actors think they’re so goddam important? They’re not. Acting is not an important job in the scheme of things. Plumbing is.’

Brett Climo put it his way in a conversation with Sydney show business writer, Kevin Sadlier: ‘Acting is not the best time I have in my life. Never has been. I mean, I enjoy it immensely and I’m glad I get paid to do it. And as long as I get paid to do it and as long as I get better at it, then I’m pleased about that. But the best times for me happen when I’m not working.’

Without formal training in dramatic acting, Brett followed a variation of the instructions originally given by the great American thespian, Alfred Lunt: ‘Don’t bump into the furniture and remember your lines.’

Said Brett: ‘I could always remember my lines but I always bumped into the furniture. It was so difficult to do both things at the same time.’

Nevertheless he succeeded. He landed a role in Sons and Daughters, one of Australia’s more primitive soapies, then had parts in Archer, a telemovie about Australia’s greatest passion, The Melbourne Cup horse race, and the mini-series, Vietnam, in which he was blown up by a land mine. But at times he had doubts about acting, becoming despondent as he wondered if there was more to life than pretending to be someone else. ‘You start questioning the reason why you want to work, and it was good for me to do that.’

Then came A Country Practice, a series or soapie (call it what you wish) that carries the same sort of prestige as The Flying Doctors. He played a nurse. He enjoyed the experience, the satisfaction of good ratings and the critics’ applause but pined for something else. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted, as long as it was a character different from the do-gooder image of A Country Practice. ‘I’d like a compete change and be a hippie, a druggie or a murderer.’

He wasn’t to be any of these. Instead, he graduated from nurse to doctor in The Flying Doctors, an achievement accomplished in a few weeks, making it possibly the quickest leap forward in the history of medicine. His character, Dr David Ratcliffe, is the son of a wealthy grazier who has returned to the country after studying medicine. Brett welcomed the change. ‘I’m fairly lazy by nature and things can become a bit routine to me. I suppose I did get a little stale and saw this as a great chance to move on.’

The Flying Doctors also gave him freedom to develop the character. Because each episode is self-contained, he treated them as short telemovies produced once a week. Another reason he fitted comfortably into The Flying Doctors was that it was shot on film, a technique most experienced actors prefer. Working with video may mean there is a safety-net, the scene can be replayed instantly and if there are mistakes they can be shot again with little further expense. But it removes much of the challenge that actors working in film face daily. ‘With film we don’t know how it’s actually going to look until it’s cut together and put on the screen,’ he said. ‘So you’ve got this feeling of nervousness, and everyone’s sort of focused on the same action, with a real sense of being in it together, and I like that.’

There was one other reason why he was pleased when offered a role in The Flying Doctors, a reason most actors understand. ‘It’s nice for the ego when that sort of thing happens,’ he admitted.

The heart-throbs have their place in The Flying Doctors. But the series is an equal-opportunity employer. It is not male dominated. Females are not mere decorations but are also given meaty roles. They also have to share the same discomforts.

Quick pick Chapter 4 Andrew McFarlane - Chapter 5 Robert Grubb - Chapter 6 Peter O' Brien, Brett Climo - Chapter 7 Liz Burch, Rebecca Gibney - Chapter 8 Maurie Fields, Max Cullen - Chapter 9 Lenore Smith

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Peter

Brett