Comment from Peter Saxon.
As a young man, I auditioned for NIDA straight out of high school. Much to my parents’ horror, I was accepted. It was not the law degree they had in mind for their only child.
I, of course, had high hopes of making it big in Hollywood. But after a year, I realised that an acting career wasn’t for me. I knew I was too young with too little life experience to portray truly rounded characters. I realised that I didn’t have the X-Factor as others in my year, including Belinda Giblin, Paula Duncan and John Jarrett had. After much soul searching, what finally convinced me I wasn’t going to be a star was a letter from NIDA Director John Clark who wished me luck for the future but offered me no place at the drama school for the following year.
So, I took the hint and thought, ‘what about radio?’ It’s sort of like acting, except that it paid better, or at least it paid more regularly.
Pauline, my darling wife, sometimes asks me if I miss acting. What if I’d persevered? “You could have been as big as Russell Crowe,” she teases.
“What, like in Gladiator?” I ask. “No,” she retorts, “More like Roger Ailes (the obese and lecherous FOX News boss) in the Loudest Voice.”
Pauline brought up the topic of my failed acting career again on Saturday night as we played a game of “In Stuff” while watching television. The game works like this: If one of us sees an actor in a movie or a TV series that looks familiar but can’t immediately name them, we ask the other, “Who’s that?” The other has about 10 secs to answer and, if they can’t, they then reply – “dunno, but they’re In Stuff.” Thus, with iPad in hand, the search begins through IMDb and Wikipedia to find exactly what Stuff they’ve been In.
For example, while re-watching The West Wing with Martin Sheen as president, the young woman playing his daughter seemed familiar. Couldn’t place her but we agreed she was definitely “In Stuff.” After 26 seconds of exhaustive research, she turned out to be Elisabeth Moss who starred in Handmaiden’s Tale and co-starred in Madmen.
Most of the “In Stuff” actors we come across never made it to A-List status. They usually landed a guest role as a sex offender on Law and Order and then bobbed up as a judge in Boston legal. And then as a judge accused of sexual offences (or vice versa) on The Good Wife.
I explained to Pauline, for the umpteenth time, that I have no regrets having traded in the acting career for a life in radio. But if I had continued as a thespian, I would have been content just to have been “In Stuff.”
I know that may not sound particularly ambitious but, in hindsight, I’m not sure the full-blown Hollywood Star lifestyle was for me – even if I’d had the talent.
Those actors who are “In Stuff” may not be household names but they seem to be constantly In a variety of Stuff and making a comfortable living without the downside of stardom. Who needs the relentless exposure in the tabloid media examining your relationships, going through your garbage, following you to rehab and the rest of it? I don’t.
When the late Sir John Gielgud was asked the secret to his success, he said, ‘I never turned down a part.’ I assume he meant, ‘paying part.’ But there’s no doubt Sir John lived by the dictum: There are no small parts, just small actors.
Radio’s very similar. Not everyone’s cut out to do a prime shift in a metro market. We don’t all get to have our faces on billboards and TVCs. While many don’t realise their dream and leave the business to be in real estate or advertising, those that remain, the stalwarts, the journeymen and journeywomen of radio are the unsung heroes. The glue that holds stations together. They’re the first to volunteer to stay at work through fires and floods and turn up at a local sausage sizzle to help raise funds for sick kids.
They’re the ones that are the true broadcast professionals, able to cover any shift at short notice – even after a call from the CD at 3 am.
They’re the ones who’ve tamed their egos and taken on the jobs that have to be done without complaint.
There’s Jamie Angel, pumping out the tunes at Breakfast, on 2Day-FM knowing full well that he’s just filling in until they find a viable replacement. Troy Ellis and and then Brendon Dangar did the same at GOLD 104.3 in Melbourne a few years ago when they took over the Breakfast chair after the departure of Jo and Lehmo and kept it warm while maintaining audience share, waiting for British import Christian O’Connell who turned up six months later.
Speaking of O’Connell, the man who follows him in Mornings, Craig “Huggy” Huggins, whom I mentioned last week, has been with the station for 29 years and survived numerous management and content changes as talent came and went around him. Over those years he’s shared his life with his listeners, including his mother’s passing from COVID-19 the other week.
ARN’s Head of Music for both GOLD and WSFM, Jason Staveley has been in radio for 27 years and on-air for most of that time. In 2014 he too mourned the passing of his mother but in stranger circumstances. He was sitting at home watching television news as a murder scene filled his screen. To his horror, Jason was watching his own mother’s house from the helicopter that hovered above.
What both Craig and Jason’s stories demonstrate is how a radio presenter who knows their craft can find a way to share a positive message when faced with personal tragedy.
Radio can be a cut-throat business. You can’t make it last as your chosen journey if you’ve just come along for the ride. For some, it’s all about talent and ambition. For others (with apologies to John F. Kennedy) it’s about ‘asking not what radio can do for you but what you can do for radio.’
Peter Saxon
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On being an actor, I have observed that even if you are a graduate of NIDA or the WAAPA or The Victorian College of Arts, it is no guarantee that you will be a "star" and remained continually employed. If you take a list of graduates of cohorts in a particular year from NIDA, google their names and see if they are still in acting.
But "successful" actors have not even attended acting schools such as NIDA. One could think of Nicole Kidman, Rebel Wilson and Anthony La Paglia.
However, the abovementioned institutions do train people in other aspects of theatre and film and offer courses to professional people such as barristers on presenting themselves online, https://www.corporate.nida.edu.au/class/CVICEC-20OCM1 .
As a result, skills obtained from education courses or by learning on the job are transferrable within the particular industry. Clinton Maynard, a reporter on 2GB has experienced being a newsreader, a manager, an on air presenter and now reporter. The skills gained within one industry were transferred between 'jobs'. This page reinforces the stickability to the industry of the Jason Staveley, Craig Huggins and Jamie Angel.
On the other hand, it may not explain why some "jocks" who go from one station to the next station and the next station, disappear or become traffic reporters or not get another job in radio.
Then the issue goes back to the author's wife playing spot the "familiar" face on a tv show but don't necessarily recall the actor's name. I have at home dvd copies of "Hogan's Heroes", "Get Smart", "Mr Ed" and "Fawlty Towers" to name a few. Of particular interest are the character actors that have appeared on the US sitcoms.
Typically you google a character actor from a US sitcom and find from the IMDB site that they have made a consistent living being a character actor. In fact some of the character actors on "Hogan's Heroes" have made appearances on the show as differernt characters. Some of these actors include Alan Oppenheimer, John Hoyt and Hans Conried.
Similarly you'll see the names of Parley Baer, Howard Caine, Kathleen Freeman and voice actor June Foray on many other shows. The latter is the character voices on WB cartoons, Bullwinkle and Crusader Rabbit.
Hence those familiar faces that you see on the screen pertains to the US market where there are many shows produced. But in Australia the story is different where there are not so many jobs for character actors.
In conclusion you have to ask what are the stickability factors in order to remain in one industry in different roles and what are the transferrable skills that one picked up in a course or on the job that can be applied within and outside a particular industry.
Thank you,
Anthony of exciting, thinking, critical and thoughtful Belfield. See my recollection of the Belfield Pub https://timegents.com/2018/01/22/belfield-hotel-belfield/#comment-5992